Restaurant prices are just ludicrous

[Mummyhokey]

I know that this is hardly breaking news, but seriously what the actual fuck is going on with prices in restaurants?

Went out to a High Street chain restaurant last night for DD’s birthday. So whilst the food was cooked fresh on site there was absolutely no local chef input into the menu etc. There were also only two waiting staff working a busy place so the service was slow even though they were doing their best.

The cost of the meals was, in my opinion, completely unrealistic in terms of what we were getting. Little change from £20 for a basic burger or chicken dish. Another fiver for a side order. So for the four of us, £100 gets us one course each. Drinks on top, £3.95 for a glass of watered down Diet Coke. Twice that for a beer. £6 for a slice of cake for dessert.

This seems typical now for restaurants. It’s just totally unaffordable for most families to do this more than very occasionally, surely? I get that utilities and wages have gone up, as have the cost of ingredients. But have they gone up by that much? The increases seem outrageous. That slice of cake works out at about £50 for the entire cake. I could buy the ingredients for that burger for well under a fiver.

And then the 12.5% optional service charge added to the bill so that the options are ‘Pay it’ or ‘Ask for it to be removed and feel like a dick for doing so’.

No offence to hospitality business owners or the people working in them, but this just can’t be sustainable surely?

I don’t mind paying restaurant prices if the quality is there

a good but not great Manchester restaurant was trying to charge me only £5 less for scallops that weren’t fresh and what was being charged in Hells Kitchen for an experience. I'd also get charged £1.50 for extras

2-3 years ago I would eat out once a month with friends, and expect to pay £25-30 with a drink.
Now it would easily be £35-£40++, so I have stopped.
When I was a child we would eat out maybe once a year, it would be a big thing, restaurant with table cloth, nice music, good food, proper discreet and helpful but unobtrusive service etc.

I think the days of eating out as part of a very regular activity are coming to an end.
Ah well, it was nice while it lasted.

My parents retired from pubs in covid and it was tough then
I could have cried for them TBH, 37 years in pubs and it ended with them sat in the closed pub alone when it should have been a giant party
the electricity bill was crippling, my dad says he wouldn’t advise anyone to go into it now

This is one of the big issues IMO, leaving aside NI/NMW, we had a huge spike in energy prices and electricity costs because of the Ukraine war, but even though energy prices on the global markets have gone down again, in the U.K. we are still paying huge prices for energy (where other countries aren’t). My energy bill is still exactly the same as it was during the energy price spike crisis — it’s not reduced at all but wholesale energy costs actually have done!

Restaurants might not be making much of any profit, but energy companies are raking it in — at a time when service sector businesses are facing huge labour cost increases.

I’m in Australia and when we were back in the U.K. we were amazed at how expensive eating out was, even at places we thought of as fairly cheap and cheerful like pizza express and the like.
Over here we would normally pay around $25-40 for a main dish which is about £12-20. In my mind this is what feels reasonable for a main course - for the years I lived in the U.K. and ate out regularly around £15-25 for a main course seemed reasonable.
I think everyone on this thread is correct - eating out will revert to special occasions only, like it was in the 80s when I was growing up.

And that doesn’t include the two glasses of wine mentioned either by @Jellycatspyjamas

I am absolutely aghast by the price of a Caesar salad these days, £15-£20, and sometimes without the chicken?! Is it gold plated? Sorry but it’s a couple of bits of lettuce! No I’ve been out too often recently and left feeling well and truly ripped off, would rather stay in with friends these days.

Obviously never owned a Restaurant before!

It always seems to be somehow taboo to mention it, but service ( staffing levels and professionalism) also declined since Brexit.
Rising costs of utilities, ingredients, NI, and the effects of the pandemic have meant that the Brexit impact has been conveniently glossed over or receded in memory

We rarely eat out as a family nowadays. Cannot justify the prices for the experience. We used to eat out 3 or 4 times a month. Doubt we do that in a year now. Even takeaways are infrequent. With the cost of living it's just not viable. Sadly, places will cost and jobs will be lost

Yes, you'd obviously spend less on your own weekly shop, but as pointed out in a lot of the replies, in a restaurant you are not paying just for the food items. You are paying for the running of the business, too: building rent, rates, water, gas, electricity, staff wages, national insurance, staff pension costs, public liability insurance....I could probably think of a lot more.. All these must be paid by the customer - it's a business.

