To think this café owner is a CF...

[ooohthepriceofbutter]

...to charge £4 for 2 small bottles of water to take away?

Not a swanky brand, think plain Highland Spring in 500ml plastic bottles, and screw caps, not even sports caps. Water had been in the fridge, but it was to take away so he didn't even open the bottles, let alone provide use of glasses, ice, a table and chairs, loo etc. It's just an ordinary café, not a Michelin star restaurant.

When I politely and quietly declined it and asked for my money back, he loudly called me 'very rude' in front of other customers.

Five minutes down the road, I was able to buy exactly the same for 60p. This was out of the fridge too, in a little rural village shop, where perhaps you'd expect to pay a few pence more to help keep it going.

I wasn't rude, but was the café owner otherwise right in his pricing? AIBU to think this is CF-ery? Profiteering against walkers and tourists in this scorching hot weather?

NC as this is local to me.

@NewYearNewMe18

No one shoved your arm up your back and propelled you into the café and forced you to purchase his goods.

Oh for God's sake! Why do people give in to this ridiculous trend of saying "nobody forced you to buy" whenever anyone complains about pricing?!

Every consumer has a right to pass comment if they feel something is too expensive!

Please stop acting like a troll. You and I both know if you were to see a price tag of £2 next to a bottle of water you would recoil in horror! Without anybody putting you in an armlock!!!!!!

Also, saying about he needs to make a profit.. ever heard of wholesale?

What?
He’s not going to charge wholesale prices is he?

Yes he is making quite a fat profit on a bottle of water, yes it is over priced but it is his cafe and he can charge what he wants.
The profit margin on the water most likely subsidies the smaller profit he makes on other items.

He COULD charge less for the water yes.
He COULD pay his staff a bit less.
He COULD buy cheaper meat for his restaurant.

He may be pushing the limits on his prices for water, but that's his prerogative. It's really really hard to run a business, and people are constantly trying to work out your actual costs and how much you're making. It's often less than they imagine.
Storing a large number of water bottles is expensive in a restaurant as they take up valuable storage space. It's a lot of space for not a huge return. He might be able to sell that bottle for 2.00 to a sitting customer, but if a walk in one gets it for 1.50, that's 50p of his anticipated profit lost.
It's like going to him and asking him just for the meat, as though he were a butcher. He anticipates making profit on that meat by cooking it and serving it, not from being a butcher.
In the same way, he's not a corner shop. He might sometimes have to succumb to walk in customers, but it affects his margins.

@Gemini69 CF means Cheeky Fucker

Someone said on another thread that the most profit you make in a restaurant/cafe is in bottled water.
I think £2 is ridiculous. Most people when ordering water in a cafe don’t really look/think that hard about it, so it’s an easy thing to make overpriced, therefore I think he is a CF

the rest is irrelevant, someone else said the most they have been charged is £1.60 and I would say between 1.20-1.60 is about right.

And add some rudeness and he’s definitely a bit of an arse.
He could have just apologised and said, sorry this is what we need to charge to survive, and the op would have probably felt guilty and bought the water!!

£2 is a pretty standard price surely? In a cafe or attraction, not a supermarket.

Cafes mark up prices,yes.it’s a for profit business after all.Think of the mark up on cuppa tea...
Overheads,rates,wages,fridge switched on,utilities,stock,supplies
It’s not as simple as it’s cheaper in a shop

Have we established it’s a 500ml
If so then Carluccio charge 3.30
So I take everything I said back.

Glad I never drink water and I only wine out

Exactly most of the profit comes from bottled drinks, many restaurants actually make a loss on food, so there's going to be a huge mark-up on stuff like water. That's why it's not going to be cost-effective to go to a cafe for a take-away water. Cafe's tend to be marginally profitable as it is so they clearly can't afford not to have the huge mark-up.

The comment from the shop owner is completely irrelevant. She is running a shop - with lower running costs - not a cafe. For all we know, she owns the shop outright while the cafe owner pays rent etc And how does she work out what is "fair" profit? It's totally subjective and bollocks. If she is so altruistic, why doesn't she provide it for cost?

£2 is what you pay for a bottle of 500ml water at a festival (aka a rip off)

Her attitude was very much she wants and needs to make a profit and a living, but also wants to provide a service and not rip people off, especially for water in a heatwave. She said she's happy with the profit margin on the water at 60p and it covers the refrigeration costs ok.

She’s hardly going to say that she makes a big profit on it, is she?

Businesses are free to charge what they want for bottled water. Customers are free to shop wherever they want. The cafe owner wasn’t being a CF.

£2 is what you pay for a bottle of 500ml water at a festival (aka a rip off)

You should see the prices they have to pay for a pitch at a festival.
£20,000 for a small food pitch.

I do agree that it's a café, not a shop, 2 very different businesses. I also agree that he has to cover his overheads and make a living profit, and that these might very well be different overheads to a shop. I wasn't aware that he'd possibly make most of his profit on drinks, but less, break even or lose on food? A friend who owned and ran pubs for many years always said her profit was in the food.

