What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that?
What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.
To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be a lot more than $200? We're talking Magic's $100, however much the meal cost, plus the cost chilled overnight mail would be insane.
They don't chill the whole logistics chain, they just put the food in an insulated box with some dry ice and send it with the rest of the overnight packages.
Yep -- see http://orderboxesnow.com/ for FedEx's first-party options, which are the upper bound on expense (for the chilling, not the overnight delivery).
This is what I appreciate about Magic, by the way. I simply asked for food from the restaurant, specifying that leftovers were fine. Chilled overnight didn't even occur to me; I did not have any idea at the time how they might accomplish it, and I was prepared to be told it was impossible (or insanely expensive).
They figured out that chilled overnight delivery was possible, and got a local service to handle the logistics of picking it up from the restaurant, packing it into the box, and shipping it. It turned out rather nicely, and not nearly as expensive as I expected. It's not even really that much work and effort, when all is said and done.
What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.
To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.