Chef Archive
Thread: Are there no capitalist thinking Master Chefs? Or is it just Sunrunner?
Not only can I not keep my own vendors stocked, but I refrained from responding to your email. Since you have come here to challenge Sunrunner Chefs, I will reply.
First, I found your email to be a giant slap in the face. I take great pride in the time and energy I spend producing food and drinks. I also do my best to make the best possible products using the best resources and tools available. Telling me to leave my name off of my food/drinks so that you can resell them on your vendor is insulting. I loaded up 20 crates of fishak last night, it was gone in 2 hours, guess how many people I told? 2, and they only bought 3 crates between the 2 of them.
I certainly don't bust my butt so that you can have a "middleman" fee. I sell direct from my vendor end of story. It's no surprise that you have found no takers. Being a good chef takes time, dedication and hardwork. At the end of the day what keeps me doing it are my customers that thank me and keep coming back day in and day out. I can't count how many people that thought it was cool that I label my products Vallyn's Amazing (insert food name here). That is my benchmark and my trademark. If you think that all of us do this for the money your nuts. We get a sense of pride and accomplishment in our work. You have basically insulted everything I enjoy with your email and now this post.
I was taught if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. So when I read you email, I just ignored it, but coming here and making the Sunrunner Chefs appear negatively is crossing the line.
Hello all.
I'm a merchent on the Sunrunner server and have been searching far and wide for a Master Chef to supply me with various products that I would in turn resell at my vendor shop.
I have been shocked at the amount of resistence I've come up against in my endeavor however.
After emailing 7 Master Chefs, Ive gotten the following responses:
3 didn't bother to answer after a week
- which doesn't seem a very good way of doing business, but maybe they already have all the business they can handle.
1 said "I only supply for my guild"
- Ok, understandable I guess.
1 said "Sorry, I can't handle that kind of supply"
- At least he's being honest. I'd prefer this to someone saying they could and then not being able to deliver. But still, we're talking about a LOT of credits here. An investment in a couple of factories and harvesters and you'd be rolling in the dough in no time (no chef pun intended 
)
2 said "I'd love to sell you 30-50 crates every 2 weeks! But I don't want my items resold so you would have to use all of it yourself"
- *BOGGLE* Why in the world would it matter one way or the other to you whether I marked up your product and resold it? That's what merchents DO.
They also said that even if they did decideit was OK to resell them, they would insist on having their name on it. Again, failing to understand how merchents work. I want people to buy the products from ME so that I can get my middle man fee. I dont want people using them up and saying "Wow, that BoH worked awesome!I need to call this Monsieur Chef guy and make some more. I want them coming back to my vendor mall to get more.
Sorry if I sound rantish. I've been looking for 2 weeks for a Master Chef to supply me, and for all the whining I hear alot of chefs doing about how they are a poor profession, I sure am having a hard time finding one to take a couple hundred thousand credits off me every couple of weeks.
Is Sunrunner the only server where the Chefs have this attitude or do all of them?
I cant speak for them...but for me at least, Ive sold some stuff to other master merchants...but only after Ive made sure my stores were stocked. Its more important to me to keep my stores stocked so that I dont lose my customers. With some items such as fishak/breath of heaven, its very difficult to keep my own stores stock up.
Personally I refuse to put my name on the items I make. I once bought some spices to sell on my vendor that had the smugglers name in them. Ive no problem with selling spices with someone elses name in it (or didnt). A few weeks later the guy stole a BUNCH of stuff from some dear friends in game and was labelled as a huge scam artist..probably the worst our server has seen. Several weeks after that someone noticed I had a couple of units of spice for sale with his name on it and decided that I mustve been involved with the scam as well and was boycotting my shop and telling people that was the case... Maybe i was wrong but I felt that I had paid for it so it was ok to sell it...and honestly the thought didnt occur to me that someone might construe that. From that point on, Ive refused to buy items with a makers name in them. Since I refuse to buy them, I cant honestly make them that way. (wow did I say a lot without saying anything) Just a little food for thought about putting your name in items...you never know what someone is going to do with the item once youve sold it to them. They could drop it on the floor and make vulgar pictures with it (do you really want your name on that sausage now?) ..or drop it on the vendor and proclaim it was made by the worst chef ever. You really just dont know.
