"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?

Of course life does not exist outside of the M25 or further north than Cambridge.

Many couples might well have 2 x min wage. Thats another important point. 2 wages, better property.

Not everything has to be about the very bottom. That's like the 'ordinary working people ' vs 'those with the broadest shoulders' when the latter group now apparently includes anyone earning even slightly above minimum wage. Panorama have made plenty of programmes about food banks, benefits trap etc.

I really fancy pizza express now…

Times were tight in the 70s - I remember it as a child. We weren't eating pizzas out every week, in fact we didn't eat out very often, and if we did it was in the type of place that offered a small glass of orange juice as a starter.

BUT

My dad - in common with many fathers at the time - was the sole earner in the family, while DM stayed at home and looked after me and my sister. They managed to buy a three bedroom semi in the South East near London before having us, and managed the mortgage, to run a car, to go on holidays in the UK and pay for ballet etc for us. They socialised pretty much every weekend in a local sports club, spending money on drinks with friends after DF had played squash with his mates. We went to the cinema occasionally and to the circus and pantomime every year. We were well-clothed, and ate well. There weren't many toys throughout the year, but plenty at Christmas and birthdays and always we were bought books.

This was possible all on one wage. And DF wasn't a professional, just in a well-paid, higher working class job.

Now? You'd need two parents working full time in professional roles to afford that house, the car and anything like that lifestyle.

That's the issue. There's been a massive drop in living standards for ordinary working people and the middle classes.

Sanctimonious posts about packing lunch and nobody in the past expecting to eat out every week miss the point entirely.

Surely it’s about modern expectations that have climbed to dizzying heights. Never ever would working people have expected the Panorama day out 50 years ago. We just want more and more but the money isn’t now there so lessening expectations, whilst still having a good time, is now important.

The pizza express example is daft. By my reckoning and not even using any of the many PE deals you could have a very nice meal as a family of 4 with an 8 and 6 year old for about £90 (x2 kids meals, x2 pizza, x2 sides x2 desserts and beer and wine for adults).

I find it irritating as well OP and not because I think everyone should take sandwiches everywhere but because it’s not a realistic example of what most average families would pay if they went out to Pizza Express for dinner.

its still a lot of money but I think most average waged families only ever do this once in a while and as a treat

But in the past this would have been because there was only wage coming in to the family.

Now there are often TWO full-time wages and yet it's out of reach again, having been attainable for quite a while, not so long ago.

I have no idea why anyone accepts this as ok.

Because nobody needs to be spending £800 or even half that a month on bad value family trips out. It’s not a human right.

I get your argument BUT surely the point of the piece is that they used to be able to manage a lunch like that, cost wise, and now they can't warrant it?

Not-so-much a budgeting piece as a bloody-hell-eating-out-has-gotten-crazy-expensive piece.

And they're not wrong!

My lot would moan all day of I said no starters/sides/puds/second drinks. I honestly think they'd rather not bother.

Loads of people had 2 wages coming in 50 years ago in the 70’s. We still didn’t think eating out and lots of days out was the norm. Because we couldn’t afford it.

Where has £800 come from?

Even ignoring the actual cost, what is bad value for one person may not be for someone else.

These trips out cost over £200, posters are moaning that they should be regular weekly occurrences. You do the maths.

@likelysuspect

A cup of tea is replaced now with a whole pot so that they can charge more for this.

This isn't so. Tea has always been served in whole pots in good cafes. What IS different is them having the nerve to charge for a bit more hot water and use of a teapot!

We tend to take a packed lunch on a day out with our child or if we are out for a walk or national trust place and maybe just get a coffee or ice cream at the cafe. The other day we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at a zoo and it cost around £50 for the 2 of us! Ok for a one off but wouldn’t want to pay that weekly.

But also it really wasn’t the norm. At that time eating out would mean a hotel restaurant, there really weren’t many casual dining options available, because it wasn’t the norm. Going out to eat was a much more formal process than having a pizza - my memories of casual eating out were bakeries serving tea and sausage rolls or a chippy tea in the Blue Lagoon.

What you're talking about though isn't growth. Prices are growing because of inflation - that's not growth. It's not growth if the government increases national minimum wage. Growth means an expansion of the economy and we're in a period of contraction (or will be very soon even if we're not technically in recession yet).

I don’t see anyone saying weekly £200 trips should be the norm, just that having lunch out shouldn’t be so expensive that it’s a considered spend.

Who said anything about about spending nothing?

Exactly and we certainly couldn’t have afforded it on top of brand new cars x2, never ending tech including £1000 phones for kids, Xmas Eve hampers, Easter baskets, boo baskets, nails, several holidays a year, new clothes on a loop, ditto renos, uber eats, £5 coffees on car journies etc, etc

Its utter madness now.

Anybody else remember their dad with hi is arse hanging out the boot every weekend nursing the old family car back to life? We didn’t have a video until I left home in the 80s for uni even though they’d been around a whole. Now everybody has to have every bit of tech bi in every room immediately.

It’s nuts and why people
cant afford to eat out because you can’t have it all.

Ah, and here we have it!

Just stop eating avocados, everyone…

So what?
They can cost money or they can save money, depending on the hobby, but plenty don’t involve spending on the level being discussed- obviously.

Id love to go to a berni inn again. An early 80s one.

I remember when McDonald’s arrived. Before that it was a sit down Wimpy on plates which again was not a regular occurrence.

This!

I was born in 1960. My parents had rock-solid jobs (Dad in local government, Mum a part-time NHS doctor). We ate out about once every month at the Berni Inn, or my Dad's favourite Italian where we once spotted the local BBC regional newsreader, ooh the glamour. We had two weeks self-catering holiday in Cornwall.

This was a time when food shopping took up 25-30% of the average househild budget. The price of a "standard white sliced loaf" was the national benchmark for inflation. I remember the run-up to the February 1974 election, with Shirley Williams standing outside a baker's shop saying how evil the Tories were because "this loaf <brandishes bag> now costs 22p", or whatever it was.

Also, has anyone looked at the calories on the menu of these chain restaurants? Starter plus main plus dessert can easily go over 2,000 calories. Great for strapping 15-year-old rugby players; perimenopausal 5ft6 women, not so much.