The High Cost of Eating Out in America

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-23/restaurant-prices-keep-us-diners-at-home-slowing-sales

by paulpauper • 2 years ago

33 34 2 years ago

kjkjadksj3• 2 years ago

The big mac index seems a bit trickier to calculate now that mcdonalds app users pay half price for one.

The Big Mac Index has always measured the base/undiscounted price of a single burger, which has always been comparatively expensive compared to getting a set meal.

kjkjadksj3• 2 years ago

Well if its priced higher now with the expectation that some users are subsidized that kind of screws up its utility when comparing to times or places that don’t have that system, if it was originally some proxy for food prices and cost of living.

antifa2• 2 years ago

There were coupons before apps.

kjkjadksj3• 2 years ago

While true they might not have been given out at the same rate. I expect only mcdonalds knows the true year over year average price people are paying in a particular market.

darth_avocado• 2 years ago

Pre pandemic, sit down prices were $16-22 for mains and $28-30 if you're ordering something really fancy like fresh fish or a steak (non steakhouse). If you go out now, a simple pasta will cost you 20+ and the fancier ones go north of $40. Eating out is now a luxury.

But at the same time, fast food is also not cheap. Ordering for two from Burger King or Wendy's or Chipotle can easily cross $40 if you're not careful.

tmnvix• 2 years ago

Not being from the US, it would be helpful if you could include some extra context here. Do these prices include taxes and expected tips?

Edit to add: Those prices do sound expensive compared with here in NZ. I would currently expect to pay all up about 20-30nzd and maybe 25-40nzd for fish or steak. Fast food has also become similarly expensive here relative to other options. This is after some pretty steep inflation over the past couple of years.

lurking_swe• 2 years ago

no OP but likely does not include taxes or tip.

paulddraper• 2 years ago

FYI, 20 NZD is 12 USD.

artwr• 2 years ago

I live in the bay area, but yes a main is $15-25+ and anything fancy can go to ~$50. You need to add 9-10% sales tax + 15-20% tip.

That's pretty pricey.

fknorangesite• 2 years ago

No, these would be prices listed on the menu; i.e., excluding taxes and tip.

costanzaDynasty• 2 years ago

I don't eat out because I'm chronically cheap. But after I stopped drinking magically the cost of eating out came down to Earth. But post Pandy, it's not just the cost of eating out. It's also the service, if you can find any. Most restaurants are wildly understaffed and the staff is terrible. I've worked service jobs most of my life before switching to tech so I understand more than most how rude customers are and how terrible these jobs are. This is something different. This is a pre-primed anger toward the customer.

oven9342• 2 years ago

Drinking must be legal because it’s so profitable, at your expense and health.

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

This is a pre-primed anger toward the customer.

It is just supply and demand. The price for evening/weekend/overnight labor was only low due to do high supply of labor relative to demand.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

An economic system where people can only get closer to living wages now that surplus labor has left the labor force through death and retirement should expect forward looking challenges, to say the least.

We can only hope the labor supply tightens further if that’s the only way some cohorts will see quality of life improvements. Prices are approaching true costs, very similar to how insurance prices are recalibrating towards proper pricing for climate risk. There is no guarantee discounted prices persist (energy, labor, insurance, etc).

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/16/the-missing-workers-who-are...

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/01/jay-powell-explains-america...

https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomer-retirement-surge...

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor...

https://www.axios.com/2022/09/03/a-deep-dive-into-the-labor-...

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/27/labor-shortages-air-traffic...

datavirtue• 2 years ago

Um...you used to be able to get by on the wages. The baby-boomer population shrinkage is coming home to roost.

whoiscroberts• 2 years ago

I eat out all the time at cheap and expensive restaurants and don’t have trouble finding service, I guess if you need the employees to dote over you that could be a problem but I just order eat the food and leave. What sort of service are you searching for?

op00to2• 2 years ago

I too have not had bad experience with wait staff at restaurants. I am polite and the staff is polite back.

tpmoney• 2 years ago

I can't speak for the OP, and I realize fast food is probably at the worst end of this, but I'd settle for things like:

1) Getting my order right >2/3 of the time.

2) Not having to repeat my order 3 times because the employee taking it is either stoned out of their mind or distracted fighting (sometimes literally) with their co-worker

3) Getting my order to me before it's cold

The only positive of the "eating out" experience post pandemic has been that I'm very quickly running out of places I feel like spending the money they're asking for to get the service they're providing so it's helping me save money. But it's still frustrating none the less.

x0x0• 2 years ago

I'm not expecting employees to dote. I'm expecting them not to be morons who can't get the order right, bring the food cold, or (a recent experience), notice when they charged everything on the bill twice. It's not rocket science to glance at a $300+ bill for a table that had one appetizer, 2 mains, and 2 or 3 drinks and wonder if that's right. Or don't leave food on the table and us with no silverware.

