Chef Archive
Thread: Nerf casks, Hear me out.
nkbrillo wrote:
Bad idea... if you want to make more money, why not make more than just 3 things to sell?
/agree
brandy and other things are fine. besides, on my server, your brandy would never sell. no one would even breath on a case of 38m vasarian... unless it were 50k a case.
hint: that may be the reason you don't sell many crates. you need to age your brandy a little longer to give it that full, rich aftertaste that lasts at least 42m.
Without drink multipliers like casks, your profit margin would drop severely. People aren't going to pay any more per dose for a smaller stack. BE additives are expensive, good quality resources are expensive. With a cask, I can triple the amount of brandy I can make with the same valuable components (and triple the price I can charge for it) for only the cost of 150 crappy gemstone and a couple of trim.
Let's look at hard numbers. You sell your 18 use brandy for 225k, that means you could sell a crate of small-glass 6 use brandy for 75k. A crate of small glasses costs 250 resources, and a crate of casks 5000, of grind quality, which average about 2.5 cpu in my galaxy. So for an investment of about 12k credits and an extra manufacturing step, you increase your profit margin on a crate by 150k credits. Or figuring the cost to make each - using my own galaxy standards of 10 cpu for top quality berries and fruits, and 40k per crate for good medium additives - this would add up to 51875 credits per crate for the 6-use brandy, and 63750 credits per crate for the 18-use. If you sell 3 crates a week of the 18-use brandy, you'd sell 9 crates of the 6-use. That's 208125 credits profit per week on the small glasses, vs. 483750 credits per week on the casks.
I'd call that a pretty darned good deal, and I can't wait for barrels. 
Message Edited by Olanthe on 04-19-2004 11:20 AM
I think what he means is that it hurts profits in the long run not the short term. repeat business I think is what he's getting at. or example, I use Vsarian regularly, a crate of 25 with 18 uses lasts me a few weeks and I'm a pretty regular hunter. If 1 crate of Casked brandy lasts a person 2-3 weeks+ That's a person that doesn't need to stop by your vendor for a while.
It's a double edged sword, I hate visiting vendors more than I have to, so I usually go for the crate. There's no easy solution except to offer a variety of purchase choices, crates made with small glasses, crates made with casks, let the buyer decide. I know for a fact not everyone has 250k+ to spend on brandy, so they might go for a cheaper 50k crate made with small glasses.
When I start to sell drinks in full swing, this is what I plan to do, the key is appealing to a wider clientale and varying budgets, you'll see the profits start to roll in.
darksithmage wrote:
There's no easy solution except to offer a variety of purchase choices, crates made with small glasses, crates made with casks, let the buyer decide. I know for a fact not everyone has 250k+ to spend on brandy, so they might go for a cheaper 50k crate made with small glasses.
Actually, I sell my foods in singles, crates of 5, and crates of 25. This accomplishes the same thing without changing the profit margin. The singles and fives are very popular among the not-so-rich and those who don't use food quite as much. The heavy users, big spenders, and folks buying for a PA may go for crates. This way I'm meeting the needs of two distinct groups of people.
I keep track of all my sales, and don't see any difference in the repeat customer rate of the two groups. The buyers of the smaller portions come back for more when they run out. The buyers of crates are buying for multiple people, or use a heck of a lot of the stuff, so they'll be back. Or they just have a lot of money to spend, and come back to try a different food when they see the large variety I offer. Some may buy a single or five-pack of a food they haven't tried before, and return later to get a crate (or three).
In my experience it's variety, quality, and being consistently stocked that brings people back to your vendor (and referring others) - not the size of what you sell.