Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Lunch Factory

Community kitchen on mass scale.
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In future, one day, we all will get rid of our bodies and our consciencenesses will run as computer programs in some giant computer. Till that day comes, we will need food to survive.

Here is a solution to solve expensive food problems.

Build very large community kitchens/food factories. Prepare meals on very large scale. Raw materials can be obtained by striking wholesale deals with farmers directly by cutting middleman out. Deliver meals at doorstep for lunch/dinner with monthly/annual contracts.

Whole operation can result in ultra-cheap, hygenic, tasty meals available to masses every single day. Imagine exotic delicacies at super-low prices available everyday!

Here is an example of cost advantage of wholesale operations:

Cigarette lighter adaptor that you bought for $35.00, wholesales for $2.15. Batteries that you pay $45.00 for, wholesale around $5.50.

VJW, Jan 21 2011

(?) Dabbawalas http://www.mydabbaw.../aboutdabbawala.htm
The Indians have already perfected the distribution and delivery network. [Wrongfellow, Jan 21 2011]

Job Corps [USA] http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx
Unfortunately, their culinary department only feeds their students for free. Also, the food sometimes ends up bland for weeks at a time. Also lines are very long [like they were in communist China] [BORINGAPATHY, Jan 25 2011]

Swifts take http://www.sparknot...oposal/summary.html
Eliminates the farmers, but not the middlemen. [popbottle, Feb 21 2016]

[link]






       Having a local restaurant/cook regularly deliver meals right to the door is a staple of modern Chinese culture with an all-working household.
FlyingToaster, Jan 21 2011
  

       I'm trying to figure out how this improves in cost or hygene over existing delivery restaraunts, other than a slight improvement in scale/consistency due to the contract basis.
MechE, Jan 21 2011
  

       Cost advantages will be due to scale of oeration. This factory will be able to deliver 100's of thousands of meals every day. Due to such large scale, processes can be highly automated, hence the hygene.   

       Know-how of country's best checf's can be incorporated in to cooking processes, thus taste advantage.
VJW, Jan 21 2011
  

       A massive nonprofit delivery/takeout restaurant?
Voice, Jan 21 2011
  

       In very few cases will 100k people be within delivery range of fresh food on this, without delivery costs driving the pricing back up. Even fewer regions where there are enough people to get a 100k subset to subscribe, unless you are talking about making this mandatory.   

       And good luck on getting the best chefs involved. You can get their recipies, but without them, a lot of judgement is going to be lost.   

       Also, there are multiple reasons that institutional food is often bland, or otherwise suffers in quality. Preparing food in large quantities limits the ability to adjust spicing/flavoring for each dish, critical since spices vary in potency, and exact cooking parameters effect this as well. Also if the food is standardized, it has to be standardized to the lowest common denominator as far as acceptable spiciness, flavoring, etc.
MechE, Jan 21 2011
  

       How do you think corner shop pre-packaged sandwiches are made? Or do you live in a bucolic part of the world where such abominations have yet to take root and outbreed the alternatives?
pocmloc, Jan 21 2011
  

       In my imaginary libertarian-ish city (that is marked by a lack of Euclidean zoning, and uses a much looser form of zoning, and encourages various kinds of development and utilities), the corporate parks have in their centers a large cafeteria building, and underground walking tunnels leading to it (along with all the other underground tunnels in the city), or the subway or some form of public transport. The cafeteria has both gas and steam service for cooking and heating, which helps save a lot of money. The cafeteria is like a normal cafeteria, but really good. Either it's a lone for-profit thing, or it's run by the HOA of the corporate park, and they help pay for it, or pay for it entirely, and maybe or maybe not it's open to the rest of the public. The workers get to voice their preferences on what's served. I guess it would be open to the rest of the public, to incentivize the manager to make the food well so he can make money. Anyway yeah, good food cheap, produced efficiently.
EdwinBakery, Jan 21 2011
  

       You know what I've found is the perfect optimized food? Dim-sum in New York City. They say you can have it good, cheap, or fast; pick two. Dim sum (in NYC) is all three. It's so awesome when I get to go there. And it does indeed run cheaply by an economy of scale - it's such a huge place and they serve so many people in the biggest city in the world.
EdwinBakery, Jan 21 2011
  

       How about MRE's? Cheap, nutritious, and somewhat tasty... at the very least palatable.
EdwinBakery, Jan 21 2011
  

       For this idea, are we saying that food-processing machinery will be in their too? Like, not just a kitchen? That would really be out there
EdwinBakery, Jan 21 2011
  

       All of this could be done as long as the recipients can cook their own food.
Frozen pre-prepared meals designed for freezability by chefs could be made en masse with easy to follow instructions with control over the amount of spices and sauce per recipe up to the person cooking.
  

       There must be at least 250 decent freezable recipes that could be shipped in 100% recyclable containers too.   

       How about not freezing at all ? Deliver it fresh, every day, similar to newspaper or milk, but twice a day.   

       I think this idea might work better in homogenious socity rather than a multiculturel one. If masses consume same type of food for lunch, brakefast and dinner, it will help.
VJW, Jan 22 2011
  

       Read Asimov
Zimmy, Jan 22 2011
  

       I was just fine with Soylent Green. [ ]
Grogster, Jan 23 2011
  

       Why Asimov ? In the underground city, food had to be eaten at, or picked up from, the dispensary, IIRC. Neither do I see any relevant "soylent" references.   

       Of course if you have a restaurant in the building then you can pickup dinner or have it delivered, *but* having a kitchen in the building relieves the business of the cost of having a storefront, eat-in area, waiters etc. so you *could* actually get a decent product for not *that* much more than you would by cooking yourself.   

       Of course there's the matter of the drooling spam at the end of the post which is what would probably happen.
FlyingToaster, Jan 23 2011
  

       // In future, one day, we all will get rid of our bodies and our consciencenesses will run as computer programs in some giant computer. //   

       "Your friendly local Hegemonising Swarm, working to bring thay day closer".   

       // Till that day comes, we will need food to survive. //   

       Go without food and it's sooner than you expect. Now, keep quite still, we just need to stick these sharp metal probes into your brain.
8th of 7, Feb 21 2016
  

       I think I prefer extra sharp probes to blunt ones. It seems to me the sharp kind will do less damage.
Voice, Feb 21 2016
  
      
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