Chef Archive
Thread: How much money do you make as a chef?
Fahd Krath Master Bounty Hunter/Master Jedi StalkerDo you mean gross income or profit?
As far as income goes, food has pretty regular sales, and people are willing to pay quite a bit for it.
Of course, the chef generally has to pay for additives (unless he/she is also a BE), resources (especially meat/hide/bone/milk unless he/she is also a scout and takes the time to hunt), factory maintenance, harvester maintenance, power, etc.
I've got a few regular customers, along with some drop-by trade, and I net around 50-100k per week. Business is pretty cyclical, so some weeks less, some weeks more. Although I'm quick to tell people: I'm a pretty good chef but a lousy merchant.A very popular chef can profit quite a bit more. I'm sure Cami will be by shortly with exact numbers. 
"I'm sure Cami will be by shortly with exact numbers. "
Eep, well if our correspondent says I'll be by, then I'll be by! Dang, the pressure... I'm a very old chef, with 5 vendor locations spread across 4 planets. Keeping that in mind.. I sell about 3M in food a day on the weekdays and considerably more on the weekends, not including special PA orders. These are vendor sales. Having a product that is consumed really opens up the door for huge sales if you have the time to cook that much. Of course, it's also not unusual for me to spend a day shopping for resources and spending 50M. You have to really enjoy it, IMHO.
How much do I make, enough to keep me out of the poor house. I make a fair amount, but getting the best resources is not cheap. I have one character, that is it. No Jedi and no alts. So I have 10 lots for my house, warehouse, factories and what I can spare for harvesters when a really good one comes along. BE Tissues and mining contracts eat up enough profits.
If you want to make money, sell what other people aren't. I spen a day looking around the different chef vendors in the Tempest Galaxy and most were empty or sell only brandy/bivoli/canapes. Sell a wide variety of stuff and you will have enough money rolling in. It will take time on your part to make everything, but I have enough repeat customerssimply for th efact I sell more than the top 5 goods.
Message Edited by Radnog on 05-11-2004 03:26 PM
Camenai wrote:
"I'm sure Cami will be by shortly with exact numbers. "
Eep, well if our correspondent says I'll be by, then I'll be by! Dang, the pressure... I'm a very old chef, with 5 vendor locations spread across 4 planets. Keeping that in mind.. I sell about 3M in food a day on the weekdays and considerably more on the weekends, not including special PA orders. These are vendor sales. Having a product that is consumed really opens up the door for huge sales if you have the time to cook that much. Of course, it's also not unusual for me to spend a day shopping for resources and spending 50M. You have to really enjoy it, IMHO.
Pfft, I just meant that whenever anyone on Chilastra starts asking about food, your name comes up 99.9% of the time (and with good reason). I'm small time, I know it, and I'm ok with it. I couldn't handle your client base if there were three of me. You are the....well, I guess you wouldn't be the McDonalds of Chilastra, too low-class. What's a big name, well-known, high-quality chain of restaurants? You're that.
Message Edited by sciguyCO on 05-11-2004 04:36 PM
Yeah Cami, you da bomb. Sal-ti speaks very highly of you, and your vendors are always not only well stocked, but diverse.
Can we get a Cami appreciation thread? 
And I'd say Cameralli's operation is sort of like...33% Olive Garden 33%Outback33% Legal Seafood?
with experimental attributes amounting to:
+900 breadth +500 volume +1500 wealth, 8 months, 90 filling, infinite uses.
/bow4 Cameralli
There have been times when business was amazing, and I made sorta like what Cameralli makes, butthe former city of my residence(the previous source of my income) has faded - gone into the west - and biz has sloweda bit. But I never wanted to be a 'pocket chef' anyway, so I traded money (and my largely loyal tri-city customer base) for pride - and like Sci, I am ok with that.
I'm a bit below Cami, but I only have two locations and one only does modest business. The thingto keep in mind is that food is consumed a lot, but the resource requirements are huge. You do 1k runs on normal, that means about 50-100k resources for the additives and another 40-100k for the food. So you can spend 200k of high quality stuff that would run 10 cpu on the market. That gets you 40 crates of food that can fetch 100k each. So you are talking 4 mil. If you do 4 - 5 runs a week, that is a gross of 20mil. Depending on your BE relations and resource supply you can net 2 mil to 18mil per week. Being able to have that through put isn't easy. You need a good location, harder than you think, to have a vendor at. Then you need a good supply of resources. Even if you can keep up with the flora, that 20k meat per run for the additives isn't easy. If you buy the BE additives out right, then you have supply problems and it eats half your profits.
To sum it up, you'll make twice the bank as an armorsmith.