To feel ripped off

She’s right though - people using cafes as work spaces are very bad for business.

They take up seats for hours on minimum spend and won’t share tables - so that’s 2 potential covers gone and a table that could reasonably be turned three or four times.

One near us has turned it into a business model - a set fee, a station with coffee pot, teapot and platter of toast, and it caters entirely to the WFH/freelance demographic until 3 pm. Then it’s out with the workers and in with that after school crowd, and serving full meals until it closes at 9:30.

They don’t bother with opening the kitchen and having full waiting staff, just a couple of people until the 3pm slot. So they save a lot on staff and not doing food until they will get a reasonable return.

Good lord.

Well, the world of the big mass market chains eg wetherspoons - see my post above

So we have a local cafe that charges 12 Euro for full cooked breakfast, tea and toast. Might be top end for cafe breakfast, but
It's lovely and warm, clean and tables always clear and welcoming when you enter. It opens at 7.30 am if you want early breakfast.
The service is great. They know you and ask about family and general pleasant and friendly (No cost to them)
You can mix and match your breakfast without high drama or 50 cent extra for mushrooms etc (minimal to no overall cost)
You can get a half breakfast for children at half price. They don't have to ID to prove they are under 8, or whatever. They just get it if they ask for it.
Ingredients not obviously cheap or poor quality
Toast and tea top ups at no cost to me (cost to them two slices of bread and tea bag and milk and butter, if it even happens)
Newspapes available
Clean pleasant toilets with hand cream and nice soap and checked for toilet paper etc (Cost over all customers minimal)
Low level calm background music and nice lighting. Comfortable seats and plenty of space between tables.
But no WiFi. They need table turn over and it's a business decision.
It's always busy. I could get breakfast for 9 Euro in town but pay 3 Euro more for a vastly better experience. It doesn't cost 30 perc more for the business to provide what I want. They have same fixed costs but are full and get more revenue per breakfast and a bigger profit. They also turn over their tables.
That's how I see it as a consumer and it works for me. We go at least once a week as do plenty of others.

Everyone keeps pointing out how the fixed costs like electricity and staffing have gone through the roof. Surley this is the reason to offer some value with the product. You need to be full or busy to reduce the fixed cost per sale. Value isn't about making everything cheap. I know that's a simple interpretation but it does seem some places have given up on trying to increase their sales and just increase prices and reduce quality of product and service. Really good service is so underestimated in the service sector. Even when buying soup and sandwiches.

I could still eat very well in London for £40 a day! You'd just have to be careful about where you went.

My earlier post mentions a massive plate of Thai food for £15. You wouldn't need a huge breakfast or lunch/dinner if you had that.

I appreciate it's expensive to eat out, but in what world do you think a business can provide somewhere for you to go, warm, with lights on, cook a meal, and serve it, for £5. They have to buy ingredients, pay utilities, upkeep on premises (and likely rent), staff (inc cleaning etc), insurance, health and safety certification, taxes, and on and on it goes.

The likes of Toby Carvery, Spoons etc aren't being run as independent businesses sp they can afford loss leaders, economies of scale etc. Probably negotiate cheaper rents. Their profit margins are probably paper thin, but they have so many establishments they still make enough to be worth it. Totally different business model to the indies.

I mean places like Toby carvery manage it on breakfasts what’s that £6.99? All you can eat. £8.99 on lunch? Then upto £14 for dinner.

Those are the types of places more people
will flock to as it hits the pocket rather than a £9.99 belly buster and £2 tea at the local cafe.

Don't be silly. How would they buy the ingredients, pay all the staff, pay the rent, pay the electricity, pay the gas, pay the water bill, pay the business rates and make any profit if they only charged £5 for a meal? They can only seat so many people in the cafe. If no one pays more than a fiver for a meal they're going to be making a huge loss.

There seems to be a stupid view by RR and co that ALL companies will pay additional taxes and NOT pass onto the end customer because after all they can use their current profit to cover it. NONE of the current Cabinet have ever run a company large or small which explains these awful decisions.

This is hitting the small companies hard. People bleat on about Amazon and co but if they were targetted with changing the way they report their profits and pay more tax in the UK guess who will be moaning their prices are too expensive.

Same with private schools. There is a view that people who are paying for a private school can afford ALL tax rises. They are clueless. The money isnt going anywhere near the state schools. It will be wasted and wasted.

Yes it is outrageous pricing. A small pleasure like eating out for lunch is now so expensive. Should be £5 at most.

They won't 'soon lower them' as they'll go bust!

