I somewhat sympathize with Mr. O'Reilly, but I can't quite agree with his assessment, at least not an overall assessment. He states that the ingredients likely cost around $1, and that the deli proprietor is marking this up 14x. While it may be true that this owner is demanding quite a profit in their $14 price, I don't think it's nearly as much profit as Mr. O'Reilly lets on in his podcasts. He and I live in basically the People's Republic of NY, a State where nobody's ever talked about a law they didn't like ;-). As I write this, the U.S. minimum wage is $7.25/hr. For NYC, it's over double, at $15/hr. Rents, leases, and property taxes in the NYC area are just unbelievable, or at least as I'm told by people who I respect/trust, like Louis Rossmann. Without thinking too hard, I have to believe there are other fees this deli owner will have to pay, like licenses and such.
I think Bill is a really sharp guy, but somehow on this one, I wonder if he's truly thought this through. It's rare that businesses do not collect more money for whatever they're selling than it cost them to deliver that product (which would be called loss leaders). This deli likely has hefty rent to pay on the space they use. The workers they hire need to be paid. The gas and electricity used to cook the soup and keep it hot need to be bought. Multiple entities will want taxes paid on all of that, and again, a corollary to the above, NYC and NYS residents have never seen a tax they didn't like. It would be truly fascinating if this deli owner would be willing to let the general public look at all the costs which go into selling that $14 serving of chicken'n'rice soup.
2023-10-15 ADDENDUM: I listened to more of this podcast now, where Bill further complains about adding on 3 or 4 percent for paying with a credit card. Bill seems oblivious to how credit card acceptance works. I know from working for at least one small business (doing nothing more than data entry, but they are good friends) that credit card companies charge transaction fees, which are both some fixed fee (on the order of $0.50 IIRC) plus some percentage of the sale amount (typically 2 to 4 percent), combined. All that deli owner is doing is passing on these fees, rather than doing some more complicated analysis and trying to average in those fees over all customers, whether they pay with credit cards or not. I am not 100% sure, but some localities may have laws against such practices, forcing the business proprietors to do just that, build the costs of credit card acceptance into all sales, not just those specific credit card sales.
Incidentally, this brings to mind recent proposed regulation which would force ISPs to itemize their bills. The ISPs argue that it would be too complicated for their systems; I think they want to keep things fuzzy and ambiguous so that they can continue to gouge customers.