As other people have said, I'm cooking a lot more, so that's good.

The $55 + tip pizza place that's under a half mile away started bringing the pizza cold, so that's more savings.

I'm not being rude, I tip well, etc. But I'm not paying 20 - 25% for the above.

spacebacon• 2 years ago

Pre primed anger is an opportunity to make someone’s day.

Meet rude introductions with polite responses. If that fails meet rude mid game with a compliment. If that fails meet rude end game with thank you for your hard work. If that fails close with a generous tip.

You are much better off emotionally than they are at this point and may be the one that solves the problem for others they serve for the rest of the day.

rhelz3• 2 years ago

Fast food prices have been unhistorically low for a few decades, due to a combination of increasing worker productivity and suppressed demand due to the great recession.

Three bean burritos at Taco bell costs $1.89 where I lived from 1992 through about 2011. Far, far cheaper than I could make bean burritos myself, especially as a single man cooking for one. It was a godsend while I was a starving grad student, but lets face it, that can only go on so long.

When I was growing up, going to McDonalds was a rare treat. Now it is once again.

gruez• 2 years ago

Fast food prices have been unhistorically low for a few decades, due to a combination of increasing worker productivity and suppressed demand due to the great recession.

This does not seem to be borne by the data. Looking at BLS's CPI data, we see that the "Limited service meals and snacks" category went up by 30% since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile the CPI as a whole only went up 20%, and "food at home" went up by 27%.

rhelz3• 2 years ago

Hmmmm…….if I understand correctly, fast food prices have increased faster than general CPI? This could be explainable by fast food prices returning to historical norms, after being abnormally low, no?

rexpop• 2 years ago

cheaper than I could make... as a single man cooking for one

I don't understand. Why should economies of scale ever expire?

rhelz3• 2 years ago

There have been substantial wage increases, in a rather tight labor market. Both of these factors would conspire to limit scalability: if you can’t find more workers or if they are too expensive, you can’t scale.

NaOH• 2 years ago

Costs in all major areas have increased. The cost of goods has gone up. That’s the ingredients, beverages (alcoholic or not), and indirect items (linens, silverware, dish soap, etc.). The cost of transporting the goods to establishments has gone up. Not just fuel, but the labor in warehouses and driving vehicles, not to mention maintaining those vehicles (usually semi trailers). The cost of real estate has generally gone up where food establishments are located. The cost of labor has gone up, not just in the restaurants but also the industries that service or supply restaurants. It would be impressive if the cost of eating out hadn’t gone up.

1letterunixname• 2 years ago

In Austin, most of the restaurants suck and are expensive. Even the pizza is terrible. Tacos are everywhere, but burritos not so much. There are a few good places. But there's really no point when I can cook better than 99% of them.

A similar situation is true with meal delivery because DoorDash and Favor drivers deliver cold, shitty, expensive food that's often wrong. They suck.

Regular Amazon can barely deliver order 30% of the time, with most packages being stolen or discarded by the drivers, and 50% of the time they are delivered in the wrong place in public areas. So I don't use Amazon.

Oh, and Whole Foods, despite being headquartered here, carries very little diversity of items. You can't even get actual pita bread or lavash at the Whole Foods' flagship store. It's bland and optimized for profits because most Whole Foods shoppers in Austin aren't all that sophisticated but have money to burn.

H-E-B does a bit better, but it's essentially a big box store with aisles of unhealthy food in enormous quantities.

Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord) is about the only decent grocer in town.

California has infinitely more choices and there's nothing like Berkeley Bowl in Austin with Wheatsville being a tiny shop compared to the "Whole Earth Access"-adjacent Berkeley Bowl.

dvno42• 2 years ago

Austin is brutal for eating out compared to 1st class cities. Everything is mediocre at best and expensive. Silly anecdote but I've started ordering delivery pizza from a deep dish Chicago (frozen and shipped) place and the price is comparable to the pizza chain down the street from me. The Chicago pizza is drastically better than what gets delivered locally.

shrugs idk, I'm prob just spoiled after being SoCal for so long. My next move will def be to somewhere with good food.

anotheruser13• 2 years ago

As a Chicago native, I can attest. However, most of us eat "tavern style" pizza, which is thin crust.

JamieDawsonCode• 2 years ago

This has been one of the biggest motivators for why I decided to get better at cooking. Nowadays I feel that I can make a better burger than just about any burger joint I can find in my city.

The High Cost of Eating Out in America

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