I say otherwise, & I will happily bathe in the righteous flames of the eternally damned, rather than suffer the unholy blight of pickles on my beloved grilled cheese.
A grilled cheese consists of only these following items. Cheese. Bread with spread (usually butter). This entire subreddit consist of “melts”. Almost every “grilled cheese” sandwich i see on here has other items added to it. The fact that this subreddit is called “grilledcheese” is nothing short of utter blasphemy. Let me start out by saying I have nothing against melts, I just hate their association with sandwiches that are not grilled cheeses. Adding cheese to your tuna sandwich? It’s called a Tuna melt. Totally different. Want to add bacon and some pretentious bread crumbs with spinach? I don’t know what the hell you’d call that but it’s not a grilled cheese. I would be more than willing to wager I’ve eaten more grilled cheeses in my 21 years than any of you had in your entire lives. I have one almost everyday and sometimes more than just one sandwich. Want to personalize your grilled cheese? Use a mix of different cheeses or use sourdough or french bread. But if you want to add some pulled pork and take a picture of it, make your own subreddit entitled “melts” because that is not a fucking grilled cheese. I’m not a religious man nor am I anything close to a culinary expert. But as a bland white mid-western male I am honestly the most passionate person when it comes to grilled cheese and mac & cheese. All of you foodies stay the hell away from our grilled cheeses and stop associating your sandwich melts with them. Yet again, it is utter blasphemy and it rocks me to the core of my pale being. Shit, I stopped lurking after 3 years and made this account for the sole purpose of posting this. I’ve seen post after post of peoples “grilled cheeses” all over reddit and it’s been driving me insane. The moment i saw this subreddit this morning I finally snapped. Hell, I may even start my own subreddit just because I know this one exists now.
You god damn heretics. Respect the grilled cheese and stop changing it into whatever you like and love it for it what it is. Or make your damn melt sandwich and call it for what it is. A melt.
If we’re going to dive straight in to the pedantry then: a panini, in English speaking countries is usually referring to a heated sandwich made from bread that is a roll (long rather than square, with an outer crust and sliced lengthways in half), usually some form of Italian bread in keeping with the Italian namesake. Panini’s as far as I’m aware are filled with anything you want, but specifically are heated, usually (or exclusively?) in a press of some kind. Jaffles are like toasties, I’d personally call them a subset of toastie, heated in a specific type of press called a jaffle machine and made only with sliced, square, toast style bread as you’d likely get in a cheap, pre-sliced and packaged loaf. The type of press is important to qualify as a jaffle, as is the bread type and shape because these machines will only fit certain standardised bread types and needs to seal shut during heating. When you put a filled sandwich (with just about any filling combo but almost always with cheese), built with two, square, toasting slices, in to a jaffle machine the shape of the cavity in this machine forces a diagonal division between two opposing corners of the bread which also squashes the filling in to either of the two bread triangles formed on either side of this diagonal. The section of dividing line between the triangles compresses the two slices of bread together in that section, which gets particularly hot and forms a snappable, dark coloured ridge between the two halves of the jaffle. When your jaffle is done, it comes out as a single object with the two halves stuck together by the dividing line, but to eat, you typically apply pressure to each opposing half causing the brittle, dividing line to snap giving you two triangular halves of a sandwich with filling completely sealed inside.
You could perhaps say ‘who calls a panini a toastie for $500?’, because toasties have a much broader, looser definition like paninis. Even though the classic ‘toastie’ will more likely be similar to a jaffle, (though crucially not heated in a jaffle machine and thus not having the jaffle shape imposed upon it), it could actually be any bread and just about any filling (though almost always including cheese), much like a panini.
