Who runs PlateCost

What we are

PlateCost is a project of Das Creative LLC, a small US data operation. We build pipelines on public data and publish what they produce. The "Das Creative Data Desk" is the name we write under here. It's not a single celebrity food writer with a byline photo. It's a small team and a set of scripts that pull USDA numbers, check them, and put them on a page in plain English.

We started PlateCost because wholesale food prices are public record, but they're published in report formats built for traders and analysts, not for someone running a kitchen. We didn't think that gap needed a new expert opinion. It needed a translation layer.

What we're not

We're not chefs. We're not commodity traders. Nobody on this desk has stood a line or hedged a butter contract. If you're looking for a chef's take on ingredient costs or a trader's read on where the futures market is headed, this isn't that site.

What we do have is a working pipeline into USDA AMS Market News, collected through the MARS API. That covers:

• National shell egg reports
• The CME cash dairy weekly recap, which includes butter, cheese, nonfat dry milk, and dry whey
• The Northeast fluid cream report

We read these reports the way anyone can. We just do it every day, automate the pulling, and format the output so it's usable without a subscription or a decoder ring.

Wholesale, not retail

Every number on PlateCost is a wholesale price. That means it's what moves between processors, packers, and large buyers, not what shows up on a shelf tag or a delivery invoice. If you buy eggs or butter for a kitchen, your invoice price includes distribution, margin, and contract terms that never show up in a USDA wholesale report. We say this a lot because it's easy to skim past and draw the wrong conclusion. Wholesale trends can tell you where costs are headed. They are not a quote for what you'll pay next Tuesday.

Where the numbers come from

Every data page on PlateCost names its source report and the date we pulled it. That's not a footnote we bury. It's the point. If a number looks wrong, you can check the same USDA report we did and see for yourself. We don't estimate, adjust, or smooth anything. If USDA didn't publish it, it's not on the site.

Corrections

Automated pipelines still make mistakes. A report format can change upstream. A field can get mapped wrong. When that happens and we trace an error back to how we handled a source report, we fix it and we say so on the affected page. We're not interested in quietly editing a number and pretending it was always right.

If you spot something that looks off, the fastest way to check it yourself is to look at the source report and date listed on that data page. If you still think we got it wrong, that's useful to know. We'd rather hear about it than have it sit uncorrected.

Contact

PlateCost is maintained by Das Creative LLC. We don't run a comments section on data pages, since prices don't need opinions attached to them. For corrections or questions about methodology, reach out through the contact channel listed in the site footer.