Chef Archive

for the past few days ive been selling my sunburns 600c a stack so 15k a crate

they are stacks of 7 +1801 buffs

I sell my rythcates 450 credits a stack 11250 a crate

Fishaks 480 a stack 12000 a crate

Verretti 400 a stack and 10000

how come I charge so low?

I have no need for mass amounts of proffit I was to to supply the population with a product at a reasonable price ..

What did I base my prices on ? well its about 6c a reasource but I looked at stim packs , good stims costs about 700-1200c which are basicly alot more useful then food *stims Bs*

my prices are letting everyone expierance food from newbies to hardened veterans ...

Too make sure I dont make a huge dent in the chef pockets I refuse all large orders of crates of foods and refer them to one of the other chefs on my server

My goal is to educate people of food buffs I dont want one person hording my supplies so I never fill my vender with more then about 5 crates at atime .

Well I personally think 200-500 per use is outrageous, so I don't charge that much.

I don't have any equations or formulas I use to determine that, and guess what, I have no fear of going out of business or affording my house/harvs/merchants/factory.

I don't mean to be the harbinger of doom for you guys, but when the market gets saturated (and it is happeningvery quickly), the prices will come down. Price em high if you can, and if you are getting people to pay it...great, more power to ya.

But please don't come here and moan because people don't have prices in line with yours. Last time I checked it was a free market. After all, maybe they are trying to drive you out of business (which kinda blows a huge hole in the unspoken rule that we should all look out for each other). And if they are indeed trying to do that, why would they care one bit about your pricing?

I guess what I'm trying to say is what do you guys really think you are accomplishing by complaining that people price lower than you? I'm not trying to flame anyone, its just an honest question. Being one of the people who does charge the aformentioned "insanely" low prices...all I can say that it appears my tactics are working.

So to be completely clear...

1) No, you don't have to charge anywhere near 300c per use to still be profitable

2) Yes, I think those of you who do are taking advantage of your customers (imho)

3) However, I don't care that you charge that much (since it increases my business)

4) And finally, if you can get away with charging that much go for it...just don't expect everyone to feel the same way.

Cyene

PS

I know it all sounds harsh, but this is business we are talking about, not community relations. I am SO with you guys on Chef issues, but also SO against you on pricing.

Perhaps we Chilastra Chefs ought to get together and work out a range of prices and stick by them... and encourage the ones who want to undercut that its to thier own disadvantage.

But how would we do that effectively?

"Perhaps we Chilastra Chefs ought to get together and work out a range of prices and stick by them... and encourage the ones who want to undercut that its to thier own disadvantage."

Ahh, the equivalent of price fixing?

As a Chilastra Chef, I'm sorry to say I won't be participating. I will, however, be competing...

Plus, I would be more than happy to let all my customers know of the impending formationof Chef-OPEC on Chilastra.

Cyene

The way I usually do prices is work from the best items down. If I'm selling Tat Sunburns at 125 creds a use, then there should not be anything higher than that since in my opinion, the sunburns are our best item. I believe I have my Icecream at 100 creds per use, then ice blasters at 75 creds per use.

When I get a new item I put it up for sale at what I believe is a good price. I started with Ice Blasters at 50 creds per use, but sold through 20 of them the first night. I increased my prices to 75 creds per use and I'm still selling all the ones I put up for sale.

Chef pricing is the hardest game to play since depending on resources, materials, crafting stations, tools and experimentation used, all our end products are completly different. I just charge what I believe is fair, and what I would purchase food for myself if I wasn't a chef.

Actually, Uzaahk, your prices aren't too far off from mine.

However, I give rather significant discounts on volume orders (excess of 30% discount).

I prefer to price from the consumer's point of view, i.e. "How much would I pay for that item"?

Cyene

at 600c a stack of sunburns im selling more then most chef sell per weak everyday .

How many chefs can saythey are bringing in 135k a day with out doing anything but paying maintance on a few harvesters and making sure they are paid up ..

I am also a Grenadeer , this mean my character if needs be can solo missions forover 15k a pop, which basicly I can dowhilemy factories produce my food so I can be making a prophit there plan and simpleI dont need chef to rakein money just a little bit is nice.