I really don’t like jaffles and I have noticed a decline in their popularity as I’ve gotten older. They are a good idea in theory, but in practice, because the machine crimps the perimeter of the bread slices together and also the dividing line between the halves as well, you end up with burning hot filling and steam sealed and squashed inside of two bulged areas, one for each triangle. Those crimped edges and dividing line mean eating one involves a chore of biting through a lot of plain, unfilled, nearly burned toast before getting to all the filling which having been trapped inside is ridiculously hot and inevitably burns you. It also means that, the contents tends to get kind of steamed during cooking, making things quite flabby. Much prefer a toastie made in a sandwich press, which is basically a panini press minus the grill lines.
You’ve just described a toastie and toastie maker. I don’t know what this jaffle nonsense is all about, but it sounds like someone is sneaking toasties through customs in a dodgy trenchcoat!
Jaffles and their associated machine are represented here
Toasties here and here, and here, and here where it doesn’t even have a lid, and this one which should really just be called a Reuben but the Aussies stick “toastie” on as a suffix.
Note the variety of breads and fillings. Toasties are a very flexible concept.Those toasties have been cooked any number of ways, under a grill (broiler to the yanks), in a pan, hell even a toaster followed by a microwave, also very commonly in one of these, a sandwich press, which as you can see is flat and and does not seal. Those also sometimes come with little ridges for grill lines like the American panini presses, but I prefer this style as it’s more versatile.
If you google image search toasties you’ll probably see a few jaffles in the results but if you search jaffles you’re going to pretty much only see… jaffles, which have that characteristic shape imposed by that particular machine.
In conclusion all jaffles are toasties, but not all toasties are jaffles. If it’s been made in a machine that imposes that particular jaffle shape on to it by way of sealing the sandwich in like a waffle iron, then it’s a jaffle.
I’ll accept that your first three images could get away with being called toasties, but making a sandwich with a slice of toast doesn’t count. Open topped sandwiches of any kind should be taken out and shot, however they’re prepared. I’ll give cheese on toast a pass, but only because it’s a separate category.
Just because people mistakenly call toasties ‘Jaffles’, doesn’t mean that’s what they are. It’s wrong. Wrong I tell you! Jaffle’s not even a real word!
There would be a line around the block. This is the grilled cheese of everyone’s childhood. Add a sprinkle of salt or use salted butter when cooking on the skillet and I would be in line with everyone else holding a fiver.
Really? A very light sprinkle of salt when the sandwich is on the buttered griddle is the shit, especially if you’re using a cheese that is lower in salt. Get that nice crust on the bread with a savory pop. Combine that with a tomato soup and it’s the bomb.
Don’t knock it until you try it.
Edit: bloody purists. Gonna turn this into a melt/grilled cheese thing aren’t you.
Gas for the generator is where it would kill you. Your best bet is to make all the grilled cheese as fast as possible to save on gas and dispense them throughout the day.
I live on earth. Even if you’re buying bulk, it will still be more than a dollar to make. The bread alone bought in bulk would still be around $0.25 per slice. That’s 50 percent of the cost right there.
I just priced it out from ingredients bought from Sam’s club. 33 cents for two slices of bread, one slice of American cheese, and I added an extra 5 cents for butter substitute.
I would love to see your source. I don’t buy bread in bulk but I have a friend who owns a local restaurant in my town. I know how much he pays for the bread he serves for breakfast and it doesn’t get cheaper than that.
I’ll take your word for it. I’m not a member so it doesn’t show me the price. Looking forward to all the profitable $1 grilled cheese trucks coming soon.
This is not the cheapest, you can get better pricing than this with a Costco business account. Your friend is probably not serving the lowest price bulk bread available, they probably have some self respect.
Well even with that bread you are still spending about $0.25 per sandwich on bread. I still don’t see how that’s profitable after adding cheese and butter. You could do it by drastically reducing the amount of cheese and butter but is it really a grilled cheese when you put a single shred of cheese on it?
Meijer and Walmart store brands of cheap ass white bread are 22 slices, Kroger is 21, and for a name brand example Sunbeam is 22. Nicer bread like Pepperidge Farm or Brownberry/Oroweat tends to be in the range of 16 slices per loaf (baring the thin sliced stuff) though.
