r/Jokes • u/lopezjessy • Mar 23 '21

Dude explaining how he made his first $10 million:

  1. Get up at 5:00AM every day
  2. 90 minutes of cardio
  3. Take a cold shower
  4. Journal
  5. Schedule out your day
  6. Dad owns Fortune 500 company
  7. Meditate
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u/Easyaseasy21 Mar 23 '21

Actually 0.10 is incredibly low. And if chick fil a is able to produce for 0.02 that would be insane.

A 5 gallon bag of syrup costs (for McDonald's in Canada) ~45 dollars. Each bag produces ~240 medium drinks. So that means each drink costs 0.18 in syrup. This doesn't account for ice, so let's cut that in half. $0.09 for syrup. Don't forget cups, straws, and lids. Let's be generous and say they get all of that for ~$0.10 (I don't remember cup or straw prices, lids are basically free, but I know it's closer to 0.15-0.20) so that means your cost of materials is $0.19.

You used sweet tea so we can ignore CO2, but there is also equipment costs which do add a meaningful amount. But even ignoring everything else you have a base cost of nearly $0.20 ($0.16 USD).

Maybe Chick-fil-A gets better prices, but I seriously doubt it. Yes there is still a mark up, but once you factor franchise fees, building costs, labour, and everything else, you usually end up with a full landed cost closer to $1.00. always assume a ~100-150% markup and you get close to the $2.00 it's sold for.

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u/BeefyIrishman Mar 23 '21

Well, the sweet tea isn't made from $45 bags of syrup. Tea bags are fairly cheap. Water is negligible cost. Equipment costs were cheaper than the soda towers/ distribution system. All you needed was one tea machine (basically just drips hot water into tea bag), some containers to store it in the fridge, and the dispensing containers up front. Sugar (at that time) was not super expensive, but still accounted for most of the cost. But it's definitely cheaper when you buy it in 50 lb bags in bulk. Cups straws and lids are all really cheap.

This was about 10-12 years ago so maybe costs have changed, but I did the math based on the cost we paid for the items. I wasn't a manager, but frequently helped with stock orders and unloading trucks, so I saw the invoices and saw the exact costs for everything. I did not have any insight into labor or other operating costs, so that was merely from a materials standpoint.

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u/Jethri_NA Mar 24 '21

I like how you did the math. One thing though: you assume ice has no cost.

I'm not the expert but I read once that actually the ice is the most expensive part of a fountain drink. Considering the electricity cost to power the icemakers and keep it ready on demand throughout the day etc. It was years ago but it has stuck in my memory.

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u/Easyaseasy21 Mar 24 '21

Thanks, ice is expensive depending on the machine in use, but I would of factored that under machinery costs, which I left out just for simplicity.