Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Any BE/CHEF care to comment on their profitability?
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PurpleWarrior
Sun Jun 27, 2004 4:45 am
#1
I have seriously considered picking up chef myself on more than one occasion just because of the ridiculous Vas Brandy prices I see. I use a LOT of Vas when I'm out sampling (2 shots every 40-50 minutes) so I'd like to get it cheaper somewhere.
Unfortunately, most good Brandy on Chim is prices at around 8K/bottle (+400/45mins/21 uses average) with some charging 10K (250K/crate).
I looked carefully at ArthurDent's figures on the 250K brandy costs and had to leave it a day before I wrote anything - my original reaction to those chef profitsmight have been a little 'inflammatory' *coughs*
I've never played a chef - I thought they had to get some really high quality meat to make that brandy - dumb aren't I? 
So - any BE/CHEFs care to comment on how they run their own business and what kind of profits they settle for?
Joilhath
Sun Jun 27, 2004 11:34 am
#2
Well I WAS charging the 1/1.5/2K works out to roughly 3xcost or so for Nutrient additives but go tired of chefs complaining(got the pricing scheme from a chef even sheesh)and/or other BE's selling for a fraction over cost so started selling chef foods at 3xcost comes out to about 135k per crate of Brandy.
Message Edited by Joilhath on 06-27-2004 11:42 PM
PurpleWarrior
Sun Jun 27, 2004 11:37 am
#3
Hmm.. that sounds like a good way of actually turning Chef Tissues into a workable profit. My wife's been prodding me to make a Chef to supply her Doctor with "Good Bivoli" *grins* Might have to have a play with the idea.
Joilhath wrote:
Well I WAS charging the 1/1.5/2K works aout to roughly 3xcost or so for Nutrient additives but go tired of chefs complaining(got the pricing scheme from a chef even sheesh)and or other BE's selling for a fraction over cost so started selling chef foods at 3xcost comes out to about 135k per crate of Brandy.
CapricornONE
Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:00 pm
#4
well thanks to a few good shifts of easily collectabe meat, and a few awesome hunters, I have made over 15 million credits selling addatives. but then again I'm charging more than the standard 1k/2k/3k for my addatives because +88 BSN's and +118 Inteligent Nano's go for just a few more credits 
nothing like logging on and seeing all 280 full crates gone in less than a day.. lol
nothing like logging on and seeing all 280 full crates gone in less than a day.. lol
Lozareth
Sun Jun 27, 2004 7:49 pm
#5
Until recently, whenever I had 300+ crates on my vendor, I'd advertise and they'd all sellout that night. I sell very cheap, but I still mad 10mil in a day each time that happened. Recently supplements stopped selling to all but brand new chefs so I picked up chef myself. I applied what BEs were expected to charge for thier stuff to food and ended up with prices 1/2 to 1/10 of what chefs had been charging. Moved 400 some crates of food in 24 hours and made around 25 million credits. Strange how doing the extra work to sell in bulk and cheap makes you far more money than selling a few things here and there at extremely high prices.
NikkiDial
Mon Jun 28, 2004 9:27 pm
#6
Standard pricing
organics 4cpu
meat 30cpu
This is my cost on average. Heck its prolly less. Notice these are buy prices since I dont hunt myself. I let others hunt for me and try to make my money by doing bulk.So if you do the math it looks like this for a full run.
60k*4=240k
20k*30=600k
840k total cost for medium nutrients.
Now I usually price my Mediums like this for a full run.
+84 = 1.1m
+85 = 1.2m
+86 = 1.3m
+87 = 1.4m
So as you can see you can always make a profit with the above math and its still cheap enough for cheaparse chefs to still want to buy them. Ofcourse other BEs on my server charge 1.7m for mediums and 2.1 for Heavies, so maybe I am cheating myself.
Uncle_Albert
Tue Jun 29, 2004 6:24 am
#7
Im just here because im grinding BE on my alt to make additives myself, which is the main problem chefs come up againest.
No one buys food that isnt BE enhanced, so if you cant get the additives, your business grinds to a halt.
But to your point about Brandy prices, I charge 225k for a crate, pretty decent stats aswell, up with the best on the server. But only last week I made afew large runs of brandy, had a special price of 200k and sold over 50 crates in 2 days, mostly to resellers.
You can price brandy at 100k allday and still make afew credits, but someone will just buy it all and resell at a bigger profit than you are making, if thats ok with you then fine
Anyway, Chef doesnt resolve around just brandy, lots of other nice foods to make, and it isnt as easy as people think 
Good luck if you do decide to go Chef, give me a tell in-game if you need any help
PurpleWarrior
Tue Jun 29, 2004 6:37 am
#8
Uncle_Albert wrote:
Im just here because im grinding BE on my alt to make additives myself, which is the main problem chefs come up againest.
No one buys food that isnt BE enhanced, so if you cant get the additives, your business grinds to a halt.
But to your point about Brandy prices, I charge 225k for a crate, pretty decent stats aswell, up with the best on the server. But only last week I made afew large runs of brandy, had a special price of 200k and sold over 50 crates in 2 days, mostly to resellers.
You can price brandy at 100k allday and still make afew credits, but someone will just buy it all and resell at a bigger profit than you are making, if thats ok with you then fine
Anyway, Chef doesnt resolve around just brandy, lots of other nice foods to make, and it isnt as easy as people think
Good luck if you do decide to go Chef, give me a tell in-game if you need any help
I pretty much stopped making Chef additives for sale. The meat on Chimaera just isn't that good at the moment and the only decent meat is selling at over 60cpu. Making BSNs at that price, for resale, just isn't worth it. (20 meat per = 1200creds before I add anything else..)
