User blog comment:Pappa2eco/What do you do?/@comment-97.96.153.26-20121227002922

It's up to you really, depending on your focus. If you are going for coins, you don't want to run a store at a loss, but once you get high enough, coins are plentiful and there is no reason to not run it at a loss, so you still get xp.

In your case, if you are discouraged about the prices, but are still making /some/ money, I would run the medium length recipe and play your board games with your family in between :-)  Or run the short, and just not check it quite as religiously!