And butter for about $0.25 per ounce (you might use .5 oz per sandwich.) EDIT: checked my butter in my fridge, you’re probably using 1/4 of an ounce per sandwich if that.
And none of these are in bulk, you can probably cut the cost in half or less buying even more generic products in bulk.
Where I live, it’s currently $4Cdn for a loaf of basic white Wonder bread, it’s $8.50Cdn for a stick of salted butter, and $5.50Cdn for a pack of 22 slices of processed cheese (not the thick slice type). My country is currently going through a bit of a cost of living crisis because shelter, heating, food costs are becoming insane. How much are those things where you live? I think it’s interesting the differences based on where we all are. 1$ for an entire grilled cheese sandwich in Canada would be considered an incredible deal for takeout food pricing.
(presuming you mean $CAD for Canadian dollars, not cdn)
$4cad = $2.90usd = 13.2c/slice
$5.50cad = $4usd = 18.2c/slice
That’s 44.5c each.
That’s 125% profit. Given that a common margin aimed for is 100%, this is a good deal with your over priced products. And I don’t believe you can’t get basic white bread for less than $4cad in Canada.
In the UK I can currently buy an 800g loaf of bread for 45p (£0.45), a 500g tub of soft spread butter substitute for 99p (£0.99), and a 200g pack of 10 cheese slices for 65p (£0.65).
Each sandwich would cost about 12p (£0.12) to make, excluding the energy costs.
Doubling up on the cheese, or using higher quality cheese would still keep it under 20p per sandwich, and that’s off the shelf costs, no bulk discounts.
Bread in Finland is about 0.1 usd per slice Low quality cheese is about 8 usd / kg, assuming you need about 20g/portion that’s 0.16 usd. Total is about 36c per portion.
If we assume power consumption of 5kw for the whole operation and power cost of 20c/kWh, that’s 1usd/h
Assuming sales of 60 units per hour -one per minute, thats 60 usd of revenue per hour and 22.6 usd of non labor cost, it leaves 37.4e for labor, taxes, permits, tools, fuel.
It’s at least only feasible in high volume locations.
When allocating food cost (in your costs) 36% is around where you want it-30% would be more ideal, but you can get that through sales, bulk discount etc. So, regardless of volume food cost % is basically where it should be.
Some numbers in spain: slice cheese .19/slice bread .08/ slice (.16) Margarine (because: costs!) .04/10g .39
To get closer to a feasible food cost you’d have to sell at 1.25
I was with you until you suggested it would use 5kWh every hour. That’s an insane amount of power even if they were using an electric griddle, which is unlikely. A small generator would be enough to power the lighting and refrigeration and then the griddle would run on gas, which is way cheaper than electricity (or the petrol for the electric generator).
I’d imagine energy costs would be a fraction of what you’ve calculated, and would scale up along with any increase in sales volume.
Depends on where you are, gas use is very rare here. Anyway the energy cost is a negligible part, you can halve or double it and it won’t change the business case.
It doesn’t seem too unreasonable. Based on some quick searches, bulk cheese breaks down to about $.19 a slice, two pieces of bread is about $.10, butter is wobbly here because I don’t know exactly how much they’d be using, but let’s say half an ounce/1 Tbsp is about $.25? Probably not a whole lot of profit after the cart and rent for the space, but you could probably get close to breaking even if you sold enough and/or had a better bulk supplier than what I can see with 5 minutes of research.
It’s gonna margarine, not butter. Or some other kind of butter flavored spread.
If you wanted to get a better estimate, go to McDonald’s, order something and add cheese. Whatever they charge you for the slice of cheese is probably double their cost.
People are actually in this thread discussing how feasible this is as if it were a real plan down to calculating specific costs and supporting them with URLs.
