£100 for a casual lunch out for 4 is too much

Totally agree. We used to be able to eat out once a week no problem but between cost of living, DS now eating adult meals, and reduced income due to ill health, it's now a rare treat.

Parents and sister (no dependants) are always asking to meet for a meal out, and we usually have to decline, reminding them that it's just too expensive for 4 of us.

Exactly!

It is soo much cheaper to buy the most expensive M&S or Waitrose food, even ready made Sushi or easy to try fillet steaks with a bottle of wine!

At these ridiculous restaurant prices, it’s just not worth it anymore imo.

.I don't know if it should be a luxury. Lots of research about how experiences are better for our wellbeing than buying stuff

But agree it used yobe an occasional treat. As a child, I remember going out for birthday meals and when my grandparents visited, but not eating out for the sake of it. And when we did go out, we were only allowed to drink water

I went to Devon this weekend and paid £21 for a crab sandwich with crisps and salad, and a coffee.

It was delicious and I enjoyed it, but I regard going out to eat anywhere as a treat these days. It's just how things are now. Having said that, the cafe was very crowded.

In the six week school holidays, in England, I've eaten out twice - one crab sandwich, and a salad & a glass of wine one evening in a pub.

I doubt I'll eat out again until Christmas.

Yes, but that’s the “insane profits” thing, it’s over and above the usual profit element.

The 30/70 is for restaurants with staff, rent and all the other associated costs of a bricks-and-mortar business. It doesn’t explain why places are serving dishes where the ingredients are way below 30% of the menu price. Of course, a lot of places get their food from the likes of Brakes and just heat it up, and I suspect that’s where a lot of the additional cost comes in. But then they’re saving on paying for experienced cooking staff…

While on holiday in France I noticed meals out were cheaper and also seemed better quality. Cooked from scratch, real flavour.

In a lot of places in UK it feels like food has been assembled from lots of pre bought in stuff. Pasta is rarely home made even in fancy places. The exceptions are a few local non-chain places run by people with genuine cooking talent who are experts in their cooking styles.

Pizza Express often do good discounts if you have the app (like 2 main courses for price of 1)

I had a 3 course pub Sunday lunch in Malta for €15 yesterday. All home cooked. Soup and bread, roast beef main course with vegetables and Yorkshire pudding and apple pie and ice cream. It would have cost a lot more at home.

Pizza Wednesday at Wetherspoons - had a lovely Ham & Mushroom pizza with aLimonxello Spritz included (other drink options were available) for £8:49, was lovely

You’re not unreasonable no - but it’s just the inflationary pressures added by supply chain (including wages/ fuel), energy on sites (more than trebled and was likely already thousands per month before), then wages.

wages have a huge impact, and despite where prices you’re seeing, these chains are also barely making any more - most verging on bankruptacy.

I need my own pizza. I’m severely allergic to tomato so no sauce or anything near it, and cut with different knives etc. Other people won’t eat my pizza because it tastes “weird”.

Yep! It’s a long running joke amongst friends I should have shares in Wetherspoons I’m in there so often, but it’s so cheap!

Not if like me a person eats out three or four times a week, I’d be the size of a house if every meal out was a full blow out.

So what was any point in anything you said then? We got a detailed breakdown of how much you eat. Why is £100 for dinner fine but £100 for lunch not? It doesn’t make sense. Eating out is expensive. You are weirdly stuck on how the time of day doesn’t change the price but does change the expense.

Civil servants are not being disrespected by their title, servant is not a dirty word. You are being served by / receiving a service from fellow humans.

My point stands - you’re paying for convenience, whether that’s a bus ride rather than walking, or a meal you don’t have to prepare and serve yourself.

Unwillingness to pay a fair price for the labour of others, or using businesses that don’t take good care of their workforce is actually disrespectful, and a real world problem.

You’re not wrong. I was thinking the same thing myself. We (2 adults one child) went out for a casual lunch today also. We had a bottle of water, one starter to share, 3 x mains, one of which was from the child’s menu. One coffee and 2x glasses of champagne. I assumed the bill would come to €200 ish due to the 2 glass of fizz. No. €250. Was surprised. This wasn’t a particularly upmarket sort of place.

Are you dead from the neck up?

I shall make it easy for you.

What the OP ordered was, to me, the main meal in a day. So as the main meal in a day £100 was fine. It doesnt matter whether its consumed at 8am 1pm or 8pm.

Got it now?

I’m working class but doing quite well for myself now in my 50’s having grown up where eating out was a once a year treat for mothers days and on a ruby/golden wedding anniversary of one of my older relatives !

The idea of going out with my adult kids and grandkids for food and not having a starter, a main, sides and a pudding with whatever anyone fancies to drink is absurd.
if it had to be limited to a cheap main and tap water - still rocking in at a cost where I could cook steak or seafood indoors instead I can’t see the point.

An average teen/man would be starving after a pizza express pizza - let alone a half portion! Christ for the cost alone they could have a feast indoors.

When The kids were little and we were skint the idea of going for a meal where we would be skimping on half portions and drinking bloody tap water was totally off the table , where’s the fun in that - some didn’t! Got pizzas in instead

Better to save up the tight arse half meal experiences for a full on blow out surely !

One wonders how many people complaining voted for Brexit or were in favour of lockdown. Because people were warned those two policies would have a detrimental effect on the economy and cause this. Prices of restaurants have probably doubled since 2019

Its very sad as it seems eating out is now becoming so expensive that it’s a rare treat, much like back in the 70s or so.

Also the chains like pizza express, Wagamama etc with the head chef Mike O’wave are very poor value at £100 or so for a mediocre meal. It’s actually far better to go somewhere nicer with say a £200 bill but half as often

One self employed man in his van with very limited overheads is a little different to a sit down restuarant with multiple staff on the pay roll don't you think?

50% of all job losses in the hospitality sector since recent increases in NI contributions and rises in the minimum wage does not suggest it is price gouging.

It suggests thats how much it bloody costs now.

A friend runs a small bar - four employees. He was saying that in the past year, staffing costs have gone up £2000 PER MONTH. Thats just staffing. All his costs have also gone up massively, because all his supplier have similar cost rises.

Yep, very reasonable prices at Spoons.

The cutlery at Nando’s is always manky as well

I’ve also noticed this. Am in London and have been for most of my life - eating out is FAR more expensive now and it’s not just because I have less disposable income now I have teenage kids.

It’s simply that prices have rocketed (as well as monthly bills) and salaries haven’t kept pace at all. DH and I have an ok income between us but one or two meals out can be the difference between nudging into the red each month - whereas we used to eat out about once a week.

I find it pretty depressing tbh, particularly when pizza express/wagamama chain places used to be good value. We try to avoid going out for meals now unless it’s somewhere ‘great’ (think high end gastro pub type places rather than the ritz 😂) for a special occasion.

I’m 54 and until I was a teenager it was just awful formal hotel dining rooms for special occasions. Terrible atmosphere, terrible food, everyone acting like it was a really big deal. Because it was.

I don’t think eating out at a pizza place a couple of times a month should be a luxury for middle class families.