Maybe @SpareBoxRoomForEmergencies but as an aside all these places are not even heated anymore, they're all steamy and cold.

I agree.

I 'treated' DD and I to lunch in a little place/cafe in London; nearly £70 for a (fridge cold) toast with avocado with 1 (fridge cold) poached egg, one (ok) fancy salad and 2 teas. Annoying and yucky and just not worth the money, imo.

If we'd gone to the Connaught, for £5 more we could have had something similar (Avocado toast with 2 poached eggs £28, Smoked salmon and blinis £28, Matcha Green Tea £10, Darjeeling £9)! Now that would have been a real treat and probably they also cook properly.

I don't know, something is wrong we're you're charged so much for something not very nice in a random cafe. There's definitely something wrong when a prestige hotel seems good value compared with high street prices 🤔

One " community" restaurant closed and opened again at least twice. Always in March to avoid tax. Another " community" place closed and forgot to pay the staff.

I find it interesting that in my suburb there is a lot of talk of " Community"
The word finds its way into most things. Community spaces/ comunity cafes/ for all the community.

Without the dollar, there is no community.

That's our standard price and quality in NE Scottish city.

Or they'd be turning over that table with several groups of perhaps two or three people all having a coffee and a sandwich and all leaving after half an hour instead of having you sitting there ekeing out 2 coffees for half the day and using their electricity to keep your laptop and your phone charged.

You are not doing them the favour you clearly think you are. Perhaps the reason a coffee is so flipping expensive in most cafés now is precisely because of people like you. They've become de facto offices so they may as well do what they can to at least try to scratch a profit from it, while people like you gate keep the tables for hours on end and spend as little as they feel they can get away with.

You are looking at this as 'spending £10 a day on coffee is a lot, and if they keep putting up their prices I am going to have to remove my custom.' But it's not actually the coffee you are there for, is it? It's the table and chair, the electricity and the warmth. The coffee is a bonus and I bet you only buy a second one once you feel you might have taken the piss a bit with the length of time you've sat there with your first. You don't really want or need the coffee but you want to sit for another two hours.

I'd suggest you don't go there to 'support' local businesses, you go there because it's the cheapest option for you that gets you out of the house and means you don't have to use your own heating and electric. If £10 a day is a lot for you to spend in order to get your job done then your freelance gig clearly isn't a viable business and you should look at getting a different job that doesn't rely on exploiting another small business in order for you to stay afloat. If you don't want to stay at home then rentable hot desks are available.

The Taylor's spice range is very good. Wouldn't waste my meagre resources on take away.

A lot of people see nothing wrong with a £5 coffee a day but will wince at the price of say a holiday.

I enjoy a Greggs chicken baguette and often think oooo I could just go get one but then I’m like no I can make a sandwich for less, take aways the same ooo I Fancy a dirty burger and kebab but that’s totting upto £30 plus. So I’ll send Dh to farm foods to grab some kebab meat, fries and mozzarella sticks, get the burgers out the freezer as we order them from the butcher and my fake away is way under that price and served more than one meal and if we are completely honest large portion too 😅

There does hit a point where places have to put their prices up but that also pushes away more customers and it’s that circle that prices go up again and loose more customers before they just have to close.

We have stopped going to the local curry place because again portions getting smaller, quality down yet price up. Might as well just buy some pataks pots if I want a lazy curry rather than a from scratch one.

I think holidays will become a distant memory for many people. Thousands and thousands of pounds. But then again we have the "Gail's mentality"
Its a mystery really.

This is part of the problem. People just suck it up and accept these ludicrous prices and then it becomes the norm. If people are stupid enough to pay them, they won’t ever go down and everyone ends up a little bit poorer. If people vote with their wallet and stop buying over priced items, or go elsewhere, they will soon lower them.

It’s ok to shrug your shoulders and say it’s ok but for a lot of people it’s made a huge difference. Lots of families can’t afford the occasional meal out as a treat anymore.

We never go on holiday because we can’t afford to anymore for example. And yet lots of their friends have got to experience trips during school holidays in places we could only dream of taking them to. Things are on a downward spiral in the uk. The average age of a first time buyer in the uk is now 33. Who knows if children will be able to enjoy the security of home ownership in 20 years time.

It sounds reasonable to me for a cafe, but it should be high quality.

I think £12.60 is reasonable , we had a flat white , basic hot chocolate and 2 cinammon buns in the John Lewis cafe recently and it came to £15 something - it was actually free with my JL card so I didn’t have pay .