Chef Archive

Howdy all...sort of a noob master chef here. I finally got to the point where I can afford a factory and decided to make something easy for my first factory run...Charde.

The stats ended up at +147 mind for 298 seconds with 6 in each stack.

How in the heck do you guys decide on pricing? I've been to the RZ website with the pricing, but I'm still trying to figure out how they've come up with the pricing there. I mean, architect was easy before you could experiment on the extraction rate. You just charged 3 or 4/CR and then added 10% or something like that.

On RZ they have the cost at 60 credits....are those prices per stack or per item in the stack? That's a price of either 1500 or 9000...big difference. I don't want to be a rip-off, but I don't want to be a pushover either.

At 60 credits, that's 4/CR if you sell the stack for that much and that seems waaaay too low.

I was thinking somewhere about 100 creds per use. So 300 credits gets you 441 mind for about 5 minutes?

Do you guys base your pricing on charges per stack? Quality of product? Resources to make the product? Factory sub-runs to create the product? Or a bit of a combination of all of those? Is there some magic formula that is used or are you guys just pulling numbers out of the air?

I know that there was an architectural spreadsheet going around that I used to use that was awesome for architect. Anything like that for chefs laying around?

Thanks for your time

-Raurra

There's going to be quite a few differences of oppinion here on this subject, i know, especially where it concerns a lower level item like charde. Experience comes into play a lot here. Personally what i base pricing on is three things, demand, perceived (by me) benifit to the consumer, and how it fits into my overall pricing scheme.

As example, Tat Sunburn is a plus 1500 min buff to 2 stats and stacks twice. I generally charge 400 per charge for it so ave stack of 4 is 1600 or crate at 40k. Some might price higher or lower, but my customers are happy at that price and it sells well. If it sells too fast, I would raise the price, if it sellstoo slow,would lower it some, but for my clientelle, this seems to be the sweet spot.

Charde on the other hand, is a plus 100 to 150 buff to one stat but stackable 3 or 4, and is in lesser demand, so i would price it agressively at 75 cr a dose to start out with to see if it gets anyones attention. At4 per stack (just to make an easier comparison, that would be300 a stack or 7500 a crate. Both Ruby Bliel and Charde are basically a poor man's Fishak, so it needs to fit in the pricing scheme if your going to carry either of those products and a master level like Fishak.

For instance, Jimbob Fett comes in and wants some mind drink. He sees 3 options. Ruby Bliel at 4k a case, Charde at 7.5k a case, or Fishak at, lets say, 40k a case. Which will he buy? well, probably the Fishak, due to the convenience of it, but what if the Fishak sold out earlier that day or Jimbob is low on money. He'll buy one of the other two options available rather than go without because he needs his combat buffs.

You asked whether we just pull these numbers out of thin air, and the honest answer is yes, we pull a number out of thin air based on our experience in the market place which will make sense for the consumer based on the aforementioned criteria of demand, benifit, and how it fits in the pricing scheme. If it isn't in demand at all and cost more in time or resources than its worth, then we don't make it. Having said that, i usually do keep a low cost line of rp drinks on my vendor such as caf, tea and jawa beer since i run a cantina and some sales come from people just wanting to imagine they are drinking with thier friends. Not much money comes from that, but it makes people happy and satisfying customers is your number one responsibility.

Thats my perspective on things anyway and i've been operating a cantina since before i was even a novice chef, so i've a little experience with most of our product line with respect to what sells and what doesn't depending on the prices you put on it.

Master Chef Shiskussi

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Vodokar wrote:

i've been operating a cantina since before i was even a novice chef, so i've a little experience with most of our product line with respect to what sells and what doesn't depending on the prices you put on it.

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I generally have a mixture of 7 use Charde for +100 mind for 286s, and 4 use Charde for +147 mind for 286s, and I sell both for 450 credits. They sell as fast as anything else, and I haven't heard a complaint on prices yet.

The simplest and most logical way to price chef foods is by Credits Per Unit of Resource Used. You do this for everything you make, and then the determining factor on weather or not joe shmoe comes to you instead of the guy down the road is if you made your stuff with better resources or better crafting. But in reality, with the lack of chef's I find no problem at all with competition. I charge 20 credits per unit of resource used in an item/crate. I make bank on some things (that have no sub factory components, etc.) and I make very little on other things (Domesticated meat anyone?) A crate of Fishak comes out to about 50K... and I make everything with 900+ quality resources so I feel justified in the 20 CPU price. (Last fishak schematic I made was +579 to mind 435 seconds.)

I TOLD them they should have made our spherical space station out of the same magnetically shielded walls as the garbage compactor! -Sleksheea

Well on my server I try to control the distribution of all my foods because I sell it at such a low price. I split all my crates into 10 leaving me with 10 10 5 both 10's going to customers and the 5 going on my personal vendor for City members.

