The cost of hosting a dinner in a particular restaurant is given by y = 18.5x + 250, where x is the number of people at the dinner and y is dollars. What is the y-intercept of this function? What does it mean in the context of the problem

It is saying: your y intercept (250) is the start of your rate, going from zero to infinity. Your rate is 18.5 times x; x is your number of people, and we don't know that.

An example of this problem is rarely going to occur in real life, so this problem is terrible.