What will happen to restaurants / cafes

[LaCouleurDeMonCiel]

Pre Covid / COL increase we would eat out as a family 1-2 a week. Eating out would often be spontaneous, places like Bills, Rosas Thai, pizzeria, etc. when we passed one while shopping or because we didn’t fancy cooking.

Now we have stopped the spontaneous meals because the prices are ridiculous. We still go out when we want to go to a specific restaurant or celebrate something but we don’t visit the casual low/mid range places because £100+ is too expensive for a quick ‘not that special’ meal.

Are we the only ones?
Will we see a change in the type of restaurants on the high streets? High end restaurants + cheap fast food ones but nothing in between?

I’m in California. For a simple, 2-course Chinese takeaway today it was almost $50 for two of us.
I treated - that’s it for me for March. I’ve got rent & debt & insurance & food & & supplies & medicine & there’s always something unexpected.
A McDonald’s Big Mac meal is over $16. KFC is ridiculous. They’re ALL ridiculous.
You want to go out for a meal and enjoy it but the cost just ruins it.
And now, the California legislature has raised the minimum wage to $20/hour which I’m wholly in support of, but the corporations will all raise their prices to make up for it.
Because it isn’t inflation. It isn’t because they can’t afford to operate. And shrinkflation, what’s that?
It’s CORPORATE GREED.

But also remember those places that you consider not that special will be considered good by others - either a different age demographic (Eg teenagers) or socioeconomic profile - Eg people who could never afford the fancier places that you do continue to go to, the ones you consider not so good maybe what they can afford as a special occasion place to them.

A lot of people just go to Wetherspoons, I would rather go there than Nando's

I meet up with a local friend regularly for lunch out but having been invariably disappointed/ripped off I now do us lunch at my home instead

I paid £9 the other day for a dried up hardly any filling jacket potato in what used to be a fantastic independent garden centre cafe that was then taken over by a big chain. Won’t use the cafe again.

I rarely eat out now used to a lot. I rarely buy takeaways either, party because I am on a diet but mainly price. When we do go out I’ll still go to a cheaper chain to save money. I used to love miller and carter but there is no way i would eat there now with their prices.

Yes Wetherspoons isn't gourmet food, but it's perfectly acceptable and genuinely cheap. Also as you can order on the app it's good to go to as a group and not get into this awkward routine of having to offer to pay for someone else's meal or appear cheap.

In years gone by DH and I would never have gone there, but ended up going for a drink before a meal somewhere else as it meant a pint and a cocktail came in around £10 rather than £20.

I read recently that high end confectionary has outperformed a lot of other sectors in this cost of living crisis, and the explanation was that people still want a treat, so look at other ways to get an affordable one. Perhaps people that would otherwise have had a takeaway or gone out to a restaurant will now cook at home but buy a nice box of chocs or sweets to have in front of the tv as it costs less?
I think that effect is everywhere, people that can’t afford holidays abroad will look to have a night or two away in the uk instead for example or even staycation, and as part of that may well eat out at restaurants. So whilst everything is shifting around I think there is still the momentum to eat out, just in a different way from before.

I disagree. We live in a working class area and pubs/cafes/restaurants are full every time I go past whether day or night. Some people will give up other things before their food & drink and some people just aren't affected by the CoL like others.

We never discuss the CoL between my friends and still meet for coffee/drinks as we always have and clearly plenty still do.

I always as for no ice too, not paying for half a pint of ice

I've worked in a number of successful independents, and none of the owners are in it for the money. Not that there is a problem with earning good money. Most of them work long hours, have a lot of pressure, but do it because they love it.

For me, using an independent generally means better quality - I avoid those I don't like - and better quality. I know most genuinely care about what they're serving and how. Ot also means the money remains in the local economy, rather than being sent to a central factory, marketing agent, share holders. If we only ever use chains the rich really do get richer, the wealth is funnelled up and most importantly we lose the diversity of our high street.
Yes, chains have their place, I just think its important to think about how we spend our hard earned cash, and to me, supporting independents when I can is something I'm very passionate about.

We have definitely stopped eating out as much, I was fed up paying decent money for mediocre food that i could have made at home. I often meet friends for breakfast or lunch, although lunch isn't much cheaper if any than dinner but when only paying for myself it doesn't seem as bad. My mother likes going out for lunch and will usually foot the bill. I find it ridiculous that a starter or dessert are almost £7 each. Last time i had dessert at our lovely local golf range it was £6.50 and it was a tiny slither, half of what would be a normal portion, having been in recently it is now £7. So even if i really fancied it I couldn’t justify that price. A nice breakfast there using good quality ingredients with tea/toast included is £10 which i dont mind at all. It is always extremely busy at lunch. I am also a spoons fan, a main meal and a drink for under £10 is value for money, its not gourmet food, but the chicken basket is nice and filling and i do enjoy their cookie dough pudding, which i dont mind paying the £6.50 for as overall the meal isnt too expensive. I prefer there for drinks rather than paying £8 for a gin it £5. I wont even order a cocktail when out as refuse to pay at least £10 for a few sips. I much prefer to make my own, not that i consume much alcohol.