Prices are up but £12-20 is about what I pay for a main here in the UK too, though obviously you can pay more. It varies by area I imagine. Though I paid only £10 for a main and (non alcoholic) drink the other week but that was a chain(Las Iguanas).

I live in fear of our local Indian restaurant shutting down. One night a week they do a “buffet” where you can order as much as you like from a limited menu for £18 each. They don’t have a liquor licence either, so it’s BYOB with no corkage charge.

The food is fantastic and it’s always absolutely packed. It’s the only place we ever eat out now, as the quality and value has spoilt us for anywhere else.

Anywhere that gives value will last. Like the place we were in with the early bird where it was super busy. People just cant afford it and pushing people to the absolute max on their bill will destroy any business. Every where new coffee hatchs/ trucks now popping up. I have my stanley aerolight and I just will not buy any more when traveling . Coffee is gone crazy here in ireland just far far too much now.

As a person who runs a small business (not in food) and has a DH who manages one (element of food included), yes, prices have gone up that much. Wages, increased NI contributions, utilities, food and drink cost are escalating and those costs have to passed to the end user.

This is where we all stop being able to get take aways/eat out once a week for granted and go back to the old days of seeing it as a treat I am afraid and only the fittest suppliers will survive.

Anywhere that gives value will last.

I agree, but value is subjective. In the city I live in and the other cities I visit, coffee shops are always busy but there’s plenty of people who would never or only very occasionally pay upwards of £3.30 for a coffee. Likewise some high end restaurants are doing really well and going off on a bit of a tangent now, as someone else said on here, going to see a show in the west end remains a popular activity despite sky high ticket prices - the people paying £200 a ticket won’t all be rich.

@anon666

I'm sick to the back teeth of it and I now frequent independents only. I'm sick of feeding the beast of globalisation, and instead I seek to support small traders and businesses in my local community.

I fully agree. It's all gone too far and just money grabbing by hedge funds and venture capitalists. Small shops, pubs, have already gone, now its restaurants, but also vets, opticians, dentists - the "money men" are everywhere screwing normal people.

You’ve got a point. The expression ‘cheap as chips’ isn’t very applicable to today’s prices!

The figures I posted showed that being a shop is challenging long before you look at labour.

Alongside the cost of everything going up - minimum wage, petrol, food, rent, Nd other overheads, this was inevitable. Yes, not something we can justify when we've seen the cost of living become untenable.

We go out rarely, and usually because it's a treat from grandparents.

A little bête noir of mine is the something-on-a-bun with chips and salad for anything between £15-18.
If you deconstruct the meal it’s bread, one potato, a couple of lettuce leaves, half a tomato, 2 slices of cucumber. Finally, the meat or chicken which is breadcrumbed or processed.
I never order those now. Better to pay a little more and choose a full meal.

We eat out very rarely because it’s just so pricey ,our treat is coffee and cake and I cook at home .
When we do eat out we often use vouchers , Groupon (which sometimes restricts time and day of booking)
Occasionally use Tesco Clubcard vouchers to head to the likes of Pizza Express which I feel is really overpriced if you don’t have a voucher .
I like an independent pizza restaurant not too far from us as I feel it’s good food and good value .
Some Japanese and Korean cafes and restaurants near the university ( city near us ) are very good value and excellent food

nmw and ni costs on top of the extra 25/30% we are all paying for everything.

As I have said, you are holed before the waterline long before you even contemplate hiring. And the fetish with wages is starting to suggest an agenda here.

Bottom line is it's not the staffing that makes the venture hard to profit from. Even if the labour was free, you'd till fail.

@Clafoutie interesting how so ?

Before Brexit you rarely came across professional waiting staff like you do In the USA where they rely on tips or some parts of Italy or France

It's just not a thing here for some bizzare reason