Panda's food cost on that plate is around $3. They sell it to you for ~$11. If you tried to make it at home you probably spent $15 on ingredients and an hour of your life to lose this race. Here's why the scale math is brutal.
Panda buys boneless chicken thighs at wholesale: around $2/lb, sometimes less on contract. The same cut at your grocery store runs $3-5/lb. You're paying a 2x retail markup before you've turned on the stove.
Then stack the ingredient tax. Orange chicken at home needs cornstarch, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, orange juice, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, and frying oil. Each bottle costs $3-8. You use a tablespoon of each and toss the rest a year later. Panda buys these inputs in drums and the per-plate seasoning cost rounds to zero.
Labor is where the comparison breaks. A Panda cook plates 200-300 entrees per shift. Marginal labor is ~90 seconds at ~$18/hr, so about $0.50 of labor per tray. You spent 45 minutes on yours. At any honest hourly rate, the time cost more than the meal.
Panda sells 115 million pounds of orange chicken a year. At that volume, they're functionally a food manufacturer with 2,400 retail outlets. The plate is the last step in a commodities pipeline.
A chain running 90-second wok labor on commodity chicken beats your home kitchen every time. That's the whole business.
To my 25 - 35 year olds, you've reached the age where people around you are starting to give up on themselves because they think it's too late. Don't let that energy rub off on you. It's not too late.