if you want to read the original thread, check this: https://nitter.net/tinymediaempire/status/1136992675742269440#m
"Cash only. I don't have Venmo because I'm not some teenage asshole who vapes"
That part got me haha
It's definitely poking fun at the fact that people who vape are younger on average than those who smoke cigs, not supposing literally only teens vape.
Sort of like how lots of old people also use venmo, but it's particularly popular among the young.
A grilled cheese consists of only these following items. Cheese. Bread with spread (usually butter). This entire subreddit consist of "melts". Almost every "grilled cheese" sandwich i see on here has other items added to it. The fact that this subreddit is called "grilledcheese" is nothing short of utter blasphemy. Let me start out by saying I have nothing against melts, I just hate their association with sandwiches that are not grilled cheeses. Adding cheese to your tuna sandwich? It's called a Tuna melt. Totally different. Want to add bacon and some pretentious bread crumbs with spinach? I don't know what the hell you'd call that but it's not a grilled cheese. I would be more than willing to wager I've eaten more grilled cheeses in my 21 years than any of you had in your entire lives. I have one almost everyday and sometimes more than just one sandwich. Want to personalize your grilled cheese? Use a mix of different cheeses or use sourdough or french bread. But if you want to add some pulled pork and take a picture of it, make your own subreddit entitled "melts" because that is not a fucking grilled cheese. I'm not a religious man nor am I anything close to a culinary expert. But as a bland white mid-western male I am honestly the most passionate person when it comes to grilled cheese and mac & cheese. All of you foodies stay the hell away from our grilled cheeses and stop associating your sandwich melts with them. Yet again, it is utter blasphemy and it rocks me to the core of my pale being. Shit, I stopped lurking after 3 years and made this account for the sole purpose of posting this. I've seen post after post of peoples "grilled cheeses" all over reddit and it's been driving me insane. The moment i saw this subreddit this morning I finally snapped. Hell, I may even start my own subreddit just because I know this one exists now.
You god damn heretics. Respect the grilled cheese and stop changing it into whatever you like and love it for it what it is. Or make your damn melt sandwich and call it for what it is. A melt.
As a non American, where I am from, we call them toasties. Cheese toasties, cheese and tomato toasties, etc.
I don't know of any puritans who argue about what a true toastie is, but I may have lived a sheltered life. People will argue about anything.
Toasties are the way!
And yeah I'd argue what makes a toastie is much more lenient than the american counterparts.
I've seen a toastie been called a toastie just because it was essentially a sandwich with toast.
No! My wife calls sandwiches made with toast toasties, and it's wrong! These bad people need to be punished
If we're going to dive straight in to the pedantry then: a panini, in English speaking countries is usually referring to a heated sandwich made from bread that is a roll (long rather than square, with an outer crust and sliced lengthways in half), usually some form of Italian bread in keeping with the Italian namesake. Panini's as far as I'm aware are filled with anything you want, but specifically are heated, usually (or exclusively?) in a press of some kind. Jaffles are like toasties, I'd personally call them a subset of toastie, heated in a specific type of press called a jaffle machine and made only with sliced, square, toast style bread as you'd likely get in a cheap, pre-sliced and packaged loaf. The type of press is important to qualify as a jaffle, as is the bread type and shape because these machines will only fit certain standardised bread types and needs to seal shut during heating. When you put a filled sandwich (with just about any filling combo but almost always with cheese), built with two, square, toasting slices, in to a jaffle machine the shape of the cavity in this machine forces a diagonal division between two opposing corners of the bread which also squashes the filling in to either of the two bread triangles formed on either side of this diagonal. The section of dividing line between the triangles compresses the two slices of bread together in that section, which gets particularly hot and forms a snappable, dark coloured ridge between the two halves of the jaffle. When your jaffle is done, it comes out as a single object with the two halves stuck together by the dividing line, but to eat, you typically apply pressure to each opposing half causing the brittle, dividing line to snap giving you two triangular halves of a sandwich with filling completely sealed inside.
You could perhaps say 'who calls a panini a toastie for $500?', because toasties have a much broader, looser definition like paninis. Even though the classic 'toastie' will more likely be similar to a jaffle, (though crucially not heated in a jaffle machine and thus not having the jaffle shape imposed upon it), it could actually be any bread and just about any filling (though almost always including cheese), much like a panini.
