> What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that?
Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.
(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)
I have no idea what sort of food you're ordering from across the continent or what sort of business its coming from, but unless its "generic slop/carton-packed stir fry", I would know anything I pack into an overnight express delivery thing is going to arrive the next day looking like generic slop/carton-packed stir fry regardless of whatever it originally was.
Hell, we were asked to take some pastries from our city roughly 700 kms home for family on Christmas, and although we carefully packed them, stored them with freezer-blocks in an insulated container, and carried them completely supervised on our lap in an aircraft cabin the entire way, they arrived worse for wear...but still kinda presentable and edible.
If I hired this out to an overnight courier for $100, + $100 for magic, + $100 for food, i wouldn't be half surprised to find it had been forcefully jammed into my letter box or met with handling/turbulence during transportation...
UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".
All this rounding down is the difference between "a few hundred" and likely "just shy of a thousand dollars". A few hundred in shipping, a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese", the time for the service. Etc.
> UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".
I used FedEx overnight for a 5lb package, which came to less than $100.
> a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese"
I'd assumed a meal for 2-4 people at most, thus roughly $50-100.
> the time for the service
Given foreknowledge of the services needed to put together such a request, that should take a small fraction of an hour; 15-30 minutes, so $25-$50.
Put all of that together, plus the chilled packaging, and $300-400 seems like a reasonable estimate. Both of us made many assumptions based on lack of data.
Not to nickel and dime, because I appreciate your response. I had a hard time getting FedEx's rate calculator to show up on my Mac...
Still, UPS at 5lb from NY to SF Next Day Air Early is still $150+.
If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.
2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
> If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.
I think we've both relied on our own local price scales here. I don't live in San Francisco; here, $25 per person will generally get you any entrée and dessert on the menu, from anywhere other than a high-end steakhouse or similar.
And in any case, I was making the assumption that the selection of meal was driven more by some specific shared nostalgia than by five-star cuisine. If anything, I'd be less inclined to attempt to ship the latter, since quality would suffer more from transit than nostalgia would.
> 2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
I don't think you can even ship dry ice via normal shipping processes; it falls under "hazardous substances". The couple of times I've had chilled items shipped (http://www.spokandy.com/product/murphys/ , highly recommended), they arrived packed in gel-like sealed "ice"packs, still cold to the touch.
> Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
Indeed!
Going back to the original point, the examples given on the homepage for this service certainly target people with seven-figure salaries. But I could imagine people using it for somewhat saner purposes while having "just" a high-five-figure/low-six-figure salary.
Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.
(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)