The labor is paid less than people flipping burgers usually. Post docs make less than fast food managers. Grad students less than the line cooks. And a lot of undergrads are “volunteering” or have half their wage paid by federal work study. A lot of labs their reagent costs are very low and they might used shared university equipment that’s already had a grant written to purchase it by the institution. It probably costs orders of magnitude more to outfit the kitchen at a mcdonalds than it does an average academic lab.
