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So the message here is we’re selling food way too cheap in Chad ?

I lived (stationed) in Italy and Persian Gulf Region for almost 8 years of my 26 year career as well as SEA and other countries and food was dirt cheap. In Northern Italy near Aviano Air Base we could get a 9 course meal at Orsini’s for less than 3 dollars a person. My daily lunches and dinners locally were a dollar plus change in most cases.

In the middle east, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar etc food was as cheap but just awesome quality.

Only place where I don;t let the sun set on me or mine again is France where we paid (grudgingly) almost 12 dollars for a simple burger and soft drink....this was in 1976. I ain’t been back to that sink hole since.

No wonder you paid out the ass in France. You had a hamburger and a soda! Only tourists eat that crap! Now, if you had gone around the corner to the local Mom & Pop restaurant, you could have had a real meal for a quarter of the price. As an example, my wife and I once shared a dinner at a family restaurant à rive droit Paris consisting of pork roast braised until fork-tender in wine with lentils, and served with pan gravy, peas, and pearl onions. Two heaping platefuls (plus seconds of the veg) with a couple loaves of fresh bread set us back about twelve bucks... and that's WITH wine.

Or if you want to go even cheaper, you could eat picnic style, the way I did when I hitchhiked through France as a kid. There's a Uniprix grocery store right on the Rue de Rivoli near St. Paul Métro that sells everything you need. In the morning I'd have a croissant dunked in hot tea with milk for breakfast, for lunch a sandwich consisting of a half baguette with sliced cheese, apples, and paper-thin sliced sausage plus a bottle of mineral water; an early afternoon snack of olives and cheese; an evening snack of half a Milka chocolate bar, the butt end of the baguette, and a can of Coke; and a fresh pear with a half-bottle of wine (shared with this chick I met at the Beaubourg) for supper at about 10:00 p.m. All that plus a few cups of coffee came to about four bucks in those days... probably about eight today. Besides, in France the basic foods are all so good that you'll probably find yourself wanting to skip the fancy restaurant food altogether. Hell, some days in France I just ate bread and cheese!

My point: no matter where you go, if you eat what the locals eat you eat cheaply and well. Besides, foreign hamburgers are nasty. Eating a burger in Europe is like eating Mexican food north of the Red River: just don't.