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Comment by kyleperik | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I don't think marketing is a problem. In fact I have already heard of this. I think it's a super cool idea. But there's no way I can justify to myself, much less my wife to carve out $30 of my budget for candy every month. That's half our food budget. That's coming from someone who loves candy probably a bit more than average.

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I think this is probably targeted at highly productive industrialized countries, where monthly food budgets tend to be closer to $250-300/mo at the low end.

I used to order candy boxes occasionally when I was in college. My weekly food "budget" was $80-$120, so spending $30 a month on candy just meant skipping takeout a few times.

Where do you live that you spend sixty dollars a month on food?

That may be possible in Spain or Portugal, but you have to be very frugal.

You can do it anywhere if you're frugal and willing to cook. One side effect of globalization is that food staples prices are pretty much the same over the world. I'm not saying it will necessarily be a healthy diet and $1/day per person is definitely pushing it but I'm pretty sure you can do it in a country like USA too.

I live in the USA

Have you tried roasted a chicken? A whole chicken costs $6. Feeds 2 with leftovers, the bones can be used for broth, which can make lots of things, especially soup. The leftover meat is great for many things, like fried with potatoes. Sometimes I find that the chicken was used for 10 meals. Of course other things are added along the way, but veggies are dirt cheap.

Even in the middle of Mississippi, I don't see how one person can get a desirable amount of quality calories and vitamins on $1 per day. There would have to be some kind of triage such as never exercising or farming one's own vegetables going on, or skipping meals.

> A whole chicken costs $6

That means you blew your 3-day food budget on half a chicken. That's just not nearly enough calories for 3 days. I'm not doubting you're able to afford chicken on that tight budget, it just seems that you're using it more like a condiment, rather than food.

You don't get all your calories from the chicken. And yes, it's more like flavoring. You round out the meal on veggies and maybe some simple carbs. The US fascination with a protein-heavy diet is, uh, fascinating.

I'm not from US, I didn't imply that he must get all his calories from chicken and I'm not the one who brought up the chicken in the first place. He seemed to imply that chicken is a significant part of this diet and it simply isn't possible on such a budget. That was my point.

We don't eat out. We buy food on sale. We don't eat already prepared meals. We have a garden.

I think many people take for granted that we can live so well here, and buy whatever looks good, and not planning ahead of time. But honestly it's fun to make meals yourself while saving money, and you can avoid some of the weird stuff they put in a lot of preprocessed foods. I admit we are trying to live frugally, we're trying to kill a house mortgage.

I team up with two colleagues and we get one such box every month, delivered at work, that we share. It's not very expensive (10$ per month per person, where I live that's the price of one takeout) and just a bit too much candy.

It's 4-8 single serving sized packages of candy a month. That's insane.

Shipping from Japan is usually expensive. It's a niche product, but likely not many others. Doing the research yourself to find the products will eat up the savings if you value your time.

That's the nice thing about global markets: OP just needs a thousand customers a month = $30k/month gross. Maybe half that goes to shipping. If you can get each of those products for $1-$2 each in bulk, you're doing okay.

Some product might be free, highly-subsidized or he gets paid because the manufacturer wants to build an overseas market.

You’re right, he’s probably not targeting a person who only spends $30 per month on food per person.

IMO if that’s what you’re spending on food, most sane advertisers would exclude you as well.

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