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?

We only choose to go to a few select places now that we know we enjoy and don’t bother with the rest. Even a McDonald’s now I would consider expensive for a family. We got two mcflurrys as a treat while walking around the shops yesterday and it came to over £5.

I agree. Certainly where we lived, the average family with good household income wasn’t going out for meals on a regular basis. It was a treat every few months or so.

I think you are paying for the rather bad experience.

My pet peeve is the tables stacked practically on top of each other, I get why they do it but it makes dining out so unpleasant. We stick to a reliable handful of places with good food and reasonable layouts, that aren't any more expensive (I do a lot of research to find them!)

Restaurants are in a tough spot but they will end up pricing themselves into closure.

I’d be delighted if my share of a dinner out was only £25. It’s pretty much always at least £50. Just a glass of wine is like £12.

I think it’s just going back to how it was a generation ago. I grew up in a single income home in the 80s and we never went out to eat. We’d get pizza now and again and sometimes my grandparents would take me out but it was a huge treat.

We eat out less and less now, often the food and/or service just isn't very good and you walk away feeling ripped off.

We've started making more exciting stuff at home now to fill the gap, we made a Gok Wan plum sauce last night with fresh plums and it was so good. Just had it with chicken thighs and stir fry veggies but it was a fresher, better quality meal then you'd get at most restaurants.

It isn’t just NIC though. It’s also the increase in the living wage, as well as huge hikes in business rates.

With employer’s NIC, it’s gone from 13.8% to 15%. Whilst it might look like “only 1.2%”, that’s not reflective of the overall picture. It means a business’s NIC bill has increased by almost 9%.

The living wage for over 21s has increased by almost 7%.

The business rates situation is even worse, with rates more than doubling.

As well as the direct effect that those 3 things are having, the hospitality sector is also facing increased cost of supplies. Their suppliers will also be facing those increased taxes, and are passing those increases on.

I think a lot of people (including the government) are underestimating the knock on effects of these issues.

I don't know if it's because I'm old and my hearing isn't the best but I can't cope with the babble of noise in these places

I think perhaps your choice of venue influences how you feel about it.

We have a local independent Italian restaurant with very similar prices for the fancier pizza and pasta, early £29's for chicken or fish mains and, fair enough, £30 for a steak. We always come away feeling like we've been well fed and well looked after. £10 a glass for a basic Pinot is more painful but I dont begrudge the food prices.

DD is 6 and she always get an adult margherita pizza as it's only a few £ more than a kids one and she then delights in taking it in her packed lunch for a couple of days!

We can spend a similar amount in our local Indian/Nepalese restaurants.

Seek out your local independents and you'll get a much better experience for similar or barely slightly more money.

I took the kids out for lunch to a local Italian. We had 4 main courses, 2 sides, 4 desserts, 2 glasses of wine, 2 soft drinks and 2 coffees - the bill came to £70, which I thought was really good value for money. It’s an owner run restaurant in a local community, the food is good and the menu small. I refuse to use chain places now because the quality is poor while the prices are ever increasing. A good local restaurant is worth its weight in gold,

last week i had the unfortunate time to visit a holiday park in the uk where a simple jacket potato with cheese was £11.68 without a drink ..nope!

Their overheads are enormous

Restaurants generally operate on a very low profit margin- why the majority fail in their first year. Food ingredients is probably only a relatively small portion of the cost.,Overheads are huge. Staff etc.
Mind you my son and I went out for a lovely birthday meal the other night. Three starters, two mains, one dessert, one cocktail, a beer. It was delicious, the hostess warm and friendly and they gave my son a free limoncello with a candle. With tip it was just over £100. Well worth it.

I often wonder how some are still trading. Looking at you Pizza Hut

Centre Parcs is the worst. The food quality is even worse than high street even though some of the restaurants are from the same chain.

I agree with PP's that independents are often much better then the chains, I went to Ask Italian not long ago and the food was so bad as to be almost inedible. If I eat out now i tend to go to independent cafes that use fresh ingredients, we have a couple of good ones around here.

That’s more the kind of price and experience i’d find reasonable. Just looking at Prezzo prices for that quantity of food, the cheapest items on their menu are:
Burger £13.25 (so £53 for 4)
2 sides for £8 offer
Ice cream £5.75 (so £23 for 4)
Americano £3.25 (£6.50 for 2)
Pepsi £3.75 (£7.50 for 2)

So in total £98 for the cheapest possible things on the menu.

I worked in a restaurant in the very early 2000s where we did a fajita special for 12.95, that was 25 years ago so just under £20 for a main is probably about right. I was paid 4.75 an hour then.

I've been to pizza express twice this year. Both times I had some sort of voucher. The first time it seemed very short staffed I think there was only 2 waiting staff and the guy took half an hour to even come over and ask if we wanted drinks. (The restaurant was not packed) The second time the person took 40 minutes to bring the bill after asking for it! I think the prices in there are actually inflated because most people have a deal or offer, so I imagine very few people pay the original price, and the offer price didnt feel especially cheap (In the same way that probably no one ever pays "full price" for a sofa in DFS)

Oh for goodness sake, the cost of the ingredients is the smallest part of the whole thing! Minimum wage has gone up, plus NICs. Not to mention rent, business rates, utilities, waste disposal, building maintenance, cleaning, recruitment, promotion, business services and dealing with customers who flit without paying. Oh, and the whole point is to try to make a profit! OP, you clearly know nothing about running a business.

Oh god I took the kids to Pizza Hut a while ago, little change from £100 for seriously rubbish pizza and a very tired salad bar. Never, ever again.

Absolutely chain prices are terrible, and our food was much nicer than any of the chain Italian offerings.

Thanks for the summation of my character. Helpful.

I know that key to running a successful business is not charging so much that your customers can’t afford your product.

Yes OP it's more expensive now and is becoming the preserve of higher earners again,

Problem is all the businesses that rely on people spending money on food & drink etc