Yes, but there was a time when time, not so long ago, when the cost of food was BY FAR the major expense of selling food . It was a RELATIVELY much more important expense than other costs involved in running a restaurant today.
Your vinegar example is a common issue at ‘dollar’ stores, where in order to keep the price at $1/product some serious dilution sometimes occurs. Looks like the same size bottle of dish detergent or shampoo but the dollar store stuff runs out like water. Also paper towels that are rolled up very loosely and don’t contain as many sheets.
Fred Meyer, a Kroger owned supermarket chain in Oregon sells a house brand bleach which is 6% bleach, the de facto industry standard, and a cheaper house brand which is a bit over 2%. In other words, they take a gallon of house stuff and add two gallons of water to get the el cheapo brand. People buy it. They think they are getting a deal
Related:
“Is our food shrinking?”
“The era of cheap food may be over”
Lol. Huh? They couldnt just not hand you the fries? I don’t get it.
I can see that. They don’t want to risk their job. The bosses at low wage McJobs are often arbitrary, capricious, and irrational. The employees don’t want to get in trouble for not giving you what you ordered or for giving you the combo price when you really didn’t order a combo.
To you, their jobs may be a joke. To them it means being able to pay the rent. If the rule says they must serve fries with the combo or that they can only give you the combo price when you actually order the full combo, they are going to do that.
Order a Cesar salad for dinner at Cheesecake factory, and you’ll get a salad most people would be splitting with 4 people at home. Seriously, that thing was monstrous! And the worst part was I ordered a salad in the first place because I wasn’t hungry enough for a pasta or meat entree. Their portions are insane.
My wife pokes fun at me for eating my food in a particular order. Its mainly because I try not to make it a habit of trying to eat everything in one sitting. I’ll prioritize eating the stuff that doesnt taste as good as leftovers (french fries in particular) and save stuff that does, particularly if I can convert it to sandwich form the next day (steak or chicken breast).
Monstro, you probably already know this, but often getting dollar menu items ends up being a lot cheaper.Both Jack in the Box and McDonald’s have a lot of items that are all a buck each and its often much cheaper to get stuff that way. I’ve heard the dollar menu items are loss leaders and are assumed to be purchased with a more profitable item. Like 2 tacos for 99 cents.
Food processors can buy wheat for about 13, Corn for 8, and oats for 6 cents a pound. Consider that when you next buy that $4 a pound box of cereal. If the grain was FREE, the cost of the cereal at retail would still be $3.90. People are being gouged badly, but food is still relatively cheap.
Order one dinner and split it; ask if the kitchen will divide the portions for you on separate plates. We have never been turned down and each will have a perfectly satisfying dinner at half price. For 1/2 pound hamburgers, a creation never offered in the not too distant past, order one an ask for a separate plate and knife and cut it in half. There is always plenty of fries, because potatoes are really cheap. That is why there is a trend to unlimited fries in some restaurants. Leave a very generous tip.
Corn may only be in the $4-5/bushel range right now, but last year it was running $6-7 and may well be again if we have the same Rainy Season/Dry Season effect going on that kills the crops in late summer.
A bushel of Corn is 56 pounds, shelled. Unprocessed you’re looking at 8-12 cents a pound. After processing, double that.
Still only a mild dent in the price of your cereal, but even so.
Maybe that is true of corn, but to make whole wheat flour, you just grind the wheat, so the wheat content in a pound of ww flour is one pound. Oat hulls are very light, a small percentage of the kernel . The point here is that when grain goes up a few cents a pound, the price of cereal will go up many multiples of that. When you complain about the price increase, they will say, “Jeez, the price of oats DOUBLED. You should be lucky we only raised the price of oatmeal by 20%!”
And people will think, “Boy, this company is really great for not passing the full percentage of the increase in the price of oats.”
Look at oatmeal. What could be simpler. Hull the oats, steam the kernels and run them through rollers. Viola! Oatmeal at a couple of dollars a pound from a nickels worth of oats. Suppose the price of the oats goes to a dime a pound. Do you suppose that oatmeal will then be $2.05 per pound? No way. It will probably go up a quarter or more.
The second article refers to the global scenario, one where most people earn only a few dollars a day and have to pay for other basic needs.
I’d argue that the reverse is true in Aus even if the burger chains deny it. If they haven’t gotten smaller they sure haven’t got bigger.
Restaurant meals here are generally not huge, but can be expensive.
Its true. Poor people in the developing countries have been seriously hurt by rising food prices. One of the drivers is the use of corn for the production of ethanol for fuel in the US, which has been proven to be counterproductive.
Speaking of smaller portions, my husband and I went to the new-ish (year old) Chinese buffet and I thought of this thread. The chicken pieces had been cut in half. Not a bad idea for the larger pieces but so had the divided wings. Cross-ways, so each full one made four. I told him if they started cutting the napkins in half we’d know they were going to close soon.
It should be noted, though, that even as oil and food prices are high, consumption of both continues to rise in developing countries, likely because of a growing global middle class coupled with high forex reserves.
My good woman, I do believe you have discerned my point!
YES! I’m agreeing with the gripe in the OP! I’m going to pay a higher price per unit; I recognize that this is something that is going to change. I wish for the number of units per standard package to remain unchanged.
I am not getting my wish, so :mad:.
I have noticed this phenomenon in restaurants, mainly with dishes containing fresh vegetables. For example, my favorite local steakhouse used to do a wonderful side dish of steamed veggies. It was an assortment of broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots, a huge pile of them. I ordered it again the other day, and the serving had been reduced to half its previous size.
I really like veggies, but in order to get full and stay full, I need to eat a whole giant pile of them. I assume this happens because fresh produce is expensive, but it is disappointing.