You can get overtime whenever you want? Because if you are salary, your after-work time pays 0$/hr.
>unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans.
Seems like you don't want to cook, and have justified it with time costs. Prepared food is not going to be cheaper than unprepared food.
In general cooking is the fun part and that's what makes it a treat, not the rest of it.
Some prepared food within walking distance most definitely is cheaper than all unprepared food within walking distance. It works out just because the places I can walk to for groceries are incredibly overpriced and the restaurants obviously don't source their food there.
I typically don't buy my groceries from the gas station despite them having a half gallon of milk for $4 and it being 3 minutes walking away.
I also don't use gas station numbers to determine if something is cheaper or more expensive.
I can probably walk to a dozen different big grocery stores in 15m and they're ALL more expensive than the cheap fast food in the same area. Not including the smaller expensive bodegas where you can pick up stuff 24/7 every block (kinda like the equivalent of a gas station). A half gallon of milk is $4 at any of the big stores and even more at a smaller place.
Anything cheaper requires a subway ride, which adds more walking and is annoying to do with multiple grocery bags, not to mention adding a flat ~$5 additional cost.
For comparison: I'm trying to beat the numerous dollar pizza and food carts nearby, not normal "fast food" like the more expensive Five Guys on that intersection.
I'm sure no economist would agree with the kind of perspective. I mean, yeah, it pays 0$/hr... but it doesn't mean it's worth just 0$/hr.
> Prepared food is not going to be cheaper than unprepared food
Only if you believe after-work time worths 0$. (I don't think anyone seriously believes this)
If five fast food workers can prepare 100 meals in the time I can prepare 1, there should be some monetary savings shared with me (the customer) unless my time is truly worth close to 0. That's how economies of scale work.
Labor is typically 15-70% of the business's cost. (The 70% is in fields like medicine where regulatory capture has limited the number of licenses)
Its also not perfectly efficient. The worker may only be making 5 meals due to a slow day or slow hours. You may find processed foods in a grocery store more similar to '100 meals in the time I can prepare 1'.