Too bad they aren't interested in assisting the poor. This could have been a godsend. The market their price targets will likely show little interest. They like and can afford food.
“I’d like this to be something that is like coffee — a commodity something that’s available everywhere. Maybe a utility like water and power. Something that is ubiquitous and easy to consume,” he said. “I’d like to see it in grocery and convenience stores soon.” ( http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/01/soylent-1m-preorders/ )
You have to keep in mind this is an early adopter, hot-off-the-manufacturing-line, hey-look-this-might-work version. Give it time to grow, mature, and let economies of scale kick in.
I'm skeptical that a packaged product like soylent would be able to compete in price with regular food. Their market, at least for now is going to be a) people who want a strict diet and b) people who would rather eat a milk shake than cook normal food.
They have (somewhere), but even more interesting is that they are kind of treating this in a sort of open source manner. They either plan to (or already have) publish the recipe. It's not going to be a trade secret, and they expect competition. The kickstarter they did basically gives them enough funds to establish supply lines and produce a viable product. Any real competition would have to jump through similar hoops, and that takes time. One of their goals is to make the product ubiquitous ('like coffee'), so as long as they're making money, they don't care if they're even the market leader. Of course, for the short term, they will be.
To that end, Soylent has a DIY section where people have contributed recipes so you can make soylent yourself, often with a button to add all the ingredients into your amazon cart.
The thing to remember that when you DIY, you're buying the ingredients in bulk and it seems expensive. Take for example the [QuidNYC's Superfood for him](http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-superfood-for-him) which will cost you $437 up front, but gives you an ~80 day supply, so it really comes down to $5.50/day. Also, if you compare that to the Soylent campaign prices, it's $255 for a 1 month supply, or $130 for a 2 week supply. There's no real "trial size" at this point, so it's rather difficult to try a bunch of recipes and see what you like.
At about $9/day, it's still too expensive for a lot of poor people. You can eat rice and beans for $1 a day, or a healthy variety of food for $5-6/day (though requiring more time to prepare obviously)
