How to Make A Dining Hall with $10,000 and $100K Ate

It’s easy to feel guilty about paying more for your food at restaurants, but you might not have to.

A new study finds that, for those willing to pay more, the cost of a meal can be considerably lower at restaurants with a higher number of courses and higher prices.

A restaurant with 5,000 to 7,000 courses and $10 to $20 in food costs around $3,200 per person, according to the study by the consulting firm HCI Associates.

But for a restaurant with 10,000 or more courses, the bill would be about $2,000, or about 25 percent less.

The study looked at the cost for dining in restaurants across six cities: Philadelphia, New York, Miami, Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C. For example, in Seattle, the average cost of an entree would be $1,800 per person; in Miami, $1.80 per person.

Restaurants that served more than 30,000 meals in the cities surveyed had average prices of $2.20 per person per meal, which is well below the $3.20 national average.

But at places with fewer than 50,000 dining days, the overall average price for a meal was about $4.40 per person for people who dined more than 20 times a year, HCI said.

Restaurations that serve fewer than 30 people a day in the city had average price of $3 per person on a per-person basis, compared to $4 per person at restaurants serving more than 50 people a week.

This study is an important first step in understanding how people can afford to pay higher prices for food, said Andrew J. Sager, a senior research associate at HCI.

“These are real differences in the cost, not just the cost per meal,” he said.

It’s also possible that higher prices can be offset by a higher average meal price, Sager said.

“The question is: How can you get a lower price, or a higher price, if the price you pay is lower?”