I mean, it’s a bummer when the bougie burger places do this, but when the taco trucks and teriyaki shops near me started costing more than $2 a taco or $10 for a plate of yakisoba, I knew shit was getting hard out there.
Just saying the concept works, ppl DO want a simply Sammy for a buck and the ingredients are less as 30% of sales price even with some real decent toppings. But renovation (and extreme rent) only allows multi nationals to compete at busy places like city central stations etc.
Gaslamp district in San Diego had a cafeteria like this years ago, guessing it’s no longer a thing, but simple cheap menu would have steady customers, maybe profitable, it’s the business development people who would oppose.
Makes me wonder what people are paying for bread, Kraft cheese (or a knockoff of the same) and butter/margarine.
Seriously, a single grilled cheese shouldn’t be more than $1, it should be much less… At least in materials… The cost of grilling it and cleaning up and whatnot should still be really cheap. Even if you wrap the sandwiches in wax/parchment paper or whatever and serve it, you should still be able to make a profit per sandwich. Whether you would be better off doing this rather than getting a job at McDonald’s or whatever… That will depend on how popular the food truck is…
There used to be a vending machine in a hosiptal near me that would heat up a premade grilled cheese sandwich for £2. Being a vending machine in a hospital, they had to be making at least enough to cover the costs plus wastage. I’d say that somewhere with high footfall, especially on a cold day, you could make at least some profit from this.
Eat what you like,but if you want a “melt”, go to a restaurant. If you just want a grilled cheese(or toastie),go to the truck. Simple. And damn,why isn’t this a thing? I’d kill for a simple grilled cheese rn
There’s a couple of laws I think would make that illegal on Brazil. First, you have to accept legal tender, for example you cannot have a “credit card only” policy. Second, they are laws against “married sells”, where you can’t sell items on “groups” without the possibility of them for being bought individually (like you cannot sell pizza+soda, without selling the pizza or the soda individually). Based on those I guess you cannot not accept a 5, neither force the client to buy 5 if they only want 1.
But those laws don’t seem to imply that the seller can’t give 5 grilled cheeses when accepting a $5 bill. There is a possibility of buying just one grilled cheese, you give them $1. If the client chooses to produce a 5, after reading the rules, then whether they plan on eating more than one or not, it doesn’t matter.
In this situation nobody is refusing to accept legal tender nor are they attempting to make “married sells” with items that can’t be bought individually.
Melt is crazy good. Half sandwiches, vegan, gluten free, or full on grease and meat and dairy. I go once every time I visit Ohio. I’d go twice if I hated my body.
I went to a food truck festival a few weeks ago, and holy shit the prices of stuff. I don’t think there was a single item you could get for less than $18, and that was like the price of three french fries.
Yeah that’s how it is here. Food trucks are only at events and event food costs a fortune for some reason. You’d think that having 1000s of hungry people in one place would allow the to drop the price a bit but nah gotta squeeze us for everything.
TBF food trucks are insanely expensive (like, $80K+ expensive) so I don’t really blame owners for charging whatever people will pay. I’m just amazed people pay that much.
Yeah classic food truck venue here is an event at a brewery where they’re legally required to serve food. So you buy tickets and then provide to the vendors, but if you work out the prices it ends up being insane with super small quantities. They always have to make the food weird too, sometimes it’s cool but sometimes you just want normal shitfood.
I wanna do one where it’s like simple lowbrow stoner food done just a little fancy. Like grilled PB&J, but the peanut butter is the good stuff and the jam has the full berries in it, sourdough bread that can really take a heavy fry in some salted butter. The kind of stuff that’s dirt simple to make but really shines with a bit of extra love.
In Colorado, that has been my experience for over a decade. Food truck food was never cheap here. In Portland, just this year, I managed a few great and cheap meals from their food carts.
In my city: there was two stoners who ran around making three types of ramen - vegan, non-vegan (their broth is a different), and regular (they crack an egg).
It was like $6-7.
I loved those guys and used to follow them around.
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