In Asia, it’s often cheaper to buy food outside rather than cooking at home, whereas in Europe, the ratio is completely reversed. Also, culturally, everyone is often taking food and bring it back home.
I can see some reasons that might explain this, such as the cost of labor or stricter health regulations in Europe compared to Asia. But even with these factors in mind, it doesn’t explain it all.
Of course, I understand that it’s not feasible to replicate a model like Thailand’s street food culture in Europe. The regulations and cost of labor would likely make it impossible to achieve such competitive prices. But if we look at a place like Taiwan, for example, where street food is less common and instead, you have more buffet-style restaurants where you can get takeaway or eat on-site for around €3, while cooking the same meal at home might cost between €1.50. The price difference is barely 2x, which is still very far from the situation in Europe.
Why isn’t something like this possible in Europe?
In: Other
If you amortized the cost of all the overhead needed to prepare food at home to individual meal prices the prices look much closer. For example, buying and maintaining expensive appliances, the electricity/gas to fuel them, the extra space in your house that you need to pay extra rent/mortgage for are all significant incurred expenses that don’t normally get allocated to individual meal prices.
All the top answers are talking about why people cook at home more in Europe than in Asia.
That’s great, but I’m more interested in the part about Europeans (and Americans too) having such a habit of buying take-out and bringing it back home to eat.
I am AMAZED that this is so common, and don’t understand it at all. If I’m going to go out to eat, then I’m going to GO OUT TO EAT. Why would I pay more for restaurant food (not to mention delivery charges if someone’s bringing it to you), and then eat it at home after it’s sat in a cardboard or plastic container for a 20-30 minute car ride?
Just blows my mind. Ironically, the food that holds up the best for takeout vs. eating it fresh at restaurant is… Asian food. 🤷
Service cost is low in Asia while material goods cost is high. It’s the inverse in US and to some extent, Europe.
Tuscan countryside here.
“Trucker” sized portion of pasta at the gas station is 5 bucks. Can make for 2.50 if i ignore labour.
Because they are different countries growing different crops using different livestock. You use what you got laying around and Asia and Europe had different resources laying around.
Your question is based off of a false premise. There is no way in hell eating out in Asia is cheaper than cooking at home.
One cultural factor may be that Asians eat a lot more times in a day compared to Western cultures and have a higher amount of social activity out of the house in a given day/week.
In the morning, you may wake up at 6 and start with a simple coffee and toast at home. Then you make your way to the office and get there by 8ish and may go to the coffee shop for a morning snack with your office mates before you start your day. Then you get lunch around 12/1. At around 3, you take a break and have tea, where either your whole team goes out to the nearby stall (5 min walk) or someone gets something back for everyone. Day ends at 6/7, and you either go home and make dinner or get it with your mates, then you may do some social activity like browse the malls, catch a movie etc. After that, it’s supper time (宵夜), where you get a drink and some snacks.
All this means there’s a high demand for food outside of the house. High demand means vendors can have lower profit margin as the volume makes up for it.
Rent costs, general cost of living being very high. Also centralising of populations has an effect, they don’t really do suburbs in Asia like we do in the west.
Say in the uk you wanted to set up a food place you need to make literally about 4 grand a month just to break even on rent and your wages alone.
That’s before you even start to do anything. Cost rise with ingredients and equipment and the high cost becomes quite obvious.
With zero evidence, I wonder if the combination of heat and humidity in SE Asia hasn’t contributed (in a small way) to the difference, at least in some small way.
In colder and/or dryer climates, food would likely last a little bit longer prior to refrigeration, so having a few more days worth of food at home would make more sense.
Why buy a week’s worth of meat if it’ll be rotting by Wednesday?
It might be more efficient to just buy a meal of cooked food as your primary source of nutrition from a centralized source that’s supplied daily from the countryside.
That being said, I know open air markets were very common in Europe. But I think people bought a higher percentage of “cooking ingredients”… maybe.
I wildly speculate.
Source: Shit I just made up.
Your first sentence is wrong – it’s never cheaper to buy food outside than cook – it’s illogical that labor would be so cheap it would be negative value.
Yes, in dense countries like China, Vietnam, Singapore etc prepared food can be cheap and affordable, but it’s still slight more expensive than cooking yourself.
One key aspect is cheap and yet skilled labor at cooking,
Latest Answers