Chef Archive
Thread: Everybody please read: Question about sales
I post crates and singles of everything I make. The singles do not sell at all until all the crates are gone for that food type. Even then my customers send me tells and emails asking when they can get crates again.
No I do not believe I could support myself on singels alone. The quantity required to maintain a profit would haveot rise significantly or the cost of the singles would have to rise significantly.
I can give somegeneral numbers, since I have two food vendors. One is a bartender, which contains individual stacks, and the other is a bulk food vendor that carries only crates. The bartender is in the Fooville Cantina, on Naboo (Chilastra), south of Theed. The bulk food vendor is in the IFC PA Hall, just north of the Cantina.
When I first made Master Chef about a month ago, I threw a ton of individuals up on the bartender. Basically my test runs to figure out the parameters of the various foods. Also, if I have a partial crate, I generally throw the foods up on the bartender. I put probably 200 foods up there, ranging from 200 to 2,500 in cost for a stack (i.e. Wastril Bread to Angerian Fishak). I also occasionally threw other foods up, but only the ones that I knew would sell -- Tat Sunburn, Angerian Fishak, Breath of Heaven, etc. Just hit the one month mark from the beginning and about 60 foods came up as unsuccessful auctions.
Meanwhile, I run 4 factories (using a friend's lots) and 8 harvesters at any given time. I sell some of the resources and use the bulk for my food crafting (and, at present, occasional vehicle crafting).
I have never once had an order for a single food, only for crates of food. Once someone asked me if I had crates of Fishak, I told them I was out but had some individuals, and they then said that they were looking for crates. Didn't even buy the individual stack, even though they were specifically seeking out Fishak.
Given the people who buy off the individual vendor, I imagine that most of those foods were:
1. Tatooine Sunburns for entertainers in the Cantina.
2. Foods bought only because there were not crates available on the bulk food vendor.
3. Cheap foods (i.e. Wastril bread/Stewed gwouch from grinding) that were bought by Creature Handlers to feed their pets.
The rates of sale when someone comes to either vendor is about the same. The average person will buy one or two crates of food/drink at the bulk food vendor, and the average person will buy one or two STACKS of food/drink at the individual vendor.
A few qualifiers:
The IFC PA Hall is a common shopping location, as there are assorted vendors in there. The only vendor in the cantina is my bartender and a general equipment and vehicle vendor of mine, so it doesn't get nearly as much traffic.
Without completely changeing my method of business, No Way could I make a living on singles.
SirVimes wrote:
Ok, I need some numbers here.
Who here can make a living selling food individually as opposed to crates?
PLEASE I do not want a discussion, I want numbers. If you want me to help chefs, just answer the question and only the question. You can discuss on other threads. Please. I am begging you this time. And I need as many people as possible to answer this.
Everyone can make a living selling food individually.
There are no numbers to give without requiring discussion, because each person's numbers will bespecific for their situation.
I don't sell a lot of singles, but I certainly sell them.
One nice thing about singles is that they _don't_ sell, so that they stay on the vendor and demonstrate the variety in my menu.
For instance,I can't keep crates of Fishak stocked for more than a day. But, I almost always have Fishak singles ... so if someone comes in and sees no Fishak crates, they will see the singles, and crates of other food, and will be able to deduce that next time they happen by I might have crates of Fishak.
Hero
~
SirVimes wrote:
PLEASE I do not want a discussion, I want numbers.
Is this a joke?
I keep at least 5 singles of everything I stock on my vendors. The only times singles sell is when the crates are sold out or when someone comes and buys 1 of everything which tells me they are decorating. Nobody wants singles, go fight 1 lair and then come back and buy more food? Yea, Im sure thats what most people want to do. The entire thought process behind this question being asked shows an extreme lack of knowledge about cheffing.
*crawls back to my hole*
GalinHawk wrote:
Good approach Vodokar. Let me change that around for a "normal single-account" chef that does NOT have vendors (i.e. the question was "can you make a living without vendors":
harvester maintenance = 50 cr/hr *24 hr*7 days/week*5 Medium harvesters = 42,000
Power Cost = One Fusion PP running 24/7 = 12,600
Factory Maintenance = 75 cr/hr * 24*7*2 factories = 25,200
1 house = 6,300
Total weekly expenses = 96,100 cr.
Based on that, a chef would have to sell about 100,000 per week to be in the black.
So let's assume this chef is INCREDIBLY INNEFFICIENT and makes only 5 crates of food per week . Let's also assume that those foods sell for 2K per stack. That would be 25 X 2,000 X 5 = 250,000 in reveneues per week. Less from that the production costs, the bazaar listing fees (20 cr per unit?), shuttle fees to advanced planets (where this stuff will sell better) and you'll get a Net profit of about 125,000.
I'd think selling one case of food on a bazaar on each advanced planet PER WEEK would be reasonable. The bigger problem will be making those 2,000 cr. foods (as opposed to the more expensive and more competitive BE foods that will have to sell for 7,000 cr per stack and are too expensive to put on the Bazaar).
That said, this chef won't be making 1 million in profit per week... but they COULD make a living...
Message Edited by GalinHawk on 02-04-2004 05:00 PM
Flaw in your argument. Singles don't sell.
I have a perfect example to show that. I recently catered a wedding. I dropped a vendor and put 200 stacks of 5 different extremely popular foods (BOH, GGP, Bivoli, Fishak, and Thaktillo) on the vendor at 1 cr each for the guests to take. 75 people attended the wedding, yet after 3 hrs, 175 stacks were still there. I was standing right next to the vendor the whole time and almost everyone inspected it when i told them there was free food courtesy of thier hosts. The vendor is still standing there, full of free master quality foods in a high traffic cantina in a metropolis player city. virtually none of it has been touched.
You can't even give away stacks, much less sell them on a regular basis. THAT is the point.