As far as unanswered email...they could have broken email, I did for a very long time. Also, Ive noticed a lot of people run chefs as alternates only which could explain them not really going through their email.
Frankly, Ive seen alot of whining about chef being broken...but never really heard master chefs whine about being poor hehe. I think for most people its more a matter of keeping up with demand...especially now that food isnt bugged majorly for the first time since release lol
This type of thread came up a couple weeks ago, and I'll reiterate here:
The demand is far far greater than the supply on chef foods. The vast majority of chefs have their own vendors, and can barely keep those stocked. There is no motivation to supply you, because it's easier to just sell it ourselves.
There's the rub.
They hit it on the head there. supply and demand.
Even on a chef heavy server there are only 4 or 5 actually practicing Masters on a server at any given time. Yeah there may be 30 master chefs but most of them are either hologrinders, PA pocket chefs or little played alts.
People that become Chefs almost always pick up enough merchant skills (if not master it as well) because we all dreamed of opeing a cafe or cantina and setting up shop ourselves. Well we've done that now and realized that demand for our product is WAY above what we can produce even with 10 factories going 24/7
I in fact just hit a ceiling myself. Ive stopped all custom and bulk orders and now i am closing down my original location near theed (which iswidely known as it has been there since the first month)and moving to my guild city and my cantina there just to slow business DOWN! I couldnt keep both my cantina and my cafe in theed stocked as well as i would like.
So the rub is, why would a master chef who can sell her own goods for maximum profit on her own vendors and barely keep them stocked would want to sell at a bulk discount rate to someone who would then mark up the product and canabilize her own business?
What you need to find is either a well on their way novice chef and sell off market items that most Masters dont bother with or find a Master willing to make you schematics for the items you want so that you can manufacture them yourself.
I'm just reiterating what's been said here with some of my personal experience:
Right now I run 3 shops, and I sell wholesale to one cantina that is owned by an old friend in the game. I've recieved in the neighborhood of 2 dozen requests from guilds/cities to be their main food supplier. I've turned them all down. Some of these guilds have scraped my vendors and bought them out the minute they are stocked and resell them in their cities, so I guess that's their answer. The personal/group sales thing is a hard thing to balance, especially without alienating groups.
I produce about 150-200 crates of food a week (only about 60-80 being fishak/boh), and it gets bought out in about 12 hours (the fishak/boh is about 1-3 hours). Demand on most chefs is incredible. This is due to the very low number of public chefs (selling outside their guild), combined with atrocious factory times on food. With the new changes to chef, more people will join the profession, and hopefully the food will produce faster.
One other gate on food production is resources. I probably burn about a million resources a week (when I don't take any days off), and that's a hard pace for people to keep up with. Those million resources are worked on all week and the endgame is a 12 hour salefest. Feasably, to keep my vendor stocked, I'd need to use about 3 million resources a week running about 15 factories. Not gonna happen, I'd have to quit my RL job.
I'm a business chef because: I like food, a lot. I enjoy the forum board scraping, setting up deals. I like the numbers game with crafting (SWG has the most indepth crafting system in any MMORPG!). I like the sorting/analyzing data after sales and profiling customers (vegas style ).
I'm not a chef because: My holocron said so. I'm in it for the ridiculus profits (what do I really buy? more resources). I feel the need to singlehandedly support a server with my wares. I am, true and true, and crafting monkey (Dance monkey dance!).
I understand the perspective of the merchant here, but reselling food right now is a hard bit, mostly because of all the gates that slow food production. I do hope that you succeed in your venture though, I'm sure its gotta be neat to be a commodities trader.
Not only can I not keep my own vendors stocked, but I refrained from responding to your email. Since you have come here to challenge Sunrunner Chefs, I will reply.