130k or more a night fo just walking from point a to point b is nothing to laugh about . Because im not makin 1 59.5k Profit per resource doesnt mean im not making a proffit .

My harvesters can pay for themselves if I justset aside 500 ofthe 8000 redources they pull up per day Icould charge 3000c on the bassar and they would sell .. 3000c would pay for about one day and 7 hours I think off the top of my head.

I havea currentset up of ,2 factories,1 smallshop ,1 large flora ,1 large mineral ,1 large gas, and 1 med mineral.

and only 1solar and it powers them all with exess every day... The cost me 120k for one large Flora , Large Mineral free from a guildmate Large Reactive gas 40k from an Architech who likes my low priced sunburns and the med mineralcost me 20k.. Solar power plantive had forever basicly even berfore I was a master chef.

basicly sence ive purchassed these items ive made over300k that is after I devide my net gains on sunburns by 300. That means how much ive made that didn't need to spend and that in less then a weak of being at these lower prices . .

When I was charging 2k a stack of sunburn I would make alot of money per sell but sells typically were the same couple of people every few days I came the the conclusion I wanted to sell to alot more people , that means I cut my prices to areasonable amount for the product.

Again if you dont want to change a reasonable about thats fine , being insanely expensive opens your product up to the elite that can load up on money in no time.. But I bet there will be more and more chefs per server that will begin to sell lower and lower then yourself and nothing will set you product apart and pretty soon you'll beselling nothing while the chef who started out cheap can raise or lower there prices as the economy changes and the masses wont even know you exsist.

I guess selling per resourceall depends on your servers economy.. My server seems to have a thiriving resource market, and a lot of professional miners.

I can sell decent quality resources on the bazaar for 5 credits each - that only takes an investment of 15 skill points for novice artisan and 14 for survey IV.. Neither of which require any significant time or monetary investment..

Theres no way I'd sell food items, which require an investment of 78further skill points, a lot of time and a minimum of 130k credits for training, for anything approaching that price.

The other part of the problem though is partly an oversupply of Tatooine Sunurns - since they're the only recipe a non master (or at least a non Tier IV Cooking/Entrees) chef can really make that will sell, everyone makes them - if therewere more viable recipes people would have to focus on a few of them and with everyone focusing on different items there'd be less of each in the market.

If the rebalance brings the other food up without overly nerfing sunburn, you'll still see less sunburn in the market place as people shift to the other recipes - there'll probably still be an oversupply though, simply from the people that take Mixology to II and don't bother with the rest of the tree

Of course, far more likely is that Sunburn will nerfed, or moved up the tree..

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Cyene wrote:

"Perhaps we Chilastra Chefs ought to get together and work out a range of prices and stick by them... and encourage the ones who want to undercut that its to thier own disadvantage."

Ahh, the equivalent of price fixing?

As a Chilastra Chef, I'm sorry to say I won't be participating. I will, however, be competing...

Plus, I would be more than happy to let all my customers know of the impending formationof Chef-OPEC on Chilastra.

Cyene

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Hey now... this looks like the beginnings of anger on the chef boards. It's all about being nice and helping each other on here, so just chill. I think all that the person is trying to say is that the chefs should stick together and not screw themselves by selling too low, as Architects have been known to do. No one is trying to say that unless you want to pay outrageous prices, you're not getting buffs. All that I get from this is, "Hey, let's not try to screw each other."

This same discussion is brought up often on the DE boards. I happen to be one of the few that sells 'too low' for most DE's over there. My defense is that my sell price covers my costs and puts a profit in my pocket, and one big point that most of them have seemed to lost... this is a game! People play to have fun playing their characters, and for a lot of people that means making enough to cover costs and future investments. Not gouging customers.

Btw - I'm here as I have a Chef alt which I just started recently.

An interesting pricing topic.. In SWG you are able to master two elite classes. For most of us we are mastering chef. Our second class might be a serious money maker, or a serious money drain. Or you might not have a second class yet, focusing first on chef.

