Take Me To Dinner

So the Prudent Beavers (that's what my wife calls the nice people on the Wall Street Bear professional investors' forum) were talking last night about the price of hamburgers.

Top Iowa hamburger

Hamburgers are one of those things that are fundamental, and in theory ought to be difficult to screw up - but they are screwed up in so many ways, one of the most egregious in the USA, being this tendency to believe that 'bigger is better.' Bigger is better almost inevitably takes one to the rising of prices!

Every serious adult club-person's 'thing.' - The pickle

Of course one has to admire the whole adventure of trying to raise any price in today's world, where even, apparently, the 500 Euro note is going to be taken out of the market because (according to the authorities) it is being used by criminals and those wishing to avoid taxes! My my.

In LA there is a restaurant whose very reason for existence is the vending of - water. And they have found ways to increase the prices of various brands of water. Amazing.

If you could, I suppose, convince the top 1 per cent to buy a certain thing for a ridiculous premium, it makes a lot of economic sense as a manufacturer since you have far less delivery and storage and frictional costs servicing a tiny market compared with a vast one. Your profit margin would make Martin Shkreli envious.

I mean this is the ultimate marketing coup isn't it - getting someone to pay a huge amount of money for a short experience of, well, water... This bottle of water retails for around $2,500: