The question is $2 per person per meal. So unless you are eating that whole loaf of bread by yourself, you can spend $3 on it and use a couple of slices per person, which would only be a few cents.

Bulk buying big units of almost anything will lower the overall cost of serving sizes. Sure, the initial purchase might be expensive once, but in the end, you're still saving money.

For example, I love rice and cook with it often. But the supermarkets around these parts only have these shitty 250g mini packs that already cost 2.50€ - just for the rice itself. No sauce, no veggies, no meat - just the effing rice. That's 10€ per kg.

The overseas market one town over sells 20 kg bags of the same type of rice for 30€ which is equal to 1.50€ per kg. Sure it takes a bit of extra time to drive that far and you need to have 35€ to spare, but buying the same amount of the same rice in smaller packs would cost me 200€ instead.

If there is something you eat often anyway and you have a place to properly store it, always buy the "big" units.