Minimum Wage Wealth

As we’ve discussed recently, cooking your own food can lead to saving large amounts of money. But exactly how much does it cost to make popular dishes at home vs. the restaurant?

We’ll be presenting multiple threads concerning pricing and how to make big-name dishes, and the true costs to make these dishes. Please note that these prices are not what the restaurant pays, but what you would pay to make the dish. Restaurants pay even less, as they are able to purchase foods in bulk to get volume discounts.

A few notes to the disclaimer:

• Dishes are valuated for individual portions. When you buy food at a store, you are most likely going to purchase more food than needed for a single porton. Prices are divided by the number of portions that the initial recipe calls for.
• We are using recipes from www.AllRecipes.com – I’ve made most of these recipes personally, and can vouch for their eerily-close flavors to the actual items used in the big-name restaurants
• Prices for the dishes at the restaurant are based on my area in the Columbus, Ohio. Prices are for dinners, and may vary from restaurant to restaurant.

This Week: Olive Garden

The Breakdown:

• Linguine alla Marinara (Fancy for Spaghetti & Pasta Sauce) ranks #1 with a whopping 85% in savings when made at home. Ever wonder why they offer an ‘unlimited pasta’ serving size? Because it’s incredibly cheap to make. Most of the dish is comprised of pasta, which costs roughly $1.49 per pound which is quite cheap. The incredible sauce costs pennies to make at roughly $4.37 for over 2lbs of sauce (think about making all your pasta sauces at home. Much cheaper than buying at the store). Here’s the recipe. We omitted the meatballs from the recipe which can be made rather cheaply, too.
• Fettuccine Alfredo is fancy, decadent, and incredibly cheap. Typical Alfredo sauce is expensive to buy at the store, but making it is very cheap. Like the Linguine alla Marinara, the bulk of this dish is cheap pastas. The costliest part of this dish is roughly $1.00 in cheese per serving (approximately 2.5oz of the stuff per serving). Milk and half-and-half also contributes to the cost of this dish. Still, at 83% off, you will definitely want to try this recipe. Throw in some tomatoes and/or broccoli near the end of the simmering process to liven up the color of the dish.
• Caprese Flatbread is a mix of Focaccia bread base, garlic spread, and toppings. Although it saves less than the other two major dishes, you still save a fantastic 61% off the regular price. The large spread (excuse the pun) in cost between the other dishes and this one is the garlic spread, which calls for a large amount of creme and mozzarella cheese topping. The mozzarella could probably be cut back, saving extra, but we were generous – after all, you deserve it!

All told, you could make the 3 dishes for under the price of the appetizer alone. Remember this before you think about going out for Italian.

Disclaimer:

We do not guarantee the accuracy of the recipes offered versus their retail counterparts. However, we do deem the alternatives delicious and certainly money saving.