I really don't like jaffles and I have noticed a decline in their popularity as I've gotten older. They are a good idea in theory, but in practice, because the machine crimps the perimeter of the bread slices together and also the dividing line between the halves as well, you end up with burning hot filling and steam sealed and squashed inside of two bulged areas, one for each triangle. Those crimped edges and dividing line mean eating one involves a chore of biting through a lot of plain, unfilled, nearly burned toast before getting to all the filling which having been trapped inside is ridiculously hot and inevitably burns you. It also means that, the contents tends to get kind of steamed during cooking, making things quite flabby. Much prefer a toastie made in a sandwich press, which is basically a panini press minus the grill lines.
You've just described a toastie and toastie maker. I don't know what this jaffle nonsense is all about, but it sounds like someone is sneaking toasties through customs in a dodgy trenchcoat!
Jaffles and their associated machine are represented here
Toasties here and here, and here, and here where it doesn't even have a lid, and this one which should really just be called a Reuben but the Aussies stick "toastie" on as a suffix.
Note the variety of breads and fillings. Toasties are a very flexible concept.Those toasties have been cooked any number of ways, under a grill (broiler to the yanks), in a pan, hell even a toaster followed by a microwave, also very commonly in one of these, a sandwich press, which as you can see is flat and and does not seal. Those also sometimes come with little ridges for grill lines like the American panini presses, but I prefer this style as it's more versatile.
If you google image search toasties you'll probably see a few jaffles in the results but if you search jaffles you're going to pretty much only see... jaffles, which have that characteristic shape imposed by that particular machine.
In conclusion all jaffles are toasties, but not all toasties are jaffles. If it's been made in a machine that imposes that particular jaffle shape on to it by way of sealing the sandwich in like a waffle iron, then it's a jaffle.
Nope, that's a toastie maker, plain and simple.
I'll accept that your first three images could get away with being called toasties, but making a sandwich with a slice of toast doesn't count. Open topped sandwiches of any kind should be taken out and shot, however they're prepared. I'll give cheese on toast a pass, but only because it's a separate category.
Just because people mistakenly call toasties 'Jaffles', doesn't mean that's what they are. It's wrong. Wrong I tell you! Jaffle's not even a real word!
I really want a toastie now :(
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Huh. As an American, I thought my mom was the only person who referred to them as cheese toasties.
To this day my friends know not to call a melt a grilled cheese around me or they’re going to hear my shitty retelling of this.
Whilst this was a very entertaining read, you dropped your pedanticness (pedantry?) when you started calling Lemmy communities 'subreddits'.
If we can't call a tomato and cheese toasty a grilled cheese with tomato we definitely can't call these communities subreddits! :D
I regret to inform you that it is in fact a Reddit copypasta, and not original content.
People are actually in this thread discussing how feasible this is as if it were a real plan down to calculating specific costs and supporting them with URLs.
Never change, Lemmy.
Many of us do have this fantasy.
I'm sick of seeing $6 for a bag of fries and $12 for a basic ass sandwich.
I mean, it's a bummer when the bougie burger places do this, but when the taco trucks and teriyaki shops near me started costing more than $2 a taco or $10 for a plate of yakisoba, I knew shit was getting hard out there.
Here in Canada we've got trucks selling 3 tacos for like $18. People here are out of their minds
My god. I mean, it's probably a fair price to pay for no mass shootings and universal health care, but still wild.
Makes me wonder what people are paying for bread, Kraft cheese (or a knockoff of the same) and butter/margarine.
Seriously, a single grilled cheese shouldn't be more than $1, it should be much less... At least in materials.... The cost of grilling it and cleaning up and whatnot should still be really cheap. Even if you wrap the sandwiches in wax/parchment paper or whatever and serve it, you should still be able to make a profit per sandwich. Whether you would be better off doing this rather than getting a job at McDonald's or whatever... That will depend on how popular the food truck is....
