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 regularly eat at Pizza Hut and find that the quality of the food varies from day to day.
Sometimes as you described the buffet can be awful, pizzas with hardly any toppings, or limited choices.
I took my grandaughter there today and the food was delicious. Lots of choice on the buffet and it was hot, fresh and tasty. The pizzas had lots of toppings and plenty of choice.
It was only £1 for my grandaughter too with a drink and ice cream.

I eat out several times a week, but I am more mindful now of where I eat due to not being willing to pay huge prices for very mediocre food.

In my opinion there’s far too many mediocre food restaurants these days, going out to eat used to be a special treat when I was growing up now people eat out every week sometimes several times a week same with takeaways. The eating culture in the uk has changed so much in the last 30 years, I’m still a bit old school I guess as there’s no way I’d pay £20 for burger and chips when I can cook that at home. I expect something a bit different not your average everyday go to meals.

Except that the economy seemingly relies on being a 'service industry' these days, unlike the past, as evidenced by the sheer number of restaurants that exist now.

I'm always amazed at how frequently people eat out or order overpriced take out; while the economy does depend on such behaviour to a large extent, I wonder how they can afford it!

We don't do pizza out any more for this reason.
Store-bought pizzas are much better value and have come a long way.

All of our recent UK eating outs have felt expensive and disappointing.

I don't think people blame restaurants for raising prices, we all know prices have gone up.

The problem is charging so much and offering a bad experience. That's down to the restaurant if the food is really poor, you can't blame Labour for terrible pizza!

Meals from chain restaurants have generally always been poor value. Like most things, if you want the best (and in this context I mean the best food, service, atmosphere) you have to pay for it and that probably won’t include paying £15 for an average pizza at Prezzo or wherever at your local high street.

Exactly. Close to zero time and effort to cook so can be made at home when you CBA spending time in the kitchen.

If I eat out it has to be something I can't make at home in 5 minutes. Otherwise what am I paying for?

Yes they're providing a venue and clearing up etc but so are the people who do clever things with spices and vegetables that I can't replicate at home but charge a fraction of the price that the people who stick 6 prawns in a pan for 2 minutes and go on to say '£20 please'.

@MirabaiThats our rule too. Memorable meals I cannot cook. We have a few options where we live but London is awash with them. Exciting food that makes going to the restaurant special.

Funnily I went for a carvery this week with my dad
last time we went it was packed and we struggled to get a table
this time it was 6pm on a Friday so prime food/drink time and it was so quiet
i had a voucher so it was £6 each for the meal then just a drink on top

We tend to only eat Indian food out, as we love it and I find Indian flavours hardest to recreate at home, and everyone's curry taste is different.
We do walk n eats with friends every couple of months and usually find a great (non or small chain pub) to have a meal at (often Sunday lunch!), we've only had one or two poorer experiences.
If I'm feeling lazy, I'd rather get something from m&s in and a nice bottle of wine.
I'm also finding the price of a pint/wine/gin and tonic (in a pub/bar) pretty hard to swallow these days!
I much prefer spending leisure money on cinema/theatre/gigs/travel/experiences than basic food though.

I think for me eating out is more about not having to cook at weekends, rather than expecting to have some exceptional dining experience. Yes I could cook most of the food at home myself, but I don’t want to! I work full time and cook most evening meals in the week, the thought of spending my weekend leisure time at home cooking is my idea of hell.

I imagine that one of the reasons people ate out less in the 70s and 80s was because more women were housewives and didn’t work full time.

NMW also increased which will have a huge impact on restaurants.

The big jump in prices was during and just after the pandemic. In about 2019-22 £16.50
was about the standard price for an average burger/fish and chips/pasta main in a gastropub or chain restaurant near us (expensive town in the SE), and then it felt like it really quickly jumped to around £26 very quickly around 2022.

Post pandemic costs, Brexit and cost of living increases all contributing, I’m assuming; but it seemed like a really sudden increase. It very much felt like one moment going out for a very ordinary pub/chain restaurant dinner as a family cost us around £60; and then suddenly it was well over £100. £26 used to mean a really nice main at the average high street restaurant or gastropub: now it’s the expected amount for a bog standard burger!

These days we pretty much only go out for brunch or lunch (and that’s regularly topping £60 now!) or to cheap and cheerful but reasonably reliable quality places like Honest Burger.

Went to Flatiron the other day as we had a good experience at one of their other restaurants; and I must admit I was pretty staggered at ordering a £5 tomato dish for a side, only to be given one (1!) cut-up tomato in a very small bowl. Felt like it was honestly reaching the limit of taking the piss with what I’m paying for tbh.

