"We can't justify a £52 lunch" - AIBU to think you didn't need to?

[PropitiousJump]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg3g11z6d8o

I found this article irritating. Middle earning families complaining they can't afford a day out, in part because of the expense of eating lunch and dinner out. A family of four in both cases.

I completely agree it's got expensive to eat out, but have they never heard of taking your own sandwiches?

And if you look at what they've eaten, they've ordered a lot of extras that have bumped up the bill.

Costa family - £52 lunch for four. If they could have done without an overpriced bag of crisps on top of their mains, and not had puddings (this was lunch, not dinner) they could have got the bill down to a more reasonable £40ish - a tenner each.

Pizza Express family - £174 dinner for four. If they cut out the starter and side orders and the adults had soft drinks instead of alcohol, they could have got the bill down to approx £109 for soft drinks, mains and a dessert each.

This isn't saying they are eating too much - it's not a diet-bashing thread - but common sense says that if you are eating in a chain place on a day out and trying to keep costs down, you don't order loads of extras and alcohol. Have a drink and a snack at home if you're still hungry. Save all the extras for an 'occasion' where eating out is the focus of the event and you're going somewhere special, not fuelling up in a chain restaurant.

AIBU?

I guess again it comes down to what we can afford. By self catering and doing a simple breakfast and tea, we can go away more than if we used hotels and ate out every meal. That trade off is worth it for me (plus I've never done different even growing up).

Dear Lord... They don't.

Look at their reporting on rising food bank use, the rise in child poverty, the credit card crisis, Broke Britain, the rising price of vets bills, increasing energy prices, child nutrition... They have looked at the issue roundedly, precisely because we ARE all in it together.

This single episode of Panorama is the tip of the iceberg, not the whole narrative picture.

Who goes to The Harvester on holiday?

We (two professionals) could afford a day out and meals out 10 years ago and we are on quite a bit more now and having food out or even a takeaway that we like is significantly reduced. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and we definitely ate out at restaurants, pubs if on holiday in England, eateries connected to days out like the National Art gallery. My Dad had quite a high salary but with my Mum's income it was the equivalent to ours in 2026 but we can't contemplate things they do like a trip around the U.S. For weeks staying in some pretty expensive hotels.

I don't know how they managed to eat all that at Pizza Express! Dough balls then a pizza with polenta chips and salad then a pudding is a huge amount. Surely you can go out and have fun and have a pizza each, maybe share two starters if they're starving hungry.

Possibly not the point of the thread but I love food but would be uncomfortably full of I are all that!

It matters because of the economy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75e06e0kd7o

If people eat out less, the economy has a downturn and people will lose their jobs and not buy other products and services . Hospitality employs between 2-3 million people in the UK. We’re a service economy.

A previous poster actually used the phrase 'delicious nutritious dinners' - I claim my £5.

Harvester, pizza express, same poor quality food, different logo.

the article mentions costa, which makes me shudder at the emulsifier goodness that a family will eat in the name of it being a “treat”

This is hilarious. Panorama isn't a one-off programme! it's been going for decades, and they regularly cover issues for people who are less well off. It doesn't need to be their only focus, though.

You seem to have missed the point. If middle earners are struggling to afford or justify a high street chain bog standard 'cheap' meal, then the economy is in dire straits more generally, and this will impact the worse off even more.

All this...it really isn't a race to the bottom. 2 professionals nearly earning 100k here after working hard and studying for years..we should be able to afford a lunch out and yet its so frustrating to be nearly 50 and be scrimping and counting pennies like we were 15 years ago.we are just making no progress .... Yes we are in a luxurious position not having to worry about making our rent/mortgage and we have food etc.but what has happened to aspiration? It feels like the rich are getting much richer and the middle are just being squeezed out. And this matters, if the middle continue to have little discretionary spending this will impact the economy greatly..

We go to pizza hut quite regularly.

The kids ice cream and a drink bought individually is the same price as a kids meal.

They don't want the kids meal.

I get them the kids meal for the ice cream and drink, let them pick a main from the adult menu and then I eat the mini pizzas that come with the kids meals myself. Sometimes I'll get one kids pizza and one pasta to mix it up a bit 😆

Also end up with a couple of bonus onion rings and garlic bread this way too because the kid meals also get sides.

Yes but the point many people are making here is that it’s a bellweather of the economy.

This thread is driving me nuts with all of the bores talking about eating anaemic lettuce sandwiches on park benches and flasks of bovril ‘in the good old days.’ It is 2026 and modern families ought to be able to afford small luxuries when they want to and not be completely squeezed. The cost of living is unacceptable.

