To feel ripped off

[Bunny2607]

Nipped out to a local cafe at work today for some lunch to take back and eat at my desk. Very rarely buy lunch as either take it with me or nip home but circumstances today meant i ended up buying it.
small independent cafe, i got a mocha coffee, flapjack slice and a soup to take away. £12.60!!! I paid and didn’t say anything but i was so shocked at the price. Its been bugging me all day and tbh i don’t think i will go back due to the prices, it was only average at best as well.
when did you last feel ripped off?

As a small independent restaurant owner, I don't think this is excessive any more. Overheads in the hospitality industry are through the roof and it's all about survival now. Come April it will be worse with our ridiculous Government making changes that are going to break many small businesses.

@FlyingFox , genuienely interested...what are the main factors please? heating I assume.

That's a bargain, we are in the cotswolds, I went to a cafe with the kids after school, 2 flapjack type cakes and 1 smoothie, 1 milkshake (I didn't have anything, so a snack and drink for each kid) a whopping £18.50.
Won't be going back tbh..... I think lunch, coffee and a dessert for 12 quid is about fair so long as it was all good quality, a Costa or Starbucks is going to be similar as it'd be £3 ish for a coffee on its own! Cost of living does catch you out occasionally especially if you've not grabbed a lunch out for a while.

Yes, that's why I do it. I'm glad to support local caffs, but I'm afraid £10 a day is a lot for me to spend on coffee. Certainly racks up over a week, a month. Freelance rates have not kept pace with inflation, so these days, like many other people, I have to limit my spending.
I agree that I benefit from their heating, but if I wasn't there they'd be heating an empty table...

Its really interesting to hear the perspective of a business owner as opposed to yet more 'daylight robbery!' type posts. Do you find you have to put the prices up even higher to compensate for a loss of customers/volume and this is a vicious circle of sorts?

The cost of your food isn’t dependant in quality anymore. It’s about how much utilities, wages and taxes are - and the cost of the ingredients.

Have you been living under a rock ?

Last year I was working in London temporarily and was in the fortunate position of getting a food allowance of £40 per day to cover breakfast, lunch and dinner. That sounds loads, but when you are out and about and dependent on pret and the like it does not go far let me tell you. Perfectly adequate to live off sandwiches for a bit - but I was imagining I could get a few restaurant type meals in (nothing fancy, just the chains) and found that if I ate out in the evening I had to ration myself to sainsbos meals deals the rest of the day. Sign o' the times.

We hardly go out at night now. A treat now is coffee and cake during the day. Last time we had 2 coffees which were lukewarm even though we asked for extra hot and one piece of shortbread. £10.50. Jesus wept!!!

But it's not the responsibility of the paying customer to threaten their own financial security to keep someone else in business.

I understand why cafes have got more expensive (increases in price of food, staff, utilities and likely other costs). However, you'd be a bit daft to think 'I can't afford to pay that amount for coffee etc but I must keep spending in the cafe or else they'll go bust'.

Perhaps there will be a significant reduction in the number of cafes, which is obviously a shame, but if the demand for their offering isn't there, what can you do?

Thing is these places are often full. Thinking of a new Gails that was opened near us (well outside London!). Its packed with people who seem to have huge amounts of time and money and these arent people on expenses. Its late middle aged couples, retired people and people bringing in their children.

Thanks to RR - for small independents increasing NI and the threasholds to pay NI plus the increase in MW wont help things. Its all very well saying that people should be paid more but I dont think some get it - if wages go up then WE pay for the increase.

My independent hairdresser has sent his regulars an email saying due to the bduget he needs to increase his prices. Same with the electrian we use. He has laid off two of this staff and its now only him. He said its just not worth it after he reaches a certain level and combined with the paperwork he has thrown the towel in.

FGS - these are the SME's we need to be encouraging. Not signing their death warrant. Thanks Labour! I do wonder if my hairdresser will actually survive. Already a few people have posted on Facebook that they arent happy with the increases and are thinking of trying someone else.

I find the coffee overpriced in places like Costa but some people are obsessed with them. Their food is horrible, dried up rubbish but again people are buying them.

I never said it was the responsibility of paying customers.... what a strange thing to imply

It's bizarre isn't it. I'm with @ssd . I don't go very often at all.

But the bloody Gails is packed!

I suppose I can cope with a less than wonderful coffee. Please don't give me micro waved , bought in food at 40 a pop.