Just going to post this again, so people have an idea of why costs for restaurants, cafes and pubs have risen so much:

In 2021 the UK minimum wage for those over 23 was £8.91 per hour.

Today, for everyone over 21 it is £12.21 per hour.

That's a 50% increase. As well as that increase, NI contributions have gone up. And as the national wage goes up, pension contributions paid by employers have to go up.

Utilities have also gone up. Food prices have gone up. And that goes for every company that is in the supply chain servicing hospitality venues, such as restaurants. But they have only one way to pass those costs - to the public.

So, no, it's not sustainable. Those "nice basic restaurants that serve locally cooked food" just can't afford to do it any more.

Look out for brunch deals.

We had a lovely meal in Edinburgh last week. Burger, chips and salad, plus 6 cocktails each, for £34 a head. The food was top notch and the cocktails were really good - not watered down or anything. The menu was extensive - breakfast choices, burgers, pizza's and you could choose from about 10 cocktails, prosecco, cider, beer. Brilliant value.

I didn’t realise anyone actually paid full price for chain restaurants.

Where was this as I live in Edinburgh and would like to try it out ?

I don’t so much mind paying more - inflation is an actual thing and we can’t expect prices to remain the same - I do resent paying for poor quality. Our local pub used to serve delicious home made burgers, now they buy the inedible cheap ones in from Brake Brothers, and DH wonders why I don’t want to eat there. Oh and automatic service charges above 10% make me very angry. We aren’t USA, serving staff get paid at least minimum wage, a 10% tip is more than generous and was the norm for about 40 years. Making it 12.5 or 15 is just grasping.

We’ve had this exact experience. A crowd of us have always put away money each month to cover going out for a meal for everyone’s birthday. Nothing fancy - generally a local pub so not a chain. Costs have gone up so much it’s just not worth eating out anymore so we are going to start doing drinks around each others houses instead. I love eating out and have done so regularly - as someone said prices crept up after covid and then again there was another jump around 2022. Main peeves for me:

1. Food is very average for the prices.
2. Starters now start around £7.95 - never have one now
3. The mark up on drinks - particularly wine - is shocking and that leads to
4. service charge being very high as prices are inflated. And most of the time all the person is doing is bringing the food to the table.
5. If you just go for mains you are in and out in just over an hour so it doesn’t feel like a night out as such

We have also been spoilt by spending a lot of time in southern Europe recently and the price, quality and ambience are so much better and it’s hard not to compare. If it’s just two of us we tend now to get a takeaway as otherwise you are looking at £60 for an hour out and cardboard food.

There are great lunch deals as opposed to evening prices. I just try and avoid pizzas and burgers. Supermarket pizzas are pretty good.

Also if going out for poor food is £60, go half as much and spend £120. The difference is astounding. £7.95 for a starter? When was this? Even in pubs it’s £10 here which is why I no longer go. A local pub restaurant “chain”has over extended itself and gone bust. I’m not surprised. My lovely small high quality restaurant is still going and they actually cook everything!

I do like a midweek lunchtime deal!

We used to go out all of the time!!

Now it's £13 for a medium glass of red in a bar we used to go to every other week.

The diet coke is £5.50!

I just know they are making huge profits.

Profits are based on footfall. Not just prices! You get less people through the door if you price them out! Huge profits? A joke I think. Choose somewhere else of buy decent wine at home!

I just know they are making huge profits.

They're really, really not. You have to have a markup of about 300% just in order to barely cover expenses.

So, the original item will be roughly one third of the cost, ie ingredients, drink, etc. The next 66% is to cover rent, rates, wages, National Insurance, pensions, utilities, H&S compliance, music licensing, TV licensing, contents insurance, building insurance, employers insurance, public liability insurance, training, general maintenance, cleaning, marketing, wastage, breakages, kitchen equipment and upkeep, etc etc.

I agree that it's just not value for money any more. We've relegated eating out to birthdays and special occasions only. I'm not badly off financially, but I'm not forking out £££ for a mediocre meal. I end up feeling cheated and resentful. Why spend money to feel that way! Ditto takeaways now tbh. They've also shot up in price, while portions get smaller.

If I don't feel like cooking or want a treat, I'd rather just get a good quality easy cook meal from Waitrose or M&S and a bottle of wine. Still costs more than my average food spend but nowhere near the price of eating out or a takeaway. I can stick it in the oven and let it cook itself. I have a dishwasher so not like I have to wash up after.