First, I found your email to be a giant slap in the face. I take great pride in the time and energy I spend producing food and drinks. I also do my best to make the best possible products using the best resources and tools available. Telling me to leave my name off of my food/drinks so that you can resell them on your vendor is insulting. I loaded up 20 crates of fishak last night, it was gone in 2 hours, guess how many people I told? 2, and they only bought 3 crates between the 2 of them.
I certainly don't bust my butt so that you can have a "middleman" fee. I sell direct from my vendor end of story. It's no surprise that you have found no takers. Being a good chef takes time, dedication and hardwork. At the end of the day what keeps me doing it are my customers that thank me and keep coming back day in and day out. I can't count how many people that thought it was cool that I label my products Vallyn's Amazing (insert food name here). That is my benchmark and my trademark. If you think that all of us do this for the money your nuts. We get a sense of pride and accomplishment in our work. You have basically insulted everything I enjoy with your email and now this post.
I was taught if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. So when I read you email, I just ignored it, but coming here and making the Sunrunner Chefs appear negatively is crossing the line.
Vallyn wrote:
Not only can I not keep my own vendors stocked, but I refrained from responding to your email. Since you have come here to challenge Sunrunner Chefs, I will reply.
First, I found your email to be a giant slap in the face. I take great pride in the time and energy I spend producing food and drinks. I also do my best to make the best possible products using the best resources and tools available. Telling me to leave my name off of my food/drinks so that you can resell them on your vendor is insulting. I loaded up 20 crates of fishak last night, it was gone in 2 hours, guess how many people I told? 2, and they only bought 3 crates between the 2 of them.
I certainly don't bust my butt so that you can have a "middleman" fee. I sell direct from my vendor end of story. It's no surprise that you have found no takers. Being a good chef takes time, dedication and hardwork. At the end of the day what keeps me doing it are my customers that thank me and keep coming back day in and day out. I can't count how many people that thought it was cool that I label my products Vallyn's Amazing (insert food name here). That is my benchmark and my trademark. If you think that all of us do this for the money your nuts. We get a sense of pride and accomplishment in our work. You have basically insulted everything I enjoy with your email and now this post.
I was taught if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. So when I read you email, I just ignored it, but coming here and making the Sunrunner Chefs appear negatively is crossing the line.
And what would be wrong with simply replying and stating that?
I'm a master weaponsmith as well as a merchent. I sell only the best weapons possible, meaning that I throw away alot of resources because of bad experimentation or whatnot, and I take an extreme amount of pride in what I do.
So don't act like you're the only person that gets joy from serving your customers, because you aren't.
The purpose of the merchent profession as it was originally designed was for players to buy items from crafters and sell them. Kind of like Wal-Mart.
Now if you're simply too busy to fill large orders, then fine, I can understand that completely. But to be "insulted" because a merchent is doing what he is SUPPOSED to do, I find unreasonable.
I hope I never become so succesful that I just ignore common courtesy.
Enix_Dayspring wrote:
I've written nothing that would be offensive to most people. If you have taken special offense to it, then there's nothing I can do about that.
Okay, how about
I've been looking for 2 weeks for a Master Chef to supply me, and for all the whining I hear alot of chefs doing about how they are a poor profession, I sure am having a hard time finding one to take a couple hundred thousand credits off me every couple of weeks.
WHERE do you find a lot of chefs whining? Take a look at the forums here, where are the Master Chefs whining "ooh, poor us"?
As for your offer, yeah, big deal, most of us are pulling in at least a half a million creds a week running our own cantinas and our own vendors have stopped taking custom orders since we barely have enough time and resources to keep our own customers supplied. Why should we make YOU a profit from our hard work?
BranrStarkiller wrote:
Enix_Dayspring wrote:
I've written nothing that would be offensive to most people. If you have taken special offense to it, then there's nothing I can do about that.
Okay, how about
I've been looking for 2 weeks for a Master Chef to supply me, and for all the whining I hear alot of chefs doing about how they are a poor profession, I sure am having a hard time finding one to take a couple hundred thousand credits off me every couple of weeks.
WHERE do you find a lot of chefs whining? Take a look at the forums here, where are the Master Chefs whining "ooh, poor us"?