I think £12.60 is reasonable , we had a flat white , basic hot chocolate and 2 cinammon buns in the John Lewis cafe recently and it came to £15 something - it was actually free with my JL card so I didn’t have pay .

It sounds reasonable to me for a cafe, but it should be high quality.

This is part of the problem. People just suck it up and accept these ludicrous prices and then it becomes the norm. If people are stupid enough to pay them, they won’t ever go down and everyone ends up a little bit poorer. If people vote with their wallet and stop buying over priced items, or go elsewhere, they will soon lower them.

It’s ok to shrug your shoulders and say it’s ok but for a lot of people it’s made a huge difference. Lots of families can’t afford the occasional meal out as a treat anymore.

We never go on holiday because we can’t afford to anymore for example. And yet lots of their friends have got to experience trips during school holidays in places we could only dream of taking them to. Things are on a downward spiral in the uk. The average age of a first time buyer in the uk is now 33. Who knows if children will be able to enjoy the security of home ownership in 20 years time.

I think holidays will become a distant memory for many people. Thousands and thousands of pounds. But then again we have the "Gail's mentality"
Its a mystery really.

A lot of people see nothing wrong with a £5 coffee a day but will wince at the price of say a holiday.

I enjoy a Greggs chicken baguette and often think oooo I could just go get one but then I’m like no I can make a sandwich for less, take aways the same ooo I Fancy a dirty burger and kebab but that’s totting upto £30 plus. So I’ll send Dh to farm foods to grab some kebab meat, fries and mozzarella sticks, get the burgers out the freezer as we order them from the butcher and my fake away is way under that price and served more than one meal and if we are completely honest large portion too 😅

There does hit a point where places have to put their prices up but that also pushes away more customers and it’s that circle that prices go up again and loose more customers before they just have to close.

We have stopped going to the local curry place because again portions getting smaller, quality down yet price up. Might as well just buy some pataks pots if I want a lazy curry rather than a from scratch one.

The Taylor's spice range is very good. Wouldn't waste my meagre resources on take away.

Or they'd be turning over that table with several groups of perhaps two or three people all having a coffee and a sandwich and all leaving after half an hour instead of having you sitting there ekeing out 2 coffees for half the day and using their electricity to keep your laptop and your phone charged.

You are not doing them the favour you clearly think you are. Perhaps the reason a coffee is so flipping expensive in most cafés now is precisely because of people like you. They've become de facto offices so they may as well do what they can to at least try to scratch a profit from it, while people like you gate keep the tables for hours on end and spend as little as they feel they can get away with.

You are looking at this as 'spending £10 a day on coffee is a lot, and if they keep putting up their prices I am going to have to remove my custom.' But it's not actually the coffee you are there for, is it? It's the table and chair, the electricity and the warmth. The coffee is a bonus and I bet you only buy a second one once you feel you might have taken the piss a bit with the length of time you've sat there with your first. You don't really want or need the coffee but you want to sit for another two hours.

I'd suggest you don't go there to 'support' local businesses, you go there because it's the cheapest option for you that gets you out of the house and means you don't have to use your own heating and electric. If £10 a day is a lot for you to spend in order to get your job done then your freelance gig clearly isn't a viable business and you should look at getting a different job that doesn't rely on exploiting another small business in order for you to stay afloat. If you don't want to stay at home then rentable hot desks are available.

That's our standard price and quality in NE Scottish city.

I find it interesting that in my suburb there is a lot of talk of " Community"
The word finds its way into most things. Community spaces/ comunity cafes/ for all the community.

Without the dollar, there is no community.

One " community" restaurant closed and opened again at least twice. Always in March to avoid tax. Another " community" place closed and forgot to pay the staff.

I agree.

I 'treated' DD and I to lunch in a little place/cafe in London; nearly £70 for a (fridge cold) toast with avocado with 1 (fridge cold) poached egg, one (ok) fancy salad and 2 teas. Annoying and yucky and just not worth the money, imo.

If we'd gone to the Connaught, for £5 more we could have had something similar (Avocado toast with 2 poached eggs £28, Smoked salmon and blinis £28, Matcha Green Tea £10, Darjeeling £9)! Now that would have been a real treat and probably they also cook properly.

I don't know, something is wrong we're you're charged so much for something not very nice in a random cafe. There's definitely something wrong when a prestige hotel seems good value compared with high street prices 🤔

Maybe @SpareBoxRoomForEmergencies but as an aside all these places are not even heated anymore, they're all steamy and cold.