I'm going to give Chef a try. I don't think I'll ever be a big seller like Kara (Been to the New Mall and the Bestine vendor quite a few times )
My wife's a Doctor so she'll have to bankroll me for a while until I get the Cheffing sorted out. She seems to think I can grind it in 24 hours and make +25 Bivoli *coughs* I'll disillusion her later.
It's the only way I can see making a profit from BSNs in the current situation.
I'm glad my Rancors still sell *chuckles* or I'd be skint.
Dsabre
Tue Jun 29, 2004 12:53 pm
#9
the server your on makes a big difference in how much profit you can make...on a server like bria with its inflated market and prices...you could sell a ton for cheap...and still turn a huge profit (this is where being both a BE and chef helps a lot). on the other hand there are quite a few other servers where you can't do this anywhere near as effectively (I don't know what chimaera's economy looks like).
on bria's economy...with its 250k per crate of brandy prices...selling for 125k (1/2 price) can still net you a nice profit, and will sell very very quickly as long as the quality is decent...I would personally recommend 150k or 175k to start, and work your way down to a price your comfortable with...and maybe you'll bring the server average down too (your startup costs are probably going to be fairly high so you may want to recover it a bit quicker).
on other servers where 100k-150k per crate is the average...50k-75k a crate...will not really get you all that great of a profit (for that 50k a crate price you might actually be taking a loss)...but you can still make a small amount of profit. however the one catch with these servers is that your quality will need to be higher than on a server like bria....particularly the 100k a crate servers...and exp tapes aren't cheap.
and if you go for the 1/2 price type of deal...be prepared for all the hate mails and tells and such you'll likely be getting...in the end you may end up pricing maybe 25k-50k under your server average just to avoid the aggrevation of having to deal with all the crap.
on bria's economy...with its 250k per crate of brandy prices...selling for 125k (1/2 price) can still net you a nice profit, and will sell very very quickly as long as the quality is decent...I would personally recommend 150k or 175k to start, and work your way down to a price your comfortable with...and maybe you'll bring the server average down too (your startup costs are probably going to be fairly high so you may want to recover it a bit quicker).
on other servers where 100k-150k per crate is the average...50k-75k a crate...will not really get you all that great of a profit (for that 50k a crate price you might actually be taking a loss)...but you can still make a small amount of profit. however the one catch with these servers is that your quality will need to be higher than on a server like bria....particularly the 100k a crate servers...and exp tapes aren't cheap.
and if you go for the 1/2 price type of deal...be prepared for all the hate mails and tells and such you'll likely be getting...in the end you may end up pricing maybe 25k-50k under your server average just to avoid the aggrevation of having to deal with all the crap.
Lozareth
Tue Jun 29, 2004 3:15 pm
#10
I'm finding chef way easier than BE. Food runs extremely fast making it easy to keep stocked and I'm used to shuffling crates since I've always stocked my supplements in backpacks of 10. And, yup, I love that I've pulled the resellers off the other chefs.
Nahualli
Wed Jun 30, 2004 2:26 pm
#11
I just love it. I recently took over the only cantina in a player city of 120+ residents. Currently I operate 4 accounts (SHOOT ME NOW) It works like clockwork.
My TKM goes out and hits things and brings back meat.
My Master BE makes additives and sells pets and tailor tissues on the side.
My Master Chef makes food with all the collected resources and sells it in my cantina as well as selling pet food in the BE shop, and my Master Merc/Master Ent runs all of my vendors, maintains all of my harvesters, factories and houses, and plays in my cantina when he's done with the chores.
As for profitability I certainly spend a ton of money in operating costs and buying meat and other resources in quantities, but I always have 3-5 mil in the bank and this keeps me afloat. I don't charge nearly as much for my food like some other elite crafters do but it's ok, I've found my little niche.
It's nice being a one man show.. I feel like an episode of Hey Mon!
-Nah-
Meplorium
Wed Jun 30, 2004 3:48 pm
#12
The word that comes to my mind on this is profitability is going south. I've also seen a few chefs quiting on my server and selling off all their resources. The problem is there were too many new chefs flooding the market with food. For a while there I couldn't keep up with demand, now my vendors still have food and I haven't made anything in over 2 weeks. On top of that getting meat is getting harder to find.
In short, it isn't as good as it was 2 months ago. Still most of the profit comes by the chef side of things, not the BE, although getting the resources for the additives is the most challenging for me. Making the food is the most time consuming as there are many sub parts that need to be made.
Prices have been holding some what though. Brandy still goes for 200k a crate. My food food is droping in price though. The problem is stuff that use to sell ok isn't doing so well now. People are keeping things simple, Brandy and Ahrisa with an occasional canape. Synsteak and early good seller has stop selling. With good armor and defences it isn't necessary. Ahrisa is needed by riflemen, so that sales well. A few people who having caught on to ahrisa yet still use canape. The crafter foods have light demand, but only light.
Basically you do get some cash for making a few items. Kinda like armorsmiths that only make composite.
Bracci
Wed Jun 30, 2004 7:47 pm
#13
Meplorium wrote:Ahrisa is needed by riflemen
It *really* helps TKA too
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