Now that we’re squarely in the post-Pandemic era, my family and I have started eating out again in the last 9 months or so, and the prices are sky high- about twice what they used to be.
I mean, places that would cost $10 a person with soft drinks are now twice that. When the four of us go out to eat, an $80 bill is not uncommon. Used to be that $50 was on the high side for the four of us, and that’s even considering that our oldest child has mostly transitioned off the kids’ menu.
Is this residual pandemic inflation, some sort of Russo-Ukrainian War inflation, labor shortage pricing, or some combination of all of them?
Is this a nationwide thing? The prices have been similar everywhere we’ve been last summer and afterward (Texas, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Missouri, Nevada), but I don’t know if those are high prices or the norm elsewhere.
Is this sustainable? I seriously doubt we’ll be eating out as much if prices are twice as high as they used to be- maybe once a week at those prices.
a) We’re not in the post-Pandemic era. Sorry to burst your bubble on that one.
b) But for a while, we were staying home; production plummeted for several months; and at the same time, the Federal Gov was shoveling money out to private citizens to keep us going in the midst of this crisis.
c) Inflation is absolutely and dependably predictable under those circumstances. I’m not an economics geek by any stretch of the imagination, but even I have no difficulty seeing how that works.
Probably a combination, but I suspect the war is the main factor because of (a) the loss of Russian fossil fuel and (b) the theft of Ukrainian grain in particular.
Prices have gone up in Canada and (when I was there in December) Latvia as well, so I believe it’s pretty much worldwide.
Although war has increased the price of fuel, bigger factors are likely a) inflation raising prices of food and services, b) minimum wage increases, c) scarcity of labour meaning higher wages, d) Covid causing some restaurant closures, more takeout than eat-in, more ghost kitchens, e) Uber Eats, Doordash, Skip etc. also causing more to eat at home….
Not to argue, but effectively we really are. Everyone’s vaccinated who is going to be, and everyone else is taking their chances. We’re not going to see anymore lockdowns or any kind of restrictions on behaviors, and only the most Chicken-Little of people, or immediate family of medically fragile people are wearing masks anymore, and with good reason, since most people in the US have hybrid immunity at this point.
While it may still be a pandemic in the academic/epidemiological sense, it’s definitely NOT one in terms of how people and governments are behaving.
Well yeah- that’s what I was trying to figure out. There’s a whole host of reasons that could be the reason, but it’s really unclear as to why places that would be in the $30-50 range are now in the $80 range.
My fear is that it’ll drive a lot of the mid-range places out of business. I mean, I like the place I ate lunch at yesterday with my family just fine at $45 for the family like it used to be, but at $80, we’ll be staying home. Same thing with pizza, and a whole host of other restaurant/take-out foods that used to be if not economical, at least not expensive.
I travel extensively. Yes, it’s national, although the exact increases vary by area and how far up the fancy scale you eat.
As a general observation, the basic family restaurants have seen larger increases than the high end places. e.g. $20 per person is now $30, up 50%, while $120 per person is now $140, up 16%.
Customer demand is 90+% back, number & seating capacity of restaurants is 70% back, and supply of restaurant workers is 50% back. So demand bids up scarce supply. Plus food and fuel inflation, largely due to Russia and the Mideast and COVID-based supply chain disruptions, with US money-printing / COVID handouts getting an honorable mention.
You’re probably right here. Lots of the low-midrange places didn’t survive COVID. The remaining ones are doing fine now as long as their customers can afford them. But once the COVID rebound traffic finishes dwindling, folks of modest means are going to be looking twice at spending big bucks to eat out.
As always, this will hit the folks of modest means (or those with big families) harder than it hits the wealthier folks. So e.g. Applebees will crash, while e.g. Ruth’s Chris sails serenely on.
The United States depends on neither Ukrainian wheat nor Russian oil and gas, so these are not direct factors. The US economy is in a state of substantial inflation (depending on what indices you reference, between 6% and 9% since 2021), with major causes being attributed to labor scarcity (nobody wants low paying service sector jobs, and especially miserable jobs in the food service industry with poor flexibility and regularity, and the immigrant labor force that staffed a lot of kitchens has been throttled even pre-pandemic), supply chain breakdowns (meat, dairy, produce, and speciality grains and nuts have all become highly variable, and again, the impact upon immigrant labor) combined with a bird influenza outbreak that resulted in poultry products, and in particular eggs, having temporary shortages. Many restaurants are also having to pay back loans, both on interim support and additional facilities and equipment they procured to get through the pandemic.
All of that being said, the cost of dining out has been artificially suppressed for quite a while, both by absurdly low wages (especially for waitstaff who in many states are paid below minimum wage and expected to make up the balance in tips) and perilously narrow profit margins. Most non-fast-food restaurants do well to just break even on entrees and depend upon the bar for profitability, and with people more accustomed to drinking at home the liquor trade hasn’t really rebounded. So what you are paying now is, adjusted for inflation, closer to what you probably should have expected to pay all along for good quality freshly prepared food served to your table.
