Would you pay £11 for a baked potato in a cafe?

[NeverAlways]

I went to a garden centre today and teen dc wanted a drink and a lunch/snack. There wasn’t much choice on the menu at the cafe apart from toasted sandwiches and cakes so dc chose a baked potato with beans which was £11. I nearly fell over. They don’t even particularly like baked potatoes. I said, No sorry I’m not paying that for a potato. I’ve got a four pack of Tesco baking potatoes at home that cost 79p. We left the cafe and went somewhere else where a proper meal was £13.

Anyway am I behind the times with prices or does that seem a lot to you?

The trick is to work out where the ball will settle in the curve.

There will always be a commercially related pressure for direct communication. When I home brewed it was invaluable to go to a physical shop and handle and see equipment and get expert advice from the proprietor (who was also a hobbiest). If that can be dropped into a space, it could share the overheads and potentially act as a draw into that space for other reasons.

Congratulations, you have just (re) invented the market square.

The potato vans on social media have sky rocketed the popularity of them but no. I wouldn’t pay that!

For that money it would have to be a filling with a difference and a nice salad with it.

Seems a bit more reasonable but they were priced at £5 a year or two ago.

At festivals it’s £15 for a jacket spud.

I can never chance a jacket spud - tok high a risk of it arriving microwaved and with melted cheese. Yuk.

I would be annoyed if it didn’t come with melted cheese 😳😂

Totally agree, melted cheese is a risk I'm not prepared to take. Got to be cold cheese.

Absolutely not. I can’t get over the cost of eating out in some places these days, and garden centres seem to be the worst offenders.
I ordered two coffees and two small cakes the other day without looking at prices and it was £17 🤦‍♀️
A cafe local to us charges £12.95 for a sandwich, and it just comes with a handful of crisps and a bit of side salad (I’d forgive them if it came with some chips which wouldn’t actually cost them much!)

I’d be ok if it had a fancy topping but no way for a few spoons of catering beans !

baked potatoes are £3.50, if you want a couple of fillings and a side salad it's still under £6.00.

We're in south wales did a long country walk to a cafe next to a lake - unfortunately canal and lake next to is dry so no pretty lake but muddy smelly dried pond.

We spent £35 - on cans of pop, cake each and small sausage roll for 4- absolutely lovely food but not cheap.

Still cheaper than long walk to pub and lunch were one meal and round of drinks is now over a hundred for us - food is really good but much rarer we do it - though pub and cafe were still relatively busy.

Could anyone suggest a simple yet very tasty recipe for making jacket potatoes with tuna?
Do you put mayonnaise in the mix?
I've never made ( nor eaten one) but I would like to make it as a simple family meal, they sound good!

I just took a look online at our nearest garden centre and they are £11.

garden centres always charge a lot. But I don’t think it’s way out. I guess it depends on where you live but with business rates and leases I can’t see how a cafe would make any money if they were any less.

it’s still the kitchen needed. And staffing and clearing up and the opportunity costs of that table being used.

it is pointless how much you could buy a potato for in a supermarket because that’s the price of the raw ingredients. It’s like saying you wouldn’t pay a taxi much to take you from A-B because you could walk it yourself in an hour. Or you wouldn’t pay a gardener much because you could do it yourself 🫤

£11? I fully expect it to be topped with sour cream and (knockoff) caviar.

Just drain tuna (not the one in oil. One in spring water or brine). Squeeze out as much liquid as you can.

add to bowl with a can of sweetcorn. I use one small tin of sweetcorn to 2-3 tins of tuna.
blob in a couple of tablespoons of mayo and mix. Add as much or little mayo as you want to get the texture you want. I don’t like too much. Other like loads. I use hellmans.

I probably would as until everyone here said what they would pay, I didn’t think it’s that bad. I always assume if I’m going out for lunch it’s going to be £10-£15 per person. But I guess I’d look at what the cost of the other meals are and they would also be exponentially higher and that might be what swayed it. I’m guessing a burger would be more than £15 quid, which would make me think twice.

I'd skip the sweetcorn but add black pepper and capers. Perhaps also cottage cheese and/or butter on the potato.

But I wouldn't call it a recipe as such, just assembly of ingredients, according to preference.

Which brings us back to my previous point about it not being worth paying someone else commercial rates to do it for you.

Agree with using the empty properties as flats - with one condition - if you buy or rent a town or city centre property then you have no right to complain about the noise at night time coming from the pubs, restaurants and clubs.

It's expensive. But garden centre cafes usually are.

Jacket potatoes have always seemed pricey to me in cafes when when they're £5.95!

The other thing to have become crazy expensive is toasties. Stopped at a cafe near my dad's house and they were charging £12 for a toastie.

Plus often the cheese isn't all molten and crispy round the edges - it's a bit soft and sweaty and the toast is soggy and falls apart.

No. I would not pay more than around £7.

I ate out with some family at a garden centre a while ago - they each had cake but I wanted something hot and of the stuff they had on the menu, I only really fancied a jacket potatoes with cheese. It was about the same price as the OP's, like £11 or thereabouts.

Was very disappointed with what arrived (we had waited ages to actually get a staff member to come over to take our order and then ages again for the food to arrive) - a tiny jacket potato, obviously microwaved, not really cooked completely all the way through, no butter, small amount of cheese on top and loads of leafy salad bits (which I don't like), felt about as hungry as I was before I had the jacket by the end of it.

Wouldn't mind paying those prices if what you get is actually decent but it does seem to be taking the micky a bit when you charge such prices but end up with something really substandard for that kind of price and with terrible service.

I might pay it for a planned lunch ,somewhere nice to spend time as part of a trip out . I'd be loath to if I'd gone to the garden centre for plants and someone couldn't wait to get home for lunch and wanted to grab something to fill them up until they got home.

The only way it will stop costing £11 is if nobody will buy it for that price. So you helped them do some price discovery.

The end point of that is going out of business.

In a cost of living crisis, the distinction between price and value is magnified, if not explained ....