Finding it increasingly difficult to justify eating out at pubs etc

[JupiterJa]

This is something I’ve always enjoyed doing, but I just find the financial outlay to be hard to justify now. A fairly average meal is now usually between £17-£20 (say a burger, or fish and chips) with a pint or glass of wine usually over £6. I just don’t feel the experience warrants the outlay now, especially midweek, so these trips are becoming rarer and rarer.

Not so long ago £15 would comfortably cover everything and I felt that was good value.

Does anyone else find themselves making less frequent visits now?

We used to eat out a lot - maybe 8/9 times a month before covid. More like once now. And I only go out for things that are a faff to make at home - took dd out for Japanese yesterday at a little independent in Birmingham and we had tempura, teriyaki and sushi - no way am I being arsed to do all that at home for lunch!
I'll also go out for a chippy because it makes the house smell if I fire the proper fryer up. Or a proper balti - again too much hassle at home to make the proper restaurant masala.
But a burger or a sandwich or a steak or whatever? Nope - make it myself thanks.

Totally agree
Even reliable cheap places like Nando’s aren’t worth it now. We went to Nando’s recently and they are obviously cutting costs with staffing because the wait was 50 minutes. The food itself was noticeably smaller portions than previously and it was nearly £40 for two of us
I haven’t eaten in places like zizzi, pizza express and other chains for a really long time now because the service and portions are shit and the food isn’t anything you couldn’t make yourself better.
We occasionally go to nice cafes but even then food like avacado toast is over a tenner

We occasionally had lunch at a nearby village pub. Lunchtime meals always fine. This time, the price had really shot up. Dh had fish which was minus the jersey potatoes included on.the menu. My ploughmans, resembled none I had had before. The bread was completely stale. When we complained, the waitress said we should have said earlier. I responded I could not do so as she was glued to her phone.

She reluctantly deducted my coke from the bill. Another set of customers who wont be back.

Also 20% VAT included in the selling price!

Bank charges, security, waste disposal, etc.

Of course you can if all you're costing is the food. What about the power to cook and for heating and lighting your home, your time cost doing the cooking, buying the cooker and utensils, buying the crockery and cutlery, costs savings in not having to pay 20% VAT on it, not having to pay waste disposal, bank charges, security, business rates, etc?

It is prohibively expensive for us a a family of 5 (3 teens so adult meals) now, but I don't necessarily think the pubs are making a fortune more that everything has gone up. The NI and min wage increases won't help it going forward either.

Friend has a popular tea room. Open 10-4. Happy to let staff with children finish early for school runs still has problems recruiting. They cook hot food. The energy bill is 2k a month. There's no energy cap on commercial energy.

YANBU I used to love eating out but it's so expensive now. It really saddens me and I do worry for the hospitality industry

It's crazy money for an average meal, we eat out no more than a couple of times a year due to the sheer expense. Never to a pub where the food is worse than I could make at home. Even takeaways are very expensive so we only have these every few months.

But as much as you're saying that the cost doesn't justify the delivery for the customer, the effort doesn't justify the return for the business or the people running and working in it. They're putting all this effort in and just making enough to keep the place afloat - that's a poor return as much as customers feeling ripped off for higher prices for the same level of service/food.
The local place that has just announced they're closing at the end of this week are a family place with a couple of staff that are family friends, they've put everything into it, it's lovely, always busy and people are lamenting the loss, but they've said themselves that the level of work they're having to put in is unsustainable, they're just breaking even and without putting their prices up they can't employ more staff. So that's it, they've decided to close. In other words like the customers feel about the prices, it's not worth it.

And that's what will continue happening to the independent places, or they'll put their prices up and they won't get customers anyway so the same result.

Expecting more and more for the same, or less in a climate of increasing costs is unrealistic, from either pov.

There's no easy answers to this, the basic issue is that prices have risen to the point where people either cannot or will not pay it, and so they look for ways to keep prices realistic and the only way to do that is scale back on service and quality, but that's not because every restaurant or cafe in the country has decided ripping their customers off is the way to go, it's because in order to be there at all, they need to make it viable.

Even the most creative minds cannot circumnavigate the massive increases we've all seen, increase what they're offering and keep the prices the same.

I also resent paying for what are in effect ready meals. Many (most?) pubs and many other venues don't make their own fresh food, they just buy it in and heat it up. Large menus are a big giveaway.

We ate at a pub a while ago which got great reviews. They specialise in pies, and the pies were very nice, but some time later I saw that exact pie range for sale in a supermarket. They were served with chips only, not even veg or salad. So basically we could have produced that exact meal ourselves for a fraction of the cost.

Bloody hell! When we've pushed the boat out for special occasions it's been around £100 a head - with one exception which was private dining and more expensive, but still not as expensive per person as your outing.

