This was expensive?

[constantnc]

Local garden center..

2 toasted sandwiches with tiny side salad. The sandwich consisted of 2 pieces of bread with meat/cheese.
2 teas
1 fruit tea
£32 😬 for a quick bite to eat...

@igelkott2026 , I wouldn't unless it was far away. I can think of a really good one that's about 28 miles away. I'd probably take a bottle of water and a sarnie with me but I'd eat it in the car.

That's insanely expensive but more fool you for paying. You could get the meal you describe for £20 from most places around here.

I was in the staff cafe the other day and overheard one of the staff members laughing about people that paid for cups of tea. £2.50 (or whatever the price is) for a teabag and boiled water. Thats why I never buy drinks out. I always take a bottle of water.

I was looking at the cat cafe in London for a b'day treat. They wanted £55 per person and only have just over an hour to eat it/see the cats. It's really small too, well, certainly not £55's worth.
As much as it's fab to help cats and independent shops, can't afford this kind of thing anymore.

£3.60 for a cheap teabag, hot water and a drop of milk. It is expensive when you think about it. I would rather drink tap water and buy myself a box of teabags that will last longer than one cuppa.

£11 for a toasted sandwich and nearly £4 for a teabag and some hot water is absolutely insane.

Name and shame! That’s extortionate! Even the big garden centres aren’t that pricey, I know COL has increased but that’s daylight robbery!

Yes, the chef is usually the one who orders supplies?

Ridiculous price, but Garden Centres aren't your best hunting ground if you want a quick bite to eat.

I presume they had a menu / price list available though ?

Why would you order somewhere that was charging that ?

I've had a large baguette filled with ham and salad and a large mug of tea for a total of £4.10 this lunchtime, in the caff at the back of our High Street market. I mean, that is known for being great vfm, but there is a whole lot of distance between £4.10 and £16pp.

You sure know how to live!

Isn't it bleedinglyobvious that no-one would take snadwiches and a flask to a garden centre?

They wouldn't let you eat your own food anyway 😆

Two coffees £7.20 plus two full English breakfasts with no blackpudding and only one sausage each £29. I won't be going there again, even though it was a nice breakfast 😮

That’s ridiculous. Daylight robbery. Were the sandwiches particularly tasty?

I wont be rocking up with a bagged lunch no.

Met friends there - halfway between our houses, and i offered lunch as a belated birthday treat.

Sarnies were £13, teas over £2+ each. The sarnies looked lovely, and friends said they were yummy.

We did say next time we would have tea & cake in the food hall end of the garden center...which would be roughly £18-£21.

And in my case, the cleaning too 😄

Their costs will gave gone up hugely - ingredients, electricity, national insurance if a chain - and custom is probably down which drives the prices up further. I've all but stopped having lunch out because the cost mounts up so quickly for what isn't a special meal but then I know that makes it even harder for these places to stay open. Last few times I went to a cafe for lunch we were pretty much the only ones in there - there's no way they can have covered costs.

Yes, we had a similar meal to this but including two tins of Diet Coke rather than alcohol at our local garden centre which was £35 and involved a 15 minute queue to order.

One meal was much less than the cost of a lasagne, if we’d ordered that it would have brought the bill to over £40.

You got a better deal I think. Pub for us next time!

national insurance if a chain

@FantasiaTurquoise All café owners pay national insurance for their employees, even if they are independent.

Then you should know the cost then of operating it and you also know often it’s not the same person, unless you’re saying you work in this site.

I think some posters are missing the point a bit. Yes tea is cheap. But they are not paying for a tea bag. They are paying to occupy a table in a nice environment and drink from a nice cup not a paper cup, and have it served so they can have a chat. They browse and walk around and enjoy the garden centre even if they don't buy anything. It could be a 2 hour outing and all for only a few pounds each.

We walked to a local beauty spot today and sat outside a little cafe - £1.95 for proper sized mugs of tea. £1.95! It was the talk of the table for being so reasonable - what rubbish times we live in right now that the price of a cup of tea is notable.

🙄 not the point of the thread.

oh yes, sorry! Almost impossible to make any hospitality profitable at the moment. In the old days the cafe was probably profit making, now it may even be subsidised by the garden centre.

Omg it’s just getting so stupid. And I really wouldn’t mind paying £30 for lunch out if it was really good. But most of it is utter shite. Dry dead limp and skimpy ☠️ . I could make a much much better sandwich at home.

It’s actually forced us to up our sandwich game this year and I have to say we are the master of picnics now. People actually walk past and you can feel their envy 😂

You could get four meals with drinks for that in a chain restaurant!