Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

+1. It’s been a long time since I had restaurant food that tasted better than okay.

The food is just terrible at most places now. We eat at home almost exclusively- even for special occasions- and I don’t miss going out at all. The rising prices don’t affect us, but it just got to a point where nothing was as enjoyable as what we could prepare ourselves. I even get up extra-early and cook or make sandwiches to pack in a cooler for long car trips because hardly anything is edible. I guess it’s not just us who thinks this!

I totally agree, particularly as a vegetarian. Options on the road are limited, overpriced, and almost reliably awful.

Well, you limit yourself by not eating meat.

Anonymous wrote:The most basic economic law there is: Supply and demand. If there was not a demand for $18 BLTs, no one would be selling $18 BLTs.

This is true. I rarely eat out anymore not only because of $$ but those tasty chipoltle, cava, panera lunches are chock full of salt and oil. Yes, you get some veggies in there but it is slathered with not so healthy stuff. Not nearly as healthy as people think. Restaurants depend on salt and fat to make everything taste so much better than you make at home. That's because the average person will not dump loads of salt and oil on their food. Not to mention this is a good way to mask food past it's prime .
But again, there is a market for this food at these prices and when there isn't, they will close down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

+1. It’s been a long time since I had restaurant food that tasted better than okay.

The food is just terrible at most places now. We eat at home almost exclusively- even for special occasions- and I don’t miss going out at all. The rising prices don’t affect us, but it just got to a point where nothing was as enjoyable as what we could prepare ourselves. I even get up extra-early and cook or make sandwiches to pack in a cooler for long car trips because hardly anything is edible. I guess it’s not just us who thinks this!

I totally agree, particularly as a vegetarian. Options on the road are limited, overpriced, and almost reliably awful.

Anonymous wrote:I was in New York and paid $26 for a salad and a yogurt from a takeout place. The salad had salmon but still/

I paid $11 for a medium iced coffee (coffee + ice) and a bottle of generic water in NYC in August. I was there for work and could expense it, so was not very price sensitive, was it still felt outrageous.

Anonymous wrote:You sound like my grandparents before coffee.

That “quote” button is really useful in cases like this.

You sound like my grandparents before coffee.

The most basic economic law there is: Supply and demand. If there was not a demand for $18 BLTs, no one would be selling $18 BLTs.

And the robot fryers do exactly what a human does, only with exact consistency, and the machine works all day with no breaks. Sorry fast food workers, your skills are not special…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:so many places need to embrace automation and get machines to do most of the work of preparing food. Reduce labor costs to a few employees

Humans are robots.

Nobody said they are.

But robots will likely be flipping burgers in the near future. A lot of casual places also already have self pay kiosks. It’s inevitable that employees will be replaced at this point.

I’ve been looking forward to this for the past decade and it is coming to fruition. Look at big store chains for example, like HD, Target, grocery stores, the self checkouts greatly outnumber human checkout stations. Many new advancements lately in robot fryers and grilling machines. Fast food is 90% fried or grilled food, so what will happen with fast food workers are paid $20 and hr?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

Exactly. My humble $18 B.L.T. looked just like a normal sandwich anyone could quickly make at home. It wasn’t like a sky high volume of premium bacon or anything exotic on it. Total rip-off.

I just made a BLT at home for dinner and it probably cost all of $4.50, even buying the "good" bacon. I made my own bread, too. It was delicious.

No way am I going to pay a more than 300% mark up on an extremely basic sandwich just because someone else assembled it for me. People need to start just walking away from these prices. It used to be that even at a place with $15 sandwiches, you could get a BLT, grilled cheese with bacon, or cheese and tomato sandwich for less than $10, because obviously these sandwiches have relatively cheap ingredients and are easy to make. This is 100% a deli saying "let's charge $18 for this and just see what happens -- if they still pay it, we can double our profit margin on them." So don't pay it!

Welcome to the cost of "living wages" for unskilled jobs. Jobs like these were never intended to support a person or family on. I understand that many of these people are supporting themselves and/or family on these jobs, but the wage scale should not be designed around that.

But what do you expect businesses to do when you have increased the hourly wage from $7.25/hr to $17.00/hr and current statistics have not yet caught up to pre-pandemic mode. Additionally, the businesses are paying for the 6-7% inflation and all of the ingredients and supplies they purpose are costing more. You expect businesses to operate in the red and eat those costs? Of course not. Their costs have gone up about 250%, so eateries are passing those cost increases on to the customer.

Not everyone can go to college and land UMC jobs. There aren't enough of them. We outsourced the union wage working class jobs for the most part. The services are what's left.

You can't run an economy like that. It's in Adam Smith's book. So pretty soon, we'll have bigger problems to deal with than an $18 BLT. It's not going to be pretty.

I agree with you that not everyone can go to college and land white collar jobs. In fact, we've gone overboard. We've spent the last 50 years encouraging more and more to go to college and we've created an entire industry of student debt lenders to push as many as possible. We've created a glut of college degree holders and only some of them will ever find a job in their field of study and there are thousands who are in debt due to the college loans that they wil struggle most of their lives to repay.

But what we've done is pulled many people away from vocations. Now we have a glut of college workers and a glut of unskilled hourly workers. And we have a real shortage of service industry workers. Instead of making it easier for people to make a living wage in unskilled jobs, we need to encourage people back into the service industry. We need auto mechanics and HVAC technicians, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, chefs, medical technicians, and many other jobs filled. With the wave of changing technology, there is a real shortage of people who can install and service security systems, Wifi, cable, satellite dishes, solar panels and other modern systems. Every time I talk with techs who work in many of these fields they are working overtime and boatload of hours because the companies cannot find enough techs to take care of these jobs so they keep getting teh techs to work 60-70 hours per week until they burn out and leave to go look for other jobs. I know someone who didn't go to college, started as a laborer, ended up apprenticing to a locksmith and now works for a private university on the security team installing locks, electronic door controls, and makes good money. He says he now makes more money than he ever thought he could without going to college.

We have a dearth of skilled labor because people are not getting into these jobs. Rather than paying people to stay in low hourlyl wage retail type jobs, we need to find ways to get people back into the service industry. We need workers there, they'll learn skills that will get them good income and they'll fill jobs that are desperately needed. Paying people to stay at the poverty level with working wages for unskilled positions is a bad policy.
These jobs pay more than minimum wage. Some of them can be learned on the job. Some of them can be learned with less expensive vocational school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

Exactly. My humble $18 B.L