kr_gentner wrote:
>
> Most baked items are cheaper to make than to buy.

That's not true, not if equal quality... just lighting your oven most
times negates any savings. And of course your time and effort are
worthless, right... baking is generally labor intensive and time
consuming... just a couple loaves of bread requires your attention for
many hours. Bakeries buy in volume, they pay less than half for
ingredients than you, and by baking in volume they can sell for the
same price as your cost or less, and still turn enough profit to cover
all expenses and show a profit. There is no way the homemaker can
compete price wise with a successful bakery... some items you'll pay
more for at a bakery, those that are labor intensive, like cookies, but
with most items you'll pay less than your cost to produce the same at
home... if you're willing to spend most of a day baking cookies and
only compute ingredients but don't include your time and labor then you
are saying your time and labor is worth nothing. If you're an
exceptional baker you can probably outdo the quality available at the
typical corner bakery, but the higher quality ingredients you use the
greater the spread in cost in favor of the bakery if they chose to also
up their quality... it's not that they can't out bake you, they choose
not to. Businesses, sucsessful businesses, tend to produce what will
sell at a price their market will bear. If the product at your local
bakery is mediocre it's because mediocre is the price range most folks
in your neighborhood are able/willing to pay... they are not going to
produce Champagne in a Budweiser neighborhood. Bakeries are like any
other business, they produce whatever will increase their volume.

Sheldon