I want the guy to make a profit, just a reasonable one. A fair mark up on food he's cooked, drinks he's made, that's absolutely fine. I'd never complain about that. I'm a very appreciative café, pub and restaurant patron in the main. But what would the mark up and percentage profit be on a small, fairly basic, bottle of water selling at £2, and involving minimal effort - anyone know? It was pushed across the counter with the lid still on. He put more effort into being rude. Luckily, he didn't try to charge me for that.

A friend who owned and ran pubs for many years always said her profit was in the food

Well she must have been the exception that proved the rule. Or maybe another altruistic type only selling bottled water cheaply....

But what would the mark up and percentage profit be on a small, fairly basic, bottle of water selling at £2, and involving minimal effort - anyone know?

We could only work that out if we knew his operating costs which could be so incredibly variable that we couldnt even hazard a guess

But it's irrelevant anyway. He is free to charge what he wants and customers are free not to buy

Plus - it's not "minimal effort". The man is running a cafe not a shop for the 50th time and is set up and staffed on the basis that patrons will sit in/use the toilet etc. That is all pro-rata per customer. Customers aren't charged less for "less effort" ie sitting nearer the kitchen or not using the loo

I just looked it up and the cost of a 500 ml bottle of water in Prezzo is £2.50 and a can of Pepsi is £2.80.

Just for reference.

What was he supposed to do? Decide a new price on the spot and reprogram the till?

With a pub, a lot depends on the brewery (or if it's a freehouse). If it's a brewery, most of the profit goes to them, not the landlord, but with a freehouse, they can source their own beer and negotiate their own prices. For a pub, the food usually makes more. The old traditional pub of men drinking pints, maybe 4 in a night would only mean a small income (imagine 20 men drinking 4 pints each) that's not a lot of profit on 80 pints...

But compare that with food, bringing in families, and children having soft drinks etc) - it's much more profitable for them (and the cost of the food is very cheap, and usually microwaved).

Depending on the style of restaurant, food isn't that profitable for them either, they are the other way round - hoping you'll buy wine, or pay a premium for your drinks due to it being a dining experience, not a pub lunch). If it's a higher end restaurant, then yes, the food price starts to become profitable, but you also have to remember, there are big lulls in the day, when there are empty tables etc. It's VERY hard for a restaurant to only be open in the evenings etc. That's why so many now do cream teas, or even breakfasts.

I can see how people feel £2.00 is extortionate, but McDonalds charge 1.30 (still quite cheap) for a small coffee and they sell hundreds and thousands of them. The margin on that is much higher, but harder to quantify because we can't go into Lidl and get a hot coffee for £0.20.

Even though we know the cost of making a coffee is dirty cheap, we seem able to accept that, because they spend a couple of minutes making it feel like a big deal. When a shop owner 'seemingly' just sells you the same bottle you can get next door' it feels like a rip off.

It's quite tragic actually, because in truth, McDonalds will probably be stretching their profits far more than the small restaurant owner is.

Peace and love?

I used to charge for photography. I might have an assignment in (say) Wales, so have to drive there (2 hour drive). I might be there for 2 hours, then drive back (2 hours). I'd charge around £150.00 for the shoot.

People would say 'that's 75.00 per hour!!'. Rip off.
When I got home, I would spend another 2 hours post processing those images (making them look better and removing anything untoward etc). I'd them upload them to a portal for the client to see, then deal with them choosing the images they wanted etc etc.

All in all, I'd probably spend 10 hours on that job, and be making only £15.00 per hour in reality. Then, I'd have to buy equipment, insurance, and storage space, because clients expect me to have a backup of their images. I'd also have to deal with various magazines when the client wanted me to send high res images to printers etc - and they'd expect this for free.

Finally, they'd say 'we don't need you any more, someone in the office has a great camera' they'll do it.
They did.
They looked shite.
They still had to pay that person's wages, but because they did this work in their work time, the client felt it was 'free'. It wasn't. They actually paid them more than they paid me... but the perception was 'it was cheaper'.

£150.00 for a 2 hour product photography session was dirt cheap, but still too much for clients to pay. People make way too many assumptions about where profit is.

Peace and love as always from me, LornaMNHQ. The only problem I had was the aggressive, goady posts from 2 people, but I responded to that with good humour. I do consider there's some ridiculously heavy-handed deleting of my responses to those goady posts going on, however. I get why you deleted my post where I (humorously) mentioned sock-puppetry, and I explained and apologised for that in the other post that you've now, almost unbelievably, deleted. Yet you leave Lavendar's goady post up? Yes, peace and love of course by all means, and would you like a cooling bottle of water, only £2, while you look at it again?

I want the guy to make a profit, just a reasonable one.

Why would what level of profit you want him to make be a consideration