There used to be a vending machine in a hosiptal near me that would heat up a premade grilled cheese sandwich for £2. Being a vending machine in a hospital, they had to be making at least enough to cover the costs plus wastage. I'd say that somewhere with high footfall, especially on a cold day, you could make at least some profit from this.
A few years back in HollandN(UTRECHT) one shop actually ONLY sold sandwiches (not grilled) for a buck or so. They had LINES. Then shit got renod
Just saying the concept works, ppl DO want a simply Sammy for a buck and the ingredients are less as 30% of sales price even with some real decent toppings. But renovation (and extreme rent) only allows multi nationals to compete at busy places like city central stations etc.
Gaslamp district in San Diego had a cafeteria like this years ago, guessing it's no longer a thing, but simple cheap menu would have steady customers, maybe profitable, it's the business development people who would oppose.
There was one in metro vancouver area, it was a store front. but it was just cheap grilled cheese nothing else. like costco hot dog pricing
It still there? I'm in downtown but go through metro enough it'd be worth knowing about
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Id love to see food trucks that were dirt cheap and just did 1 food. Please park this grilled cheese truck outside my house
I went to a food truck festival a few weeks ago, and holy shit the prices of stuff. I don't think there was a single item you could get for less than $18, and that was like the price of three french fries.
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Yeah that's how it is here. Food trucks are only at events and event food costs a fortune for some reason. You'd think that having 1000s of hungry people in one place would allow the to drop the price a bit but nah gotta squeeze us for everything.
You’d think that having 1000s of hungry people in one place would allow the to drop the price a bit
That's the sound of market demand going up, baby!
TBF food trucks are insanely expensive (like, $80K+ expensive) so I don't really blame owners for charging whatever people will pay. I'm just amazed people pay that much.
Right? I see people walking away from a food truck with combo meals for a family for four, and I'm doing the math in my head -- they just dropped $90! They were robbed!
Yeah classic food truck venue here is an event at a brewery where they're legally required to serve food. So you buy tickets and then provide to the vendors, but if you work out the prices it ends up being insane with super small quantities. They always have to make the food weird too, sometimes it's cool but sometimes you just want normal shitfood.
I wanna do one where it's like simple lowbrow stoner food done just a little fancy. Like grilled PB&J, but the peanut butter is the good stuff and the jam has the full berries in it, sourdough bread that can really take a heavy fry in some salted butter. The kind of stuff that's dirt simple to make but really shines with a bit of extra love.
for some reason.
Because useful idiots are proud to pay for it then complain they don't have enough money.
In Colorado, that has been my experience for over a decade. Food truck food was never cheap here. In Portland, just this year, I managed a few great and cheap meals from their food carts.
Trucks that do 1 or 2 foods are not that uncommon. We have a fish and chip truck and a glazed donut truck. But none are cheap.
But none are cheap.
This is the real kicker. Businesses charge what people are willing to pay, not what stuff costs to produce.
In my city: there was two stoners who ran around making three types of ramen - vegan, non-vegan (their broth is a different), and regular (they crack an egg).
It was like $6-7.
I loved those guys and used to follow them around.
I'm excited to introduce my latest business:
The $.99 Grilled Cheese Food Truck. Conveniently located next to the $1 Grilled Cheese Food Truck. Come with $1, leave with a grilled cheese and money still in your pocket (yes, we give change).
Honestly, from my experience with whole prices and no sales tax in Europe, I might just stay with the first truck.
Come to Canada, we got rid of pennies and legalized weed.
Welcome to the future!
If you sorted out the methodology one person could staff a changeless truck, you start giving change thats a lot of time.
If you ever find yourself around Cleveland, OH, find a Melt: https://meltbarandgrilled.com/menu/
Melt is crazy good. Half sandwiches, vegan, gluten free, or full on grease and meat and dairy. I go once every time I visit Ohio. I'd go twice if I hated my body.
Put this outside a good number of pubs in the UK and you’ll make an absolute killing. It would have to offer a £1 toastie, of course, but the principle is the same.
To be fair, I'd pay $5 for 5 grilled cheese sandwiches and eat them all in one setting.
There would be a line around the block. This is the grilled cheese of everyone’s childhood. Add a sprinkle of salt or use salted butter when cooking on the skillet and I would be in line with everyone else holding a fiver.
