£100 for a casual lunch out for 4 is too much

[GrealishGoddess]

Deeply middle class problem but. Anyone else noticed that you can no longer get out of the likes of Bill’s, Wagamama, Pizza Express, etc , with two teens, for less than £100. Is this just inflation, NI effects, price gouging, what? AIBU to stay home?

It clearly isn't 'enough for anyone,' as you can see by the majority of comments on this thread. I don't actually believe you're 'shocked' at this.

Ahhhh yes, The kids menu and the chicken can be the take home for next 9 day

All of those places have discount schemes ?? 2for 1. Free starters. Etc. if you go to a chain check Martin’s money tips

pizza express even have their own app for it.

but no not really £25 pp including drinks and service is about right. Teens eat adult portions

But I wouldn’t eat at a chain for 25pp I’d go Indy.

YANBU.

There was an interesting Tom Kerridge series recently where he talked about the economics of restaurants - he said (and I've seen the same figure quoted elsewhere) that the ingredients of a dish should be 30% of the menu price, the other 70% being overheads/costs including profit. A quick google suggests this is an industry standard.

And yet I look at some dishes and their prices and see ingredients that cost waaaay below 30% of what they're charging. Especially if it's vegetarian (Jay Rayner talked about "margins being better on vegetarian food" which seems to translate as "You get to charge more for cheaper ingredients") and...that's not OK. A mate was talking about starting a street food pizza van because, and I quote, "the margins are INSANE!" - as posters have said above, dough costs nothing, toppings are relatively inexpensive, and they charge high prices simply because they can.

So there's an awful of over-charging going on. For the big chains I suspect it's because their private equity owners want to keep their profits up but I resent paying those bloody prices - wherever they are - when it seems such a rip off.

For the decent/indie places trying to serve at reasonable prices, why not just make cheaper dishes? Lots of ingredients are still relatively cheap - make a dish out of that and serve it at a reasonable price, rather than carrying on serving the same menu that doesn't work any more without a big price tag.

I agree with this as I personally feel ripped off if went to a chain and had to spend full price as the quality isn't great. We go to local pub with really good food and buy lots of starters things like prawns and swiss cheese chips and they are all quite large servings it is more like £40 for two with a glass of wine each. I went to a Thai restaurant recently and it is much better value as starters included it was £110 for 4.

My 8 year old will almost eat a whole regular pizza to himself, my 2 year old will have a kids meal (£5 main only) and a small milk. And me and DH will share a large pizza. We rarely go out for a meal but we were on holiday. It was nice. If our boys were older, then I do think it would be a lot more expensive. Something I'll need to take account for when that time comes.

We went to PE recently and for 4 adults it was £157.00!! That included only 1 alcoholic drink. Think how many fillet steaks that would buy. I do agree that desserts are very expensive and often disappointing.

everything so expensive these days!

We had nandos takeaway for 3 friday night £60 - was cold by the time we sorted out the fact that we had no code for delivery guy. Such poor value for money

I budget £100 for the two of us for starter, main and a bottle of wine to share, maybe a coffee. I'd expect to pay £200 for 4 of us.

Pizza Express wouldn't be my restaurant of choice, though.

I think there is a balance to be struck though, if it was a bit cheaper then more people would go and profits would be higher - the actual food doesn't cost much at all so having 8 people paying £16 each would be far more profitable than 3 people affording to pay £25 each

Yanbu. It’s hard to get away with less than £100 for a family with teenagers now, even at fairly ‘basic’ places like the chains you’ve mentioned . I miss the £5 kids menu deals from 10 years ago when they were in the early primary school years.

I’m 54 and until I was a teenager it was just awful formal hotel dining rooms for special occasions. Terrible atmosphere, terrible food, everyone acting like it was a really big deal. Because it was.

I don’t think eating out at a pizza place a couple of times a month should be a luxury for middle class families.

I’ve also noticed this. Am in London and have been for most of my life - eating out is FAR more expensive now and it’s not just because I have less disposable income now I have teenage kids.

It’s simply that prices have rocketed (as well as monthly bills) and salaries haven’t kept pace at all. DH and I have an ok income between us but one or two meals out can be the difference between nudging into the red each month - whereas we used to eat out about once a week.

I find it pretty depressing tbh, particularly when pizza express/wagamama chain places used to be good value. We try to avoid going out for meals now unless it’s somewhere ‘great’ (think high end gastro pub type places rather than the ritz 😂) for a special occasion.

The cutlery at Nando’s is always manky as well

Yep, very reasonable prices at Spoons.

50% of all job losses in the hospitality sector since recent increases in NI contributions and rises in the minimum wage does not suggest it is price gouging.

It suggests thats how much it bloody costs now.

A friend runs a small bar - four employees. He was saying that in the past year, staffing costs have gone up £2000 PER MONTH. Thats just staffing. All his costs have also gone up massively, because all his supplier have similar cost rises.

One self employed man in his van with very limited overheads is a little different to a sit down restuarant with multiple staff on the pay roll don't you think?

One wonders how many people complaining voted for Brexit or were in favour of lockdown. Because people were warned those two policies would have a detrimental effect on the economy and cause this. Prices of restaurants have probably doubled since 2019

Its very sad as it seems eating out is now becoming so expensive that it’s a rare treat, much like back in the 70s or so.

Also the chains like pizza express, Wagamama etc with the head chef Mike O’wave are very poor value at £100 or so for a mediocre meal. It’s actually far better to go somewhere nicer with say a £200 bill but half as often

I’m working class but doing quite well for myself now in my 50’s having grown up where eating out was a once a year treat for mothers days and on a ruby/golden wedding anniversary of one of my older relatives !

The idea of going out with my adult kids and grandkids for food and not having a starter, a main, sides and a pudding with whatever anyone fancies to drink is absurd.
if it had to be limited to a cheap main and tap water - still rocking in at a cost where I could cook steak or seafood indoors instead I can’t see the point.

An average teen/man would be starving after a pizza express pizza - let alone a half portion! Christ for the cost alone they could have a feast indoors.

When The kids were little and we were skint the idea of going for a meal where we would be skimping on half portions and drinking bloody tap water was totally off the table , where’s the fun in that - some didn’t! Got pizzas in instead

Better to save up the tight arse half meal experiences for a full on blow out surely !

Are you dead from the neck up?

I shall make it easy for you.

What the OP ordered was, to me, the main meal in a day. So as the main meal in a day £100 was fine. It doesnt matter whether its consumed at 8am 1pm or 8pm.

Got it now?

You’re not wrong. I was thinking the same thing myself. We (2 adults one child) went out for a casual lunch today also. We had a bottle of water, one starter to share, 3 x mains, one of which was from the child’s menu. One coffee and 2x glasses of champagne. I assumed the bill would come to €200 ish due to the 2 glass of fizz. No. €250. Was surprised. This wasn’t a particularly upmarket sort of place.

Civil servants are not being disrespected by their title, servant is not a dirty word. You are being served by / receiving a service from fellow humans.

My point stands - you’re paying for convenience, whether that’s a bus ride rather than walking, or a meal you don’t have to prepare and serve yourself.

Unwillingness to pay a fair price for the labour of others, or using businesses that don’t take good care of their workforce is actually disrespectful, and a real world problem.

So what was any point in anything you said then? We got a detailed breakdown of how much you eat. Why is £100 for dinner fine but £100 for lunch not? It doesn’t make sense. Eating out is expensive. You are weirdly stuck on how the time of day doesn’t change the price but does change the expense.

Not if like me a person eats out three or four times a week, I’d be the size of a house if every meal out was a full blow out.