Cost Effective Lessons

I remember being out with friends a decade or more ago and we visited this Vancouver Sushi restaurant. It wasn’t on my list of fav restaurants but I was told it was good quality and real cheap. Upon arrival there was a line up (they took no bookings). There were 4 in our group and we lined up for around 30 mins. Assuming that we all had a basic wage of $30ph, then that line up had cost us $60. That’s all I could think about during the line up - what was my opportunity cost. Either the meal had to be significantly cheaper and at least good quality, or the meal had to be excellent quality and a little cheaper. It was neither, although the company was good!

Generally that’s how I look at life. What the passive cost (or the lost opportunity cost) of the activity I am doing is. So I wanted to look at this regarding learning how to make Sourdough. General cooking lessons in our area are around $199, right now we are trying to hold our Basic Sourdough at $120. So if I were taking the class myself I’d be thinking $120/3 hours = $40 per hour.

A loaf of Sourdough locally is around $10-12. During the lesson our students make 2 loaves, so there is -$20. And a healthy, vibrant Starter, let’s say -$10. That’s sort of a secondary benefit, the real benefit is about learning to make Sourdough. But it means we have $90 to justify. You could just say “well I am enjoying taking the lesson, I enjoy learning, so that’s justification to me”. But I like to see the $benefit on my grocery bill.

My small family of 3 consume around 3 loaves of bread per week. If I bought that bread, which I do sometimes for a change and a rest, it would be $120 a month, or $1440 per year. What then is the cost of instead making that bread?

Let’s not go organic for this experiment -
1. Cost to keep you Starter alive = water and around 1 cup/100g of flour a week = <$0.5 x 4 = $2 per month
2. Water = free ! We only use Vancouver tap water because it’s great
3. Salt - true story that I bought 20kg sack of Maltese sea salt in 2020 for around $18. I am not even half way through it.
4. 1 loaf = 500g flour per loaf, so 6kg for 12. 10kg of AP flour is around $20 so $12 for the 12 loaves
5. Hydro (electrical for those not in BC) = assuming you cook 2 loaves at a time = 1.5 hours, and our stove is running at around 3kw per hour, and here Hydro is $0.1097/kWh so approx $0.2 per loaf.

So per 12 loaves a month we have approx $16, that’s $168 per year. I can easily see that I already saved myself $1440-$168 = $1272. That’s basically my car insurance, or a flight to Japan, or a winter jacket. Every year, forever.

But as it’s me I also think about lost opportunity cost. This is where my favourite saying comes in, something like “if you want to find the most optimal way to do something, then watch a lazy person do it“. I love making bread, and generally spending time in the kitchen, but I hate wasting effort. Once you have honed your skills, and using some optimized method (like the simple method I teach) then your actual labour involved in 2 loaves of bread is:

Weighing and mixing = 2 mins

Folding = 4 x 30 secs

Shaping = 1 min checking it’s not burning = 30 secs.

Total time per loaf = 5:30 / 2 = < 3 mins per loaf. If I say my opportunity cost is $30ph (what I could be doing with my time if I bought bread instead of making bread myself) then that’s $1.5 per loaf. So we can roughly say that a home made Sourdough loaf is approximate cost of $2, if we include our labour and the materials . This is only the partial story however because to have fresh bread at home I would need to journey to a bakery at least 2 per week. Whereas buying materials is something I do once every 2 months or so. But still, it’s good to think about value like this.

Oh and the lesson cost, well at the Vancouver avg of $199 per lesson your return on investment will be %600 in the first year.

There is a local breakfast cafe chain in our area, Vancouverites will know the one I am talking about. Every time I pass the one on Beatty Street and see 40 or more folks in a line up outside, spending their precious time off trying to save $2 and yet standing in the morning line up for 45 mins, it just makes me wonder about opportunity cost.