Now I have 4 factories and 4 Bec 13 flora harvestors going 2 heavy water 2 mineral and 2 fusion(I use 2 of my own accounts and 1 city members lots). That is how I caculate how much items are going to cost. Everything is running at all times and uses power. So Right now I am barely trying to break even for fishak, Boh, sunburns, Rysack and flameout(tested on my server yesterday put out someone on fire bug?) Charde bivoli are in high demand from PvP types stackable and high up in mind with short duration(try and sell that to your pvp guys they will like that idea of not waiting for fishak to wear off after cloning).

Either way I charge about 18k for a crate of 10 for the master chef items and about 13k for a crate of 10 for the lower level. I use a master merchant to sell my items soo I dont need to. I try and utilize what I have at my disposal. I really like using a master Merchant he can do what ever I need and its a great way for me to save up skill points.

Like I said, my first factoryand factory run as a chef and I thought I'd do something with a low resource unit count that was still useful just to test everything out. I'll be making more useful/profitable things here pretty quickly. <grin>

by the way...it took me quite a few tries to get a schematic that I wanted to use. heh, harder than I thought it would be. I loved every second of it.

Georb79 why are you selling fishhak(andother goods)at cost? Is this just a service for a guild? Or are you already so rich it doesn't matter?

I've been approaced by master merchants about selling to them at a cut rate, but im not sure i see the point after all the easy part is sticking the stuff on a vendor and watching it sell out. They make a lot of profit and don't do much work.

When i tried to interest them in rounding up all the resources so i can just run factories, to share out the work load it was a no go.

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The simplest and most logical way to price chef foods is by Credits Per Unit of Resource Used.

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Sleeksa, there are basically two schools of thought here as i have seen. One is the demand-benifit school and the other is the resourcecost school.

Resourcecost is the simplest, but its not the most logical because it fails to take into account the actual benifit to the consumer i.e. the amount of the buffage and the usefulness that gives them in combat, nor does it take into account actual demand for the product. I have a perfect example to illustrate my point.

Has anyone here tried to make Double Dip Rum Drop? It takes 6 cases of alcohol to make one case, but gives only a plus 195 action buff for, if i recall, 200s. If you charged only based on the amount of resources, by your logic, it would cost more than Tat Sun. But Tat Sun is a minimum of plus 1500 buff to action with 450s, almost 10 times as much and twice as long duration. Thats not logical. Not to the consumer. He doesn't care how many resources you used, he doesn't care if it took you 1 hr or 3 days to make. He only cares about the level of the buff and what it buffs and how long it lasts and what its going to allow him to do. As it turns out, none of us make Double Dip, because we can't charge enough for it because no one would buy it at what we would need to charge. Its basically an unsalable product, but thats beside the point.

The point I'm trying to make here is simple. Demand-benifit pricing is looking at things thru the consumers eyes. Resourcecost pricing is looking at things only thru the chefs eyes and not taking into account just why anyone would want to buy this thing instead of that thing.

For me, its easy. I'm also a TK and i battle test every product i make. I know what is useful and what is not on the battlefield because i have used the stuff and i account for that in my pricing.

Oh, and Nikki, in my example before, if you look a little closer, you'll see that we are pretty much in agreement with our prices on Fishak. The hypothetical example was the cost of a stack of 4, because i had used 4 charges in my Tat Sun, Ruby Bliel, and Charde analogies. I was trying to keep it all equal to make easier comparison. In actuallity, when i make Fishak, it usually comes out as 5 charges, so i price it accordingly, and you have stated before, due to your better experience using the experimentation system and some exp point bonuses you have, which i don't, that you often get 10 charge stacks, so obviously your price is higher. But we are both charging about 300 cr per charge, as i understand it.

Master Chef Shiskussi

I always enjoy you sense of humor Nikkii. But in this case, I have had a vendor open for over 4 months now. It's not easy trying to sell bofa treats that are only plus 36 in buff, but i did. I struggled thru all the tough times.

I often see people say things like it only takes 3 eight hour days to grind chef, and i guess people have been able to do it that fast, but for the life of me, i just don't know how. I started grinding from 0/0/0/0 novice chef about5 weeks ago, more or less. I play 6 to 7 hrs a day, 6 to 7 days a week. I spent at least 4 hrs each weekday playtime grinding and sometimes 10 or more hours during the weekends. Yet, it took me that long. I didn't use any macro's though, and i was trying to run a business at the same time.

Having said that. I'm glad i did it this way and it took that time. I certainly have a great deal still to learn about being a chef, but at least I can say I didn't make master without having any clue about the business of being a chef.

As usual, thanks for the great responses, everyone I've been selling Charde on the bazaar at right about 100 a charge, so I'll probably start in that area and see how it sells. Sounds like it's mostly going to be a:

What does your competition sell for?

Can you keep it in stock?

Expensive components or long production runs?

I think that out of all of the advanced artisan skills, ours is one of the most driven by a supply and demand since we're not selling "essential" items but rather "extras". Basically, "sell it for whatever you can get" seems to be the consensus. hehehe