Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!
You're completely right, that x2 price jump creates a real bottleneck in the later stages, and not getting anything back when deleting items makes it way too unforgiving.
I'm currently working on an update to fix this by adding delectable difficulty modes so players can choose a much smoother cost-scaling curve that fits their playstyle, along with partial refunds for deleted items.
Really appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment, it helps a lot as I keep refining the game!