Really? A very light sprinkle of salt when the sandwich is on the buttered griddle is the shit, especially if you’re using a cheese that is lower in salt. Get that nice crust on the bread with a savory pop. Combine that with a tomato soup and it’s the bomb.
Don’t knock it until you try it.
Edit: bloody purists. Gonna turn this into a melt/grilled cheese thing aren’t you.
Tomato soup? Gonna have to flip your head over on the griddle. This is embarrassing for you.
Use a thin layer of mayonnaise instead of butter before putting it on the pan for a commercial-worthy grilled cheese.
Because tomatoes are the perfect fruit/vegetable and improve every single dish they're in, without exception.
Pickles on grilled cheese is the superior grilled cheese and everyone that says otherwise can go right to hell
I say otherwise, & I will happily bathe in the righteous flames of the eternally damned, rather than suffer the unholy blight of pickles on my beloved grilled cheese.
Mom made them with a thin smear ofmiracle whip inside the sammy when I was little. So good. Never tried mayo. Gotta give it a whirl.
I'd probably double that menu to include coffee.
No cream.
No sugar.
Take your coffee and grilled cheese sandwich and fuck off over thereabouts
I wanna open a beer garden the size of a parking spot next to it that sells cans of Rainier for a dollar out of a cooler and has a boom box and some plastic kiddie furniture. Party on.
Eat what you like,but if you want a "melt", go to a restaurant. If you just want a grilled cheese(or toastie),go to the truck. Simple. And damn,why isn't this a thing? I'd kill for a simple grilled cheese rn
I realize this is a joke but how could this be profitable? The ingredients alone are more than a dollar.
Where are you where it would cost more than $1. Buying product in bulk would be very cheap.
Because I have no life, I looked it up.
Bread in Finland is about 0.1 usd per slice Low quality cheese is about 8 usd / kg, assuming you need about 20g/portion that's 0.16 usd. Total is about 36c per portion.
If we assume power consumption of 5kw for the whole operation and power cost of 20c/kWh, that's 1usd/h
Assuming sales of 60 units per hour -one per minute, thats 60 usd of revenue per hour and 22.6 usd of non labor cost, it leaves 37.4e for labor, taxes, permits, tools, fuel.
It's at least only feasible in high volume locations.
I was with you until you suggested it would use 5kWh every hour. That's an insane amount of power even if they were using an electric griddle, which is unlikely. A small generator would be enough to power the lighting and refrigeration and then the griddle would run on gas, which is way cheaper than electricity (or the petrol for the electric generator).
I'd imagine energy costs would be a fraction of what you've calculated, and would scale up along with any increase in sales volume.
When allocating food cost (in your costs) 36% is around where you want it-30% would be more ideal, but you can get that through sales, bulk discount etc. So, regardless of volume food cost % is basically where it should be.
Some numbers in spain: slice cheese .19/slice bread .08/ slice (.16) Margarine (because: costs!) .04/10g .39
To get closer to a feasible food cost you'd have to sell at 1.25
Labor for a single grilled cheese is super easy. If you're selling a lot of them this could be decently profitable.
Gas for the generator is where it would kill you. Your best bet is to make all the grilled cheese as fast as possible to save on gas and dispense them throughout the day.
I live on earth. Even if you’re buying bulk, it will still be more than a dollar to make. The bread alone bought in bulk would still be around $0.25 per slice. That’s 50 percent of the cost right there.
Indeed. I can grab a loaf of cheap white bread from my local grocery store for under $2 which is cut into 22 slices.
You are getting 22 slices? What brand are you getting? I feel like 16 is the standard but about 50% of the time I'm fairly certain it's only 15 or 17.
Meijer and Walmart store brands of cheap ass white bread are 22 slices, Kroger is 21, and for a name brand example Sunbeam is 22. Nicer bread like Pepperidge Farm or Brownberry/Oroweat tends to be in the range of 16 slices per loaf (baring the thin sliced stuff) though.
I would love to see your source. I don’t buy bread in bulk but I have a friend who owns a local restaurant in my town. I know how much he pays for the bread he serves for breakfast and it doesn’t get cheaper than that.
https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.960013141.html
This is not the cheapest, you can get better pricing than this with a Costco business account. Your friend is probably not serving the lowest price bulk bread available, they probably have some self respect.