@DuesToTheDirt reserve got a pub in Bath like that - it’s perfectly nice and in all fairness isa lovely old pub with a great vibe , but it’s not £16 nice for pie and chips ( same pie range as I get in Waitrose ) maybe £12 or so would be more like it -

Just looked at a pub, think it’s part of a chain. £14 for Mac and cheese. I imagine it came frozen too. It’s actually on the edge of an area of significance economic issues, I know it’s been trying to drum up business lately with money off vouchers and things. I get money off with a tastecard. They’d be better just making the prices more reasonable.

I very rarely eat out now, soup and a roll in a café every so often.

We went to Miller and Carter for DDs birthday meal. I'd always avoided it as I thought it was pricey but we got 2 chateaubriand with the iceberg wedge and topping, fries, onion wedge and sauce, 3 cocktails and a diet coke and a bottle of red for £200 on a Saturday night. It was really lovely.
I'd rather spend that and not be disappointed than spend similar in my local pub and feel I wasn't getting nice food or value for money.

As my family are poors we go to wetherspoons. £25 for 2 kids meals, 2 meals for us and 4 drinks. Happy days.

I know people complain a lot about airbnbs (or holiday lets from other platforms) damaging accommodation prospects for locals, but to be honest food is a big reason for us using holiday cottages rather than hotels when holidaying in this country. As well as getting some shared space (not the case in budget hotels) we can cook, and do not have to pay every night for overpriced substandard food. Plus, if we are staying somewhere fairly rural, then the only food available within a reasonable distance might be pretty limited, especially as we are veggie - it might be veggie burger + chips at one pub, or macaroni cheese at a different pub, and that's it.

I saw a food review on YouTube of a Harrods restaurant. They were charging £37 for a dismal looking plate of fish and chips. Yes I know it’s Harrods so you expect a high cost but apparently it was tasteless.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=grvpFnJpA_k&pp=ygUVMzcgZm9yIGZpc2ggYW5kIGNoaXBz

I wouldn't mind paying more for basic food, cooked well - the traditional idea of 'pub grub' - but so many pubs seem to be trying to be 'fancy' but doing it badly, essentially reheating ready meals as pps have said.

I agree. We always stay in holiday cottages for that exact reason. We like eating out, but these days it's such a faff and so expensive and usually disappointing. Far easier just to nip to Tesco and buy stuff to cook ourselves.

We spent a week in the Cotswolds village last Summer. There was a kind of "Gastropub" in the village but we looked at the menu online and the prices were insane - £40/£50 for pretty basic sounding main courses. We cast our net wider to nearby villages and towns and most restaurants were likewise "fur coat and no knickers" of over-charging for what looked to be pretty basic. In the end we found a little private Italian restaurant that we used a few times, but other than that we bought from the nearest supermarket and cooked in.

@taxguru I was talking in a cafe here in Bath only the other week to a really nice couple- maybe mid 60s and they were telling me they based themselves in Bath and Cheltenham for a week pottering in the Cotswolds simply because they could go to medium chains and pubs without breaking the bank - stuff like Bills and Wagamama and Rosas Thai - whilst not cheap as chips they were saying they could budget £60 to £75 a night with drinks and that it was impossible to do this in much of the Cotswold villages these days - they didn’t want to cook but nor did they want to pay £120 a night for very mid range gastro pub dinners with drinks for just the 2 of them - and they also had the options of KFC or Maccy Ds if not wanting a formal meal - a lot of these gastro pubs are pricing themselves out the market - I know it’s really hard to make it pay but it’s a viscious circle if you lose trade too -

I agree eating out has become restrictively expensive, and that the quality in a lot of places is poor.

But we also have the other side of the coin. That plate of fish and chips at £15 will have £2.50 going straight to the tax man. Then we have staff costs, which as we know aren't cheap. Going to be £12.20 plus employer contributions every hour. Mortgage/rent & rates along with the other operating costs, extortionate. Add the basic cost of the materials on, and there isn't a lot left.

This is going to sound mad but I honestly think this is part of the reason why there is a general feeling of "it's all gone to shit" and why Reform seems to be getting traction. This and how much more expensive cars have become. It doesn't get picked up by pollsters because no-one is going to say - life in the UK is shit because I can't afford to eat out and drive a nice car - but if you're used to being able to do those things and you're working your bits off and not getting the nice life that you previously had, yeah that will lead to a lot of negativity and, dare I say it, populism.

Completely agree. Interestingly it’s making the real top end more interesting. We’re going on holiday soon and have two Michelin starred restaurants booked (one one star and one two star). They will end up at around £300 each for two, but given we can easily spend well over £100 for mediocre drinks and food these days it feels well worth it.