Question 5
Imagine that you have started a snack food delivery business on your college campus. Students send you orders for snacks, such as potato chips and candy bars, via the Internet. You shop at local grocery stores to fill these orders and then deliver the orders. To operate this business, you pay $500 a month to lease computer time from a local Web-hosting company to use its server to host and maintain your website. You also own a sports utility vehicle (SUV) that you use to make deliveries. Your monthly car payment is $300, and you pay $100 a month in insurance costs. Each order that you fill takes, on average, a half hour and consumes $0.50 worth of gasoline. When you fill an order, you pay the grocer for the merchandise. You then collect a payment, including a delivery fee, from the students to whom you sell. If you did not operate this business, you could work at the campus dining hall, earning $6 an hour. Right now, you operate your business five days a week, Monday through Friday. On weekends, your business is idle, and you work in the campus dining hall.
Based on the above data, answer the given subquestions.
Last week you purchased five large cases of Fritos for a customer who, as it turned out, did not accept delivery. You paid $100 for these cases. You have a deal with your grocers that they will pay you $0.25 for each dollar of returned merchandise. Just this week, you found a fraternity on campus that will buy the five cartons for $55 (and will pick them up from your apartment, relieving you of the need to deliver them to the frat house).
Your sunk cost of doing business is (in $) ____________________