They raise prices because 1) they have to, or 2) they can. I suspect it’s a little of #1 and a lot of #2. The restaurants we go to are plenty busy, even with higher prices recently. If they’re seeing strong demand, they’ll keep prices high. We love our local places, and hope they’re making enough profit to stay in business.
The disease is still fully out there. Medically, it’s a pandemic.
The public and government have largely quit trying to treat it differently than flu. IOW with (hoped-for benign) neglect most of the time. Socially, it’s over.
The real consequences of COVID are still rampant and are still a moving target. Economically, it’s a major disruptive force, and a constantly shifting one.
My Door #3 needs explanation.
Lots of people have disappeared from the workforce. They’re not all dead or disabled, and contrary to some RW propaganda, they’re not all sitting around the house collecting COVID checks.
Lots of supply chains are disrupted. Each of which results in herky jerky on-again-off-again supply to their customers. Who in turn do the same to their customers. Whether due to Chinese lockdowns, war-based shortages, missing workers in Viet Nam or Germany or whatever wherever.
The USA was already roaring headlong into a generational change as a vast supply of baby boomer workers would be retiring soon from every occupation you can name. It was always going to be hard for the US, whether industry, services, or government, to process the rate of personnel turnover. It was just gathering speed and volume when COVID hit and put the pedal to the metal. Now COVID-damaged businesses are struggling to cope with a bigger problem arriving sooner. Everyone is still reeling from the loss of skilled long-time older employees.
I saw a figure saying how many restaurants closed due to the pandemic, it might have been around 20%.
Ontario saw big price increases after raising their minimum wage to $15/hour (which seems reasonable to me). Inflation and worker scarcity would obviously increase them, as would reduced demand to eat-in. All the factors I listed are relevant with regards to increases, which are not due just to one thing.
Still, I eat out pretty often and have not seen a doubling of prices. Fast food (including chains such as Red Lobster) has increased quite a bit more than family places, which have increased in my experience by 15% to 50% (often at the lower end of this spectrum). There are still good deals on certain days, with certain chains or if one cuts coupons. You don’t see value menus or 99 cent stuff, but haven’t since minimum wages were increased before Covid or recent inflation.
I don’t think most restaurants are profiteering but rather struggling to survive in a difficult market. Aside from high end places most know raising prices reduces volumes.
In many areas, restaurants—especially fast food restaurants—are having to offer more than this ‘minimum wage’ for just entry level employees, and a premium on top of that to retain them. Which begs the question of how an industry is dependent upon a labor force earning less than what could only charitably be characterized as a ‘living wage’ could be considered in any way sustainable.
The pandemic didn’t so much break the restaurant industry (and many others) so much as just highlight how tenuous its capacity for maintaining thin profit margins built on top of paying people the bare minimum the market will bear and treating them as replaceable ‘resources’. Of course, this is far from the only cost impacting the restaurant industry; food prices, leases and operating costs, industry consolidation, et cetera, have all made it more expensive to run a restaurant, and those costs are passed on to the consumer. Which…is supply and demand at work, no?
I’ve assumed it to be mostly a matter of ingredient costs. Surely you’ve seen your grocery bills skyrocket. Mine are something on the order of 50% more than in 2010. The ballpark rule for restaurant pricing is about 3 times ingredient costs (or so) to cover the overhead (which itself has increased due to inflation) and eke out a profit.
Though I have to say, dinner for 4 for $50 – if we’re talking adults – is not something I’ve experienced since maybe the 90s. And I’m not talking getting loaded on alcohol or anything. At least $20 a person has been a pretty standard expectation for quite some time now, unless we’re going to McDonald’s or something.
Actually, many restaurants are doing their level best to absorb fluctuations in food costs (as they always have). The cook at my favorite breakfast burrito joint apologized for the fact that they raised the cost by $2, when the cost of eggs actually doubled and I’m pretty sure they were losing money per plate on breakfast for several weeks. I wonder how many people who complain about restaurant prices have actually ever worked in a restaurant or understand the uncertainty that most non-chain restaurants face with regard to labor costs, food and liquor price fluctuations, and unexpected maintenance costs that you have to deal with just to keep a store going from week to week.
There have also been nearly 60,000,000 cases of avian flu just in the U.S. which has devastated commercial poultry flocks. You may have noticed how much the price of eggs has increased over the past few months. The same is true for chicken and turkey.
My area (and probably a lot of others too) have seen restaurants pop up all over the place in recent years, and they usually don’t last very long. One excuse they give is “We can’t get help.” More than once, people on Facebook, when they announce a closure, have said things like “Maybe if you would have treated your staff better, and that includes actually paying them, you could keep employees”. In other cases, I’m not the only person who is thinking that the area just plain old has more restaurants than the area can support.