"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?

DH and I were saying the same. We no longer spend at the cheap and cheerful chain type places because they’re not cheap anymore.
I’d rather pay a few quid more for an independent place with a proper toastie press and decent ingredients than go to a Costa or Starbucks for a packet toastie that’s been chucked in a merrychef. Starbucks have ruined their cheese and marmite panini.

I agree in part with OP’s sentiment, which is about re-setting expectations and making do with the resulting options available.

However, this kind of thinking has no end point. In theory, absolutely anything can be viewed as extravagant when compared to the homeless family who are temporarily housed in one hotel room.

In a few years’ time will there be similar threads, but this time people berating others for boiling the kettle more than once a day? For daring to have more than one winter coat?

The point of the article is different from the one you are making.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/marcus-wareing-best-pizza-in-london-b2378963.html

Agree.

Unless it’s for a celebration I can’t remember the last time as a family we had a three course lunch with wine. We go straight a main and maybe share a pudding. Still feels like a treat. Of course it will expensive otherwise and it has been for years.

You are missing the point

It used to be affordable for a lot of people to go out and enjoy choosing what you want for a meal

And who are you to say that it's 'overpriced rubbish'?

Of course they can still go out for less, but previously they didn't have to (which is why there was a hospitality industry) and now it's not the same.

Articles like this are really annoying. Wages have clearly not kept pace with the cost of living and most people can feel that but the Pizza Express order was ridiculous. Even when eating out felt more affordable a family would be highly unlikely to order that much food. I can understand they might have thought they'd take advantage because someone else was paying the bill but there must have been so much waste.

Love the way the model is moaning about the bill, yet has a Balanciaga or New Balance (maybe) top on (RRP £100+)! But yes, sandwiches and bottles of squash will save every family about between 50-80% on a day out.

I sooo wish we had more independent home cooked outlets. All the chains serve the same frozen microwaved shite from the same factories just with different names. I think people are wising up, the industry has been taking
the piss for a while. Our local city is just full of overpriced boring chain restaurants, pubs all serving the same shite with fancy names. Just no. I’d rather go out just a few times a year to somewhere decent.

You can spend £8 a pint at most of our local watering holes now - couple of drinks each for a couple might be getting on for £40.

And this is why pubs are going out of business. You can drink at home for a fraction of the cost and the product is the same. On the receipt for the meal in the pub for this article one glass of wine was £10.95. You can have a decent bottle of wine for that, let alone a single glass, and I bet that glass of wine wasn't even very nice - it was probably a £6 bottle of vin ordinaire.

Absolutely. £3 for a friggin shite processed cookie?!! Madness

Both orders were more than needed to eat lunch really. Costa could have just been sandwiches, pizza express could have been pizzas, no alcohol. Think both families were taking advantage of panorama paying for them and wouldn't usually order that much food.

And you can go camping in Norfolk rather than an all-inclusive in Spain for your holidays

But people don't want to, and before, it was affordable. Now it's not

This is a difference in attitude between younger generations and boomers. My dad had a professional job and yet we grew up on sandwiches for days out. We went to a restaurant twice in my entire childhood - one was a pub where my mum shared chicken in a basket with all of us and another was an Indian restaurant for my mum's birthday. There were nowhere near as many restaurants and cafes in those days because families didn't eat out habitually.

Most families (mine included when the kids were younger) don't have a slap-up meal out. You get the cheapest pizzas on the menu, adults drink water, maybe parents even share a pizza. What they had isn't the norm for most families, even those on decent salaries. It's a bit like not getting a black cab in London. Not been in one since the early 90s.

OP you have spectacularly missed the point 🤦‍♀️

I'm not sure if you are deliberately missing the point of the article.

The point is, of COURSE they could make more sensible choices, and the ' Eee, when I were a lass' posts also don't help.

The article isn't about how you can save money, it's about how a certain demographic can't afford to eat out in a way they used to, and how damaging that will be for the economy eventually.

Our family now balks at having Fish and Chips for tea, as that is £10 a head now. Could we cut down? well yes of course, we don't even need to have it, but when a simple chippy tea becomes something you carefully check your budget for as if you going out for a slap up meal when it never used to be like that, then there is an issue.

I agree - everyone knows how expensive it is to eat out, so why would you if you can’t justify it?

Overhead costs these days for restaurant and cafe owners are crazy high, so they have to be passed into customer. Because the owners aren’t running charities. Sick and tired of people whinging about the cost of eating out - stay home or bring a packed lunch. Problem solved.

I’m with you, OP.

When my three DC were young, we’d always take our own food and drink bottles on days out. Much nicer food (and view if you find the right spot) than the over-priced, ultra-processed crap in chain cafes. Even back in the day, 5 drinks was over a tenner.

If you take a (blunt) knife and food container (use lid as chopping board), you can cobble together a decent packed lunch (nice bread, cheese, fruit etc) from a shop when you get there if you don’t have time/inclination to make it beforehand. Can be nice to sample local products.

We used to have fish and chips on way home from the seaside. But even that’s getting ridiculously expensive.

I read a bit of the article.
A box of juice at Costa is nearly £5. Er no. Wouldn't pay that. Can afford it but its a rip off so won't be happening.
We were out in central London yesterday. Dim sum lunch in China town - we had around 12 plates of dim sum and a main meal to share with 3 drinks. Bill was £91. We don't usually spend that much but we were starving/value we thought was good. The meals set out in this article are uninspired/there are cheaper alternatives and as such it would be a no from us.

No it did not!!!!

It wasn’t possible in the 70s and 80s and when my early 20s kids were little we couldn’t afford it then either and my husband was just into the higher tax bracket. We rarely ate out, had to look for offers and Tesco vouchers whilst keeping within a strict budget.

Just because you didn't do it doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Half a century ago fish and chips were a weekly treat, now they aren't, we are getting poorer as a nation.

If you set the bar as low as the third world, good for you, I want better for my children.

I get it.
We had a chippy tea last Wednesday. Something I had as a child every Friday in a standard northern town.

For fish and chips, a fish on its own and cod roe and chips it was…£29.30 😱

This is the point. Food price inflation has gone absolutely nuts.

Yeah this. Everyone can budget and take a sandwich or a Tupperware if they need to.

But the reason many people take hard core high paid jobs is so they don’t have to skimp on expenditure outside work. Its a trade off.

If you’re working 50+ hours a week and having to take sandwiches on a day trip it sort of begs the question why are you killing yourself in a stressful job which doesn’t make it worthwhile?

I can’t get over the fact they’ve chosen to have lunch at Costa Coffee. Of all the food outlets, both chain and independent, I just don’t see why you’d choose there. I’d rather have a ham butty and a banana at home than go there, and I love eating out.

OP, YANBU to notice that family has made some whacky choices, YABU to gloss over the entire point of the article which is to demonstrate middle earners are struggling to afford nice stuff.