As for Dwarf labor involved in making roasts, most of the time I don't even have to farm. I just buy all food from caravans. It gets hauled to nearby stockpiles and turned into booze and roasts. I have a booze stockpile close to kitchen, so some roasts end up as quite large stacks. Even after factoring in overzealous butchering animal husbandry, cheesemaking and occasional farming or plant gathering, this is not much effort compared to say, selling junk goblinite and crafts.
The way I see it, people complain about roast prices, because of the way they are calculated. Each ingredient gets quality modifier for how finely it is minced, the four are added together, multiplied by quality multiplier for the whole meal, and then by sum of stack sizes. IMO a good way to change this, would be to have 1 quality modifier for the meal itself, and count each ingredient as decoration, so rather than something like (10 *minced1 *base_price1 + 10 *minced2 *base_price2 + 10 *minced3 *base_price3 + 10 *minced4 *base_price4) *quality *stack_sum we would have: (10 *minced1 *base_price1 + 10 *minced2 *base_price2 + 10 *minced3 *base_price3 + 10 *minced4 *base_price4 + roast_base_price *quality) *stack_sum
I'm not sure, it all the 10s are there, I just assumed basic prices for decorations are 10. Removing them from meals would further reduce prices.
OFC there still would be cloth, and glass serrated disk industry.