Chef Archive

I was told today that you can trade schematics. If this is true, how much do you guys think is a fair price for ryshcate, breath of heaven and their sub-components? My thought is that I am going to be wanting 1000s of these foods/drinks over time and I can save a ton of money if I gather the resources for myself and run my own factories.

So, if someone came up to you and asked you to make the following schematics (they supplied the resources) what would you charge for each? Also, would you charge differently if the person requested something such as "all great successes or better"?

alchohol
carbosyrup
ryshcate
breath of heaven

Thanks for the input chefs!

-Micah

P.S: I would be doing this after the food/factory fix so I get multiple uses per item.

you need to gather the exact same resources that were used in the shematic as well as use the exact same factory crated components

So you will need 2 shematics for components + one shematic for the product then being only able to use a factory to produce them you would have a massive head ache at the end of all this work and would have only saved a little money but then a chef might charge you alot anyways for the shematics sence your now not going to buy anything but 3 items from him.

I have used factories before and am failiar with how they work as well as how identical components work. If I run my own harvesters and my own factory, I end up paying a tad more than 1c/r (have 10 fusion generators so energy costs are minimal) on a 50% efficiency spot. Assuming awell made ryshcate gets up to 4 charges / item and breath of heaven is 2 charges / item then I would get a full set of buffs (2 ryshcate + 1 BoH) for 68 resources, or a little more than 68 credits / 4-5 minute buff (before adding in the cost of schematics) or 1020 credits / hour of buffs. Compared to the current rates that I have seensome chefs advertise here I would be saving thousands of credits for each 5 minute buff! I do understand the work that has to go into everything and how itdoes add up, especially when I can be making 150k / hour doing missions. However, if I am running heavy flora farms and fusion generators (working with a few friends, so 40 lots total) and some heavy mineral harvesters along with multiple factories I can pump out a lot of food with each resource shift. Also, because I will be putting out so much I can be picky about my resources and wait for a good one to pop up and then harvest it to no end.

In the end, I think that this is the best bet for me as I want to be able to run these buffs non-stop and for a 5 minute duration I really need to limit my costs / buff.

So, again I ask if the chefs here could post what they would charge for an "allgreat success" schematic. Remember, it only takes a few minutes of your time to make the schematic. I am willing to pay a markup on your time considering the fact that you did spend all those hours getting to master chef, but I won't payan amount that you feel compensates for the amount of money you are losing from me by making a schematic instead of selling 100 individual items; chances are I wouldn't have bought them if I couldn't get them for this cheap.

-Micah

This would be an interesting proposition. I would totally do it just because even now (before chef rebalancing) a chef can have too many orders than he can fill. Understand though that some chefs might resent doing this if no one is buying their food to begin with.

I would have absolutely no idea what to charge, how about a percentage of the final product? Would make a happy chef to get a crate of food to sell if it's all made with quality ingredients.

Finding schematic costs is easy. Find base costs(resources, factories, etc), do your profit markup(for being a leet chef and all that blasted grinding we had to do), subtract base costs.

Final price is your pure profit for knowledge and skill as a Chef. Poisen my food if it don't make sense.

Ahh there I go posting before I read the whole thread again. Nice arguement Xol, you've got me conviced.

So final price - production and resources isn't a fair way to go cause it would be pointless to get the schematic other than to save time.

Pondering pricing(do all chefs do this before they go to sleep every night or is it just me)....

Since resources don't matter, perhaps a charge based on the level of the food, ie Entrees I would be less expensive than Entrees IV multiplied by how many uses the customer wants the schematic for.

Maybe something like 25, 50, 100, 150, 200 from novice to master? This would make a 100 item master chef schematic 20,000 credits, far less than the profit made from actually making the 100 items and selling them ourself, but still a good amount of money.

This was all quickly thought up and worked out, if someone acutually came to me and wanted to do this I'd probably take more time screwing with the numbers, so feel free to ignore this idea or play with it or whatever you want.

I've had the issue of schematic sales arise before.

The way I looked at it was this:

Look at what will be produced with these schematics, and decide what I would sell these items for.

Subtract market value costs for the resources that would go into them, giving the profit margin.

Divide this by X (i use 3) to factor out the bother to you of producing it, while still earning something for your time to get to the level where you can make that schematic.

Ofcourse, I only ever used this in relation to Sunburns, so I don't really know how well it will hold up against other food items.

If you're backed up, recommend another chef. What this would be doing is screwing everyone who spent a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money to become a chef and then they don't sell anything because Chef X is selling schmatics.

For low end foods, ok.

For our high end foods and best sellers, no way.