As for your offer, yeah, big deal, most of us are pulling in at least a half a million creds a week running our own cantinas and our own vendors have stopped taking custom orders since we barely have enough time and resources to keep our own customers supplied. Why should we make YOU a profit from our hard work?
Fair enough.
I admit I had no idea exactly how busy Chefs were. That's the reason I posted on this forum, to find out the reason. The first couple of posters explained that to me in a polite and reasonable way.
"As for your offer, yeah, big deal, most of us are pulling in at least a half a million creds a week running our own cantinas and our own vendors have stopped taking custom orders since we barely have enough time and resources to keep our own customers supplied. Why should we make YOU a profit from our hard work?"
This is the reason I became a weaponsmith. I found it obnoxious that people got so rich they no longer cared about the people looking for their products.
I put a great deal of time and effort into supplying my customers with what they want. Right now, Ive had lots of requests to stock Chef created foods, and that's what I've beentrying to find a way ofdoing for the last 2 weeks.
Chef's thatcan barely keep up withtheir own vendors I can clearly understand not wanting to take on an extra burden of large orders. But even if I sell the items, you are still profiting from your "hard work" because the more people buy from me, the more I buy from you. You simply don't have to deal with 200 customers sending you /tells all the time.
I would think there would be some Chefs that would find that to be a desirable arrangement. All the profit, none of the hassle.
But I suppose you get to a point where you have so much money you just play the parts of the game you enjoy and tell everyone else to screw off.
Which is what some people are telling me today.
Enix_Dayspring wrote:
Vallyn
I've written nothing that would be offensive to most people. If you have taken special offense to it, then there's nothing I can do about that.
Sorry.
Actually your last couple of posts have been kind of offensive. I can see where he's coming from. I realize you probably didn't mean it to come out that way, but it did.
Pyrrhus,
I'm on Shadowfire and only just gotten Novice, but have been doing mostly foods for my entire time as Artisan. I do intend to master some day, and as most others here I do place a kind of brand name on my products.
While I can understand why soime chefs would dislike your not wanting them to place a brand of their own on things you intended to resell, I offer another possibility:
Sweeten the deal to counter the chef's loss of direct prestige. Require him or her to brand it with your name, but let's say, guarantee a certain payment even if the last batch is not completely sold.
For example ONLY, contract with the Chef for 'x' amount of crates totalling 100k credits each week, to be paid at week's end [to allow stock to sell]. Even if you only sell 85k this week, you agree to pay the full 100k.
In exchange, the Chef is guaranteed so much income and so much needed craft, but is not allowed to place his name on the product [except where the crafting code process forces it in /Examine].
Does this appeal at all?
Vayde
I think money isnt the issue. What I have discoveredhere that I didn't realize is that Chefs are the new Weaponsmiths. There are very few of them and their goods are highly desirable.
The problem is there aren't enough chefs to keep up with demand, not that they aren't being offered enough money.
BTW
If you ever deal with a merchent, you as the supplier just sell a block amount. The merchent comes to you and says "Ineed 10 crates of this, this and that", you say "That'll be 200,000 credits", he says "OK". You sell them to him and then your part is done.
Whether he sells them or just keeps them as his personal stash doesn't matter. If you ever decide to deal with a merchent and they try to pull a deal like you were talking about like "I'll take these and if they sell, I give you x amount and if they dont, your SOL", then that isn't a very good arrangement.
A good merchent buys what he knows will sell and then does things to move the merchendise. I think some of the people on this board don't understand how much work is involved in a dedicated merchent character as opposed to a crafter that has a vendor set up to sell what they make.
We assume all the risks. I just bought 200k worth of products from you, you made the items, got paid by one person, now you can move on.
The merchent that just bought that, has invested that money into something that he thinks will be desirable. Now I have to go through the motions ofdistributing that bulk amount of product to dozens of different people.
Maybe people come in and buy everything I have the first night, in which case I come back to the Chef and say I need twice as much.
Maybe it sits on the vendor for a month. Then Im out 200k, plus vendor expenses, plus whatever time I put into trying to get people to buy it.
But oh well. I'll eventually find someone that see's its a good deal and isn't already swamped by customers.