This situation means our ability to price things at a certain level is going to vary across the board no matter what. You can say someone's going to lose all their money selling a crate of sunburn at 13k, but that person might be soloing missions on the side or doing armorcrafting and selling food for fun. Another personmay run out of money selling at the same price if they are trying to support their grinding with chef profits only, or even worse if they are trying to also support a second profession that is a money drain.

If everyone in this game could play one class only, I think that pricing would vary a whole lot less, as everyone in a class would have a similar set of challenges for raising money.

I am contemplating significantly lowering my prices across the board right now. The reasons for this are: the factory fix, a consistent source of income from stims and sunburn, a nice stockpile of resources from 2 months of collecting opportunistically, not much need to spend money now that I have my houses and harvestors and hit master doc. However, a chef just hitting mixology 2 with no other source of income is not going to have the same situation as me, and will need to charge a lot more. So on the one hand I think it is unfair to be raking in such high profits, on the other I don't want to hurt the new chefs coming up.

"Hey now... this looks like the beginnings of anger on the chef boards. It's all about being nice and helping each other on here, so just chill. I think all that the person is trying to say is that the chefs should stick together and not screw themselves by selling too low, as Architects have been known to do. No one is trying to say that unless you want to pay outrageous prices, you're not getting buffs. All that I get from this is, "Hey, let's not try to screw each other.""

Nah not anger at all, the post was partially in jest.

But it does further illustrate my point thatI would MUCH prefer healthy competition between Chefs. What many are suggesting here is EXACTLY what the oil industry does. And as a result, there really is very little difference between Exxon, Chevron, etc. You need gas, it all costs the same, so you just go to the closest station. Is that what you guys really want? Business that comes to you soley based on location and nothing else?

Just understand that I am as adamant as you all are that my prices are justified; I'm not trying to grief you, just steal your business (muhaha). Additionally, while many of you may feel I'm undercutting, I feel just as strongly that you are gouging.

The issue at hand is I see the posts hereabout people supposedly undercutting about once a week. My question is, if you are making more money by selling for higher prices and your business isn't suffering, what is there to complain about?

I don't worry about other Chef's prices, so I'm just asking those of you who choose to price higher to do the same. There is no need to "have a conversation" with a fellow Chef about his prices unless you are just asking for reference. If you want to have a conversation, shoot me a /tell about factory bugs or broken recipes and I'll talk your ear off....but please don't pressure me to raise my prices so yours appear more justified.

What fun would it be if we all had exactly the same prices? I find it difficult to beleive that anyone would really want that.

Cyene

"I am contemplating significantly lowering my prices across the board right now. The reasons for this are: the factory fix, a consistent source of income from stims and sunburn, a nice stockpile of resources from 2 months of collecting opportunistically, not much need to spend money now that I have my houses and harvestors and hit master doc. However, a chef just hitting mixology 2 with no other source of income is not going to have the same situation as me, and will need to charge a lot more. So on the one hand I think it is unfair to be raking in such high profits, on the other I don't want to hurt the new chefs coming up."

A number of the reasons you listed are what promtpted me to do the same.

Something that is getting missed here is how much do chefs price who buy resources versus those who run a full set of harvesters?

I find it plausible that a chef that runs harvesters would evetually hit critical mass where resource costsbecome trivial compared to those who buy most resources at 2-3c per unit on the bazaar. Medium and lage harvesters lower costs and the time involved significantly.

Assuming my above statement has merit, it would seem prudent that food prices would drop as more resources are obtained for less money (which also allows for more production with 1000 charge schematics...which is a huge timesaver). However, many chefs seems to be selling at the same prices they were when running all personal harvs., which is great if people are paying.

So as a business owner, what is my motivation to NOT lower my prices if I have had a similar reduction in overhead? If you say more money, yah sure, but the larger motivation in my mind is more sales volume.

As I mentioned before, in no way am I saying ANY price is wrong...charge as much as you can get

What I am saying is I feel I can increase not only my customer base, but also increase the sheer number of people who would buy food by exposing them to it with lower prices (just as someone mentioned in a previous post about giving stacks away....I can't tell you how many cutomer's I have landed with that tactic).

Cyene