Good points on how some people may buy a schematic from you and turn around and sell what they make with it. However, if some guy can undercut you so much that you lose your entire customer base to hime,then your prices are too high. That is, if he does find a chef to cut him a deal on schematics and he sells the finished product at a low price you lose all your customers and you have lost out on selling him the schematic.

Your ideas make sense if all the master chefs out there agree on it. But all it takes is one guy selling schematics at a reasonable price and you are all out of luck.

The other thing you have to take into consideration is that it takes almost no time on the chef's part (assuming the grind is over). So if everyone started buying schematics it would free up a lot of time for the chef to do other things such as develope superior schematics to sell at higher rates, or to find better resources, or to advertise their products more. Meanwhile you are still making a terribly high profit because you are selling a single item at a much higher rate than you would have sold that same item before, you just won't sell as many.

If you are a chef and you don't have enough people buying your products (or fear of people buying schematics will put you out of business) then I recommend that you go do some advertising or move your shop. I know there is only one chef outside the imperial outpost on Dantooine over on Wanderhome and he is _always_ sold out. All he makes is sunburns and he marks them way up but because he is the only one out there he can do whatever you want. Also, there are a lot of people that don't understand how food works, or even how secondary stats work. Teaching these people would create new markets. I know that until I ran some numbers on secondary stats and their effects I wouldn't have paid much for food buffs. Now I am adjusting my entire character template around them (ie: taking up surving IV and exploration I).

My number one point however, is that I highly doubt you will find that many people requesting to purchase schematics. Anyone that has done extensive resource surveying (which I have) knows that surveying for a good resource and then a high yield spot of that good resource is a serious pain. And on top of that you have to manage multiple harvesters, run out to them every so often to check up on them (resource shifts) aquire power to run harvesters and factories, etc. (you all know what I'm talking about). I would put money down saying that no more than 1% of the population is going to be willing to do this when they could just buy the finished product at a higher rate. This still leaves 99% of the population to buy your products. Even assuming that this 1% turnns around and sells the stuff they make using your schematics, you still shouldn't have a problem as there is more demand than supply (see point above about the posibility of chefs overpricing).

You could also look into it as a business deal. If you sell a good schematic to someone and they do all the work, and make a good profit. There is a good chance that person will be back for more schematics. Now you have someone working for you of sorts. You do a little work get a good chunk of money, and they go through all the tedium. If you get 5 or 10 people doing this (assuming all other chefs refuse to sell schematics cheap) you now are making money and all you have to do is make schematics. No more running around surveying for hours, or hunting the bazaar for resources.

I think this is a great discussion and would love to hear some more input on it.

-Micah

My assumption when selling a schematic would be that the buyer is going to turn around and sell the finished product (That isn't Xol’s intent, but that is likely going to be other peoples’ intent).

Working under that assumption, I would tend to go with SFSith’s first pricing method to his second; that way I would still get my “fair share” of the final sale. So while Xol has a good argument why the price shouldn’t be based on loss of profit, I would still need to base it on loss of profit.

I’d probably charge around 2500 for a novice level chef “Alcohol” schematic (but I’d try and talk you into using better alcohol) and 1500 for a carbosyrup schematic. I’m not a master chef yet, so I can’t comment on the last two schematics.

I've given thought to this and here is how I will go about selling my schematics out.

I will sell my schematics on a royaltly fee. It was I who took up the chef profession, used my skillpoints, time, money, and energy to get to the point of making a marketable enough buff that you are willing to mass produce your own. Therefore you will pay me a roayalty for my creation. Unless you want to use the skill points, time, resources, and energy to roll up your alt on a friends account or something to get a Chef, then you are going to have to buy my buff. The items will be named a distinct name to show that I am the creator of the item produced - not the factory runner, thus limiting the impact of someone trying to steal my market base. For loyal customers I will sell on a 40%of my markup, for off the street people I will sell for 80% markup.

So if I am selling a schematic that you want I will sell it as such

Retail cost of the item = 75

Wholesale cost to make = 50

Markup on item = 50%

Off the street schematic price for 100 of that schematic = 4000 (50*.8*100)

Loyal customer schematic price for 100 prouction = 2000 (50*.4*100)

Also included in the costs will be the resources and perperation charge for creating the schematic. Time is money. Gerenally this won't be more than a few hundred, but for harder to make schematics the costs could be more signifigant.

If you have been a loyal customer then I appreciate their support in helping my with my business. I know you have a good knowledge for what food can do for you and use it constantly. I will promote this service to loyal customers only and give them my waypoints to my harvesters so they can put some up there too to get the best resources in the galaxy.

I think this is a very fair way to derive prices without selling out and watering down your own market considerable without making your fair share of profit from the work you went through to make your goods marketable enough to want people to ask you for your schematics.