I agree with you OP, and in our older years very comfortable. But there’s no way on a day out I would buy lunch AND dinner out. When the DC were small it was always packed lunches and we were not alone. A picnic is far superior to a Costa bloody toastie anyway. Even a Tesco meal deal is superior.

Well yes that is a fair point - everybody should be able to afford food. And that is a real and more pressing problem.

It probably understandable to expect that for those on a very low income expensive days out are a rare treat and most activities are done on a budget.

But when even those on pretty decent salaries can’t afford small amounts of measured fun such as a glass of wine with lunch this is very an issue. We’re hardly talking about extravagant luxuries.

And when only the very well off can afford modest treats on a semi regular basis this has a big impact on the rest of the economy.

I’m not missing the point at all.
I don’t disagree that cost of eating out became way too high. But it doesn’t change the fact this particular Pizza Express example provided by Panorama is unrealistic.
The topic is far too important to support it with unrealistic examples.

I agree. In the “good old days”, it was possible for a middle income earner to buy the forever family home in their 30s, on one income and have a reasonable standard of living. Yes there wasn’t the same level of eating out and days out type luxuries, but I dare say if my mum had also worked, we’d have felt like royalty! DH and I both work flat out and we’re still squeezed.

Whoever is eating anaemic lettuce sandwiches, are so obviously doing it wrong, maybe, but I have yet to see any post, where people have said that they make their own lunch to take on days out, mention anything of the sort. I always carried a homemade lunch on day trips. I somehow managed not to include any anaemic lettuce sandwiches. My lunch, imo, was far better than the overpriced, mediocre offerings on site.

I'm having a lovely retirement, thanks. Still don't waste money.

You're basically proving the OP's point here, you know. It's not the content of the sandwich, it's all the tedious virtue-signalling about the 'good old days.' Yeah those good old days when middle-class families could afford a big house and to send all their kids to private school on one income. And now their equally middle-class kids and their partners - who will both be working because that's how it is these days - can't afford to take their own kids to Pizza Express.

It's just a repackaging of that tedious old 'you'd be able to afford it if you didn't waste your money on avocado lattes' crap.

Here I come with a "back in my day" response.

When our children were young, we went camping near the coast and made sandwiches/had a picnic on the beach every lunchtime and cooked in the evening, because we were on a very tight budget. We'd have an occasional day out at a paying attraction.

As things got a bit better financially we started buying sandwiches from local shops to save the faff of making them, and we'd have the occasional takeaway dinner.

Everyone had a lovely time and very fond memories of their childhood (earning "points" for helping out to earn an ice cream - gets referred to often now they're adults).

Yes the 'year long ticket'

A scam really because not everyone is going to use that ticket again and certainly not in a year because they're just visiting the area, we have countless 'year long tickets' from places up and down the country that we will never visit again for a few years because we are not local.

I didnt even comment on the relativity to other attractions so that wasnt my point.

I think I’m going to go against the grain here but when I was a child we never ever had a meal out. Neither did DH apparently. We went swimming, had a day at the zoo, went on walks and had a day at the seaside or in London. Only in London, once a year, did we have a meal out. Yes, a different era but we didn’t have extravagant entertainment and meals out were next to zero. Both our parents were lowish incomes but we had a car which meant we could travel and go out for a picnic. Parents do need to trim the excesses off days out but dc will still enjoy them. My dc were taken out but we often took a picnic too. I think we enjoyed simpler things but went to the theatre and London when we could but expensive days out with us drinking wine just didn’t happen.

None of which addresses the points that I made. If you had room in your house and access to cheap hall fees, those things are pieces of good fortunate that in fact not everybody has access to. The idea of using a relative's home for free, yet it somehow not constituting a freebie, was particularly bizarre. You are plain wrong to argue that everyone can just get a cheapo local hall instead- the prices of many of them have gone up a lot since the 00s, like most other things!

We all know nobody needs to throw parties, of any type, so that isn't a point that needs to be argued. That goes for tnorfotkcab too, who I've just seen said the same thing.

I see your point, but I think it's expectation. The generation before us (I'm talking about family who lived in the UK, to keep it simple) didn't eat out every week. They did go for days out, but made up picnics and didn't tend to hate the idea of a day in a park/on a walk with lunch in a bag. I suppose you'd call them more working class than middle, but still. More recently, more or less everyone got used to eating out, and making up sandwiches etc fell out of fashion, just as people don't seem to enjoy the same types of days out.