Honestly I still think you're confused why pre-made sauces exist in supermarkets. They're for convenience and there to save the consumer time - not money.
No, this thread has already asserted that time is not so much a factor, as you can knock up a simple sauce in well under an hour. These things specifically provide financial convenience. They exist because you cannot buy
only the exact quantity of ingredients required for
one jar's worth of sauce.
Very few people want 20-30 portions of sauce and in a short enough space of time to financially justify making and using that much before it goes off.
It saves money and it saves wastage.
Again, I don't pretend to work in the restaurant industry but if you're talking about a half-decent independent restaurant (of which there are thousands in the UK) where exactly is "off site" for them? If they're a single site, say in a small market town, then I'd imagine all prep is done in the kitchen. There literally is nowhere else. I'm sure there are some more knowledgeable people here that can attest to this but your opinion of how restaurants work seems very bizarre as if they magic in half-made ingredients from a factory and warm them up. Yes that's true for a lot of terrible chains (and pubs) but not anywhere professing to be an actual restaurant experience.
My opinion of how restaurants work is informed solely by the explanations of friends and a spouse who work in them, plus a few who work for catering suppliers.
Many restaurants
do have kitchens that are separate from the restaurant itself, with the latter being more of a heating/re-heating and plating-up area. Several of the Michelin starred restaurants nearby do it this way, although
they do still scratch-make most things themselves... others mix scratch with pre-made, to varying degrees. Of course there is everything in between, depending on the size of the place and what works best for them.
I'm telling you it's as small as one portion and you're not listening.
Pot, kettle.
You've proven how it's cheaper to make like-for-like sauce
when broken down, but
NOT how it's cheaper to actually acquire the ingredients in those quantities... because the point in this thread is that
you cannot buy 11p of dried basil, a single tsp of puree, 7p of olive oil... Show me where you would go to purchase just 1g of ground pepper, or where will supply you 3ml of lemon juice... ?
Even if you only make one portion of sauce, you still have to buy a whole bottle of oil, a whole bulb of garlic, a whole pack of salt, and so on... THAT is where you save money when you, like many people, only want one jar of sauce. You'd have to make X jars of home-sauce before the cost of aquisition comes in under the costof just buying it in.
Yes in some respects, having ingredients that can be used for other recipes would negate some costs, but
only if you make use of those recipes often enough... and that is further compounded by any additional ingredients needed for these other recipes, at which point those are also subject to this ever-widening picture and it carries on spiralling waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond just buying a ******* jar of sauce for under two quid!!
EDIT2: Hmn radio silence..
Cor, impatient much?
How long did you leave it before expecting a reply and then whacking that edit in? 24hrs?
I'm usually away on Wednesdays, so it's a shame you had to wait so long for your argument to be challenged, but real life comes first.
Why would they make it and sell it otherwise... Raw ingredients will always cost less than ready-made sauces, or finished jars. I'm not going to pretend to know what big Italian chains like Zizzi's do but I think you'll find any semi-decent restaurant will be making sauces themselves...
) and I don't need to make 4 portions to come out better off. Most supermarkets let you buy onions by weight don't they? And single bulbs of garlic?