I live in a seaside city and there is a big outlet shopping place, with loads of bars and restaurants by the water. We walked past about 6.30 last Friday and the place was dead. I know it's still not sunny and it was early but in the old days it would have been full of people popping out for after work drinks and socialising. We always used to stop for a couple of drinks after we'd been for a walk along the sea front but now it's almost £7 for a pint of beer we can't be arsed with it. We will pick up a crate of beer and a bottle of wine to drink in the kitchen instead. If we do go out now we will only have one or two drinks and then home as the prices have been getting too high to justify any longer.

We eat out about once a week. Much more than previously, simply because our children have left home so it’s just the two of us, and we have more disposable income.
we go to local pubs, good food, or maybe Turkish or Vietnamese, independent, or sometimes Bills or similar.
places seem full round here.

I was in a city centre TGI's for family lunch on a Saturday very recently. Only two other families were in this huge place. Even with the free kids main meal offer it was extortionate: 2 mains, 3 soft drinks and tip came to £70. It won't be something we'll be doing again in a hurry.

In a nearby large gallery cafe midweek, you can't get a seat so I do think families are cutting back while an older clientele still enjoys going out.

I would rather go to the West End or to a gig than eat out. No longer good value.

We shop around for deals. A pub reasonably local to us does a choice of 10 mains for £12 two evenings a week. The choice is good and the food is pretty decent pub grub.

A new restaurant opened in my town just before Christmas and is always busy.. I still go out to a similar level as pre covid. It’s lunchtime mainly purely because it’s winter and I CBA to go out winter nightime that often.

I find Franco Manca very delicious and cheap for our family, they also offer colouring sheets and crayons for our toddlers.

I do think there are still lots of people who still have the money for this stuff and will continue to eat out. When I've eaten out at expensive places, dh and I have been the youngest people in the restaurant and we are 50! So I guess the ones with money are older people whose mortgages are paid off and whose kids are fully independent financially.

For me, the cost is marring the enjoyment and I need some work doing on the house, so I won't be going anywhere that's expensive for a long time.

'obsession' is a weird word. 'preference' perhaps?

There's a difference between being in business to support yourself/family and perhaps hopefully make a bit extra, and being in business to generate fat dividends for shareholders.

In my neighbourhood the indie places support each other in that, for example, the juice bar buys from a local fruit and veg wholesaler; one of the cafes gets its veg/eggs/preserves etc from the (also indie) greengrocer/deli next door; one of the cafes gets bread and pastries from a bakery down the road (also small and indie).

Many of the indie cafes also do things like letting off people who are short of cash for their drinks, or giving people who are homeless free coffee and letting them sit in the warm for a few hours.
One cafe has recently introduced a menu with a selection of their brunch dishes (eggs and flatbread; fruit/granola/yoghurt etc) all priced at a fiver. They've also just started running a soup kitchen from the premises one evening a week.

Several of them also display and sell artwork, greetings cards etc by local artists.

I mean, I love a chain too – I use my local Pret a fair bit, and I enjoy Gails when I'm out and about – but don't tell me that local indie places don't contribute any more than they do.

In London I've noticed the prices has obviously gone up, but way more small/independent restaurants offering good value fixed price lunch menus (£25-35 for three courses). I hope they're getting enough people in to survive.

Recently been to Quality Wines, Noble Rot, Carousel, and Leroy - all had really good fixed price lunches - much better than the big chains.

We eat out a fair bit, but we're late fifties and mortgage free. When we were young we never ever ate out, didn't have the money and mortgage rates were very high, and childcare extortion (like now). I have no idea if older people ate out a lot then, I had no experience of them other than my parents, who didn't.

Some places may shut down, the amount of eating out places may readjust to how they were 30 years ago, who knows?

Just an observation in my very small, boring, West Yorkshire town, there are new places opening up regularly. We often comment how there can be so many hairdressers and eating/drinking places in one town.

I suspect money laundering.

We don't eat out much. When we do it's because the food and presentation are better than we can do at home, or because we are away from home.

Yes, with chains you 'know what you're going to get' and in nearly all cases, it's mass produced factory food.

If I wanted to eat that sort of food, which is rare, and I didn't want to cook, I'd buy it for a fraction of the price from M&S. I wouldn't pay restaurant prices for someone to heat up a ready meal for me.

Granted you have to do some research, but choose wisely and independents serve freshly cooked food, where you're genuinely paying for something that's not easy to produce to the same standard at home. It doesn't have to be expensive either. The places we eat out most are Indian street food restaurants/bars or anywhere that does good, fresh wood fired pizza.

During the 2008 financial crisis, I asked our local curry house how he was coping. he told me that he was doing okay, but what he'd noticed was that the clientele had changed. So he was getting people coming in who usually, he wouldn't and who he thought would previously have gone to posher/more expensive restaurants. And he said a lot of his regular customers had swapped to takeaways where it's cheaper as they're not buying booze etc. So his overall business wasn't too badly affected, but he could see the impact of the financial crisis by who was using his services, and how that had changed.

I think that's true today as well. I never ordered take out. Now, a treat for us is takeout rather than going out because agree with OP - a meal out for the whole family is just too expensive and there are always extras. But we can stretch to a round of take out burgers, delivered to home with our own drinks, no extras etc.