A breakdown
Why your $100 burger costs $100
45 days of aging. 5 hours of prep.
10,000 hours of training.
And $0.70 to the cook who made it.
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The Beef
Same animal.
Different life.
Dry-aged for 45 days in a controlled room at 0 to 4°C. It loses 30% of its weight to evaporation. What's left is concentrated flavor you can't shortcut.
45 days
Dry-aged, single-farm wagyu
0 days
Frozen commodity patty
$16
Per pound, American wagyu
$5
Per pound, commodity ground beef
Hand-ground
That morning, from whole cuts
Machine-formed
Months ago, from trim
The Bun
6 ingredients.
5 hours.
Flour, butter, eggs, milk, yeast, salt. Two rises, a cold ferment, and 18 minutes in the oven. A factory bun has 20 ingredients and takes seconds on a production line.
6
Whole ingredients, brioche from scratch
20+
Including DATEM, azodicarbonamide,
calcium propionate
5 hours
Mix, rise, shape, ferment, bake
0 seconds
Pulled from a plastic bag
The Sauce
Made from scratch.
Not a squeeze bottle.
A house-made truffle aioli: fresh garlic, egg yolks, lemon, olive oil, black truffle. 20 minutes of slow emulsion by hand. Big Mac sauce comes pre-mixed in a dispenser.
5 to 7
Real ingredients, emulsified by hand
33
Including polysorbate 80, sodium
benzoate, calcium disodium EDTA
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The Hands
10,000 hours of training.
Behind every plate.
7 to 15 years
Culinary school + apprenticeship +
working every station
2 days
Fast food onboarding
10,000+
Hours of training
20 to 80
Hours of training
The Money
Where your $100 actually goes.
Fine dining has some of the thinnest margins in any industry. Here's the split on a $100 plate.
Ingredients
$32
Dry-aged wagyu, house-made brioche, truffle, seasonal produce
Labor
$32
Exec chef, sous, line cooks, prep, dishwashers, servers, hosts
Rent & Overhead
$28
Lease, insurance, utilities, linens, equipment, licenses
$0.70
That's what the line cook who made your burger earns per plate. At $18/hour, cooking 25 covers a shift.
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The Cost Nobody Talks About
The people behind the plate.
60 to 70 hrs
Average work week in a Michelin kitchen. Six days. No holidays.
84%
Of hospitality workers report mental health issues.
43%
Have lost a spouse or partner to the demands of the job.
74%
Say they work to the point of exhaustion. Every week.
96 cents of every dollar goes back in. The ingredients. The team. The room. The craft.
Next time someone says "it's just a burger," show them this.
The price isn't for the food. It's for the 45 days, the 5 hours, the 10,000 hours, and the person who chose this life because they give a damn.
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