Lunch out is between $8-12 and dinner runs between $14-30. Most food is flash frozen and nuked. That’s a lot of money for frozen food dinners. Now, add in the rest of the people in our family and a tip and you are quickly into three figures. That’s too much for most meals.
$8-12 is worth when you avoid trip to grocery store to buy a list of items required to cook the menu item, buying paper napkins, washing the pans & pots, washing silverware and dinner plates, not to mention electricity & water & detergent consumed by the dish washer, cleaning the dining table after eating, cost of gas burned to cook the food etc etc.
But yes, it is cheaper to cook at home, especially if there are more than 2 people in the family. For DINCs (double income no children) it is so much more convenient to eat in restaurants. We in America are so lucky to have very reasonable restaurant prices compared to Western Europe, Australia, Japan, and all big cities elsewhere except Washington DC.
I think you just described a TV dinner.