Well even with that bread you are still spending about $0.25 per sandwich on bread. I still don’t see how that’s profitable after adding cheese and butter. You could do it by drastically reducing the amount of cheese and butter but is it really a grilled cheese when you put a single shred of cheese on it?
Honestly the cheese and butter together will probably cost less that $0.25 bulk cheese is cheap as hell and you're using almost no butter per sandwich
I fight seagulls for it.
Youth these days think you buy everything and don't understand a little labour goes a long way.
I imagine fighting the seagulls would be like living in a post-apocalyptic future scavenging for food.
I don't buy in bulk, and I pay under $2usd for a loaf of basic white bread from any supermarket. After taxes, to be clear.
If I were to bulk buy / business discount, it would be less.
I’ll take your word for it. I’m not a member so it doesn’t show me the price. Looking forward to all the profitable $1 grilled cheese trucks coming soon.
You might be right about the profitability of the grilled cheese truck but it’s okay to admit you were wrong on the bread.
It’s the internet, not one really cares if you are wrong.
Here's bread from Walmart for about $0.06 per slice.
Here's cheese for $0.10 per slice
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Sweet-Cream-Salted-Butter-16-oz/132893363?athbdg=L1200
And butter for about $0.25 per ounce (you might use .5 oz per sandwich.) EDIT: checked my butter in my fridge, you're probably using 1/4 of an ounce per sandwich if that.
And none of these are in bulk, you can probably cut the cost in half or less buying even more generic products in bulk.
I think this meme is older than COVID, so it might've been slightly profitable back when it was first photoshopped?
July 7, 2019 - so yep.
But still profitable after 4 years.
Would make more money renting the food truck out as capsule sleeping for 6 people though, these days.
Where I live, it's currently $4Cdn for a loaf of basic white Wonder bread, it's $8.50Cdn for a stick of salted butter, and $5.50Cdn for a pack of 22 slices of processed cheese (not the thick slice type). My country is currently going through a bit of a cost of living crisis because shelter, heating, food costs are becoming insane. How much are those things where you live? I think it's interesting the differences based on where we all are. 1$ for an entire grilled cheese sandwich in Canada would be considered an incredible deal for takeout food pricing.
(presuming you mean $CAD for Canadian dollars, not cdn)
$4cad = $2.90usd = 13.2c/slice
$5.50cad = $4usd = 18.2c/slice
That's 44.5c each.
That's 125% profit. Given that a common margin aimed for is 100%, this is a good deal with your over priced products. And I don't believe you can't get basic white bread for less than $4cad in Canada.
Also, $1usd is $1.37cad
In the UK I can currently buy an 800g loaf of bread for 45p (£0.45), a 500g tub of soft spread butter substitute for 99p (£0.99), and a 200g pack of 10 cheese slices for 65p (£0.65).
Each sandwich would cost about 12p (£0.12) to make, excluding the energy costs.
Doubling up on the cheese, or using higher quality cheese would still keep it under 20p per sandwich, and that's off the shelf costs, no bulk discounts.
Excuse me while I write up a business plan...
I just priced it out from ingredients bought from Sam's club. 33 cents for two slices of bread, one slice of American cheese, and I added an extra 5 cents for butter substitute.
Umm... what? 2 slices of white bread, 1 slice of American cheese, and some butter is not more than a dollar.
You must be one of those people who complains about not having enough money when you spend it like an idiot.
None of those things you mentioned are ingredients in grilled cheese. The purpose of the food truck is to make grilled cheese.
What happens if i pay $1.50?
Do I get .50 back? Or do i get half a sandwich or do I just get bread or just cheese or a bread with cheese but not grilled?
Cyndi B @spintheiryarns 7 Jun 2019 Replying to @tinymediaempire
what happens if i give you $1.37
Daniel Danger @tinymediaempire 7 Jun 2019
i round down so you get one grilled cheese and i get a 37 cent tip and also i put you on a mental list for being a troublemaker
What happens if i pay $1.50?
Like Chelsea Handler and his other exes, you lost 50 cent.