How much are your favorite restaurants worth? How many people could you feed for $138,491.42 in the most expensive restaurant in NYC?
It’s a rhetorical question; we’re going to find out together because it’s part of this week’s experiment: how spending money can make you rich! This week we looked at what would happen if someone started with fake cash and spent that same amount on meals from some of New York City’s top restaurants. Would they end up with enough food to buy themselves into financial freedom or even wealthy status? My bookkeeper sends me an email every year detailing my spending patterns. Over a year, I spent $138,491.42 on meals for my own company. I assumed there was a clerical mistake since the amount works out to almost $11,540 each month. I couldn’t possibly have spent so much on business dinners, could I? Nevertheless, the figure was so startling that I decided to look into it more. I posed a few basic questions to myself:
- How is it feasible for a single individual to spend $11,540 on food every month?
- Is it true that paying for meals is a waste of money?
- Is there a return on investment?
- When do I have to pay for meals, and when do I not?
What I discovered when searching through the data was highly intriguing.
The price of business dinners
I had 603 meetings for a year, which took place at happy hour or over dinner. It costs an average of $218.02 for each session. Although the amount may seem high, 18 of the lunches featured several of my employees, and the combined cost of those meals exceeded $2,000. I spent $51,491.28 on lunches with colleagues, accounting for 37 percent of my meal expenditure. I discovered that many of the smaller lunches were shared with employees, and I was always the one to pay. Why? Because I value the time and effort, they devote to my company. My businesses would not exist if it weren’t for them. In addition, I enjoyed six lunches that cost more than $5,000 apiece. They were all with prospective clientele who liked to eat excellent food. The remainder of the meals were priced differently.
Is it possible that I’m squandering money on meals?
Regrettably, there is no black-and-white solution. Why? Because each meal has a distinct function. Spending money on coworkers and colleagues, in my opinion, is never a waste since it shows your appreciation for them. As a result, I never attempt to compute a return on investment for this set of costs. My breakfasts with prospective customers turned out to be a success. These dinners brought approximately $520,000 in income for me. I spent $72,489.31 on entertaining prospective clients out of all the money I spent on meals. The remaining $14,510.83 was paid for dinners with other business owners. In many situations, these company owners provided me with complimentary advice or assisted me with my own business. I gained a lot of helpful knowledge from the dinners I paid for with other companies. While I didn’t use much of the material supplied, I did make use of a few suggestions. A guy named Zak Westphal introduced me to the notion of sales floors at one of my meetings. He informed me that several trustworthy businesses in Utah could make calls on your behalf. I finally switched from having sales calls conducted in California to contracting Utah-based organizations for one of my firms. It saved me money on labor, resulting in an additional $285,000 in revenue. In a separate business meeting, an entrepreneur explained how using geo-targeting in your website text might help you make more money.
I increased sales for a couple of my companies by including the visitor’s location in the website content (as in the example above). It didn’t make much difference, but it did bring in an additional $187,000 in income.
The Return on Investment (ROI) of Paying for Meals
Paying for meals can provide an ROI, depending on when you pay. With employees, it is always worth it as it shows you care about them; you should never track The Return on Investment (ROI) of Paying for Meals with coworkers. When it comes to prospective clients, I’ve discovered that paying for meals doesn’t always imply that you’ll get the job. I went back and asked each of the companies that hired me why they decided to work with me. My reputation and track record, they all said, were the decisive considerations. It was a grand gesture to pay for the lunch, but they would have probably signed up even if I hadn’t. The highest return on investment was paying for meals while networking with other businesses. I spent just $14,510.83 on dinners with other entrepreneurs, yet my sales soared by $472,000.
When to pay for meals and when not to?
After analyzing my spending on 603 meals over 12 months, I now know when to pay for meals and when not to. My typical rule of thumb is as follows:
- Employees and coworkers should always pay for their meals since they work so hard for you. You should evaluate who you employ if they aren’t working hard.
- You don’t have to take potential customers to the most expensive restaurants, but you should attempt to pay us a favor. Keep the expenditures minimal since paying for meals does not always imply more significant money.
- I usually attempt to pay for lunches, fellow businesspeople. This isn’t because I’m hoping for a return on investment; I want to be respectful. I usually attempt to pay when I ask someone out to a lunch or dinner meeting, and they take the time out of their hectic schedule to do so.
Conclusion
Don’t attempt to achieve a straight ROI while paying for meals. When someone provides you with some helpful advice or wants to conduct business with you, it will happen organically now and again. Nobody will want to collaborate with you if you are overly aggressive. If you’re going to get a good return on your meal investment, bear in mind that it’s a numbers game. Only 17 of the 603 lunches I bought for last year yielded any profit. This suggests that just 2.8 percent of my dinners resulted in a commercial transaction. Does this imply that I’ll have to pay for fewer meals? Most likely not. Instead, I’ll be more cautious when choosing restaurants and attempt to stay away from $5,000 bills.
Related Tags
- factor meals price
- weight loss meals delivered
- prepared meals delivered