How about adding the option to create 3 course meals in the Mystic Forge?
Tray – container sold by merchant
Starter – Soup etc
Main course
Dessert
Combine the buffs from each of the courses, keep the 30 min timer or maybe increase to 45.
Why? Just now there is a glut of unused food… with most foods selling for coppers. Because players mainly either want MF in PvE or DPS in PvP, this way they can have both and we can burn through the food stockpiles three times as fast.
Of course players may opt to just run their solo foods as they do now, I just think cooking needs a little bit of something to make it a viable craft.
OR
How about ANET just throws a chunk of virtual coin and buys up all the food off the AH costing 1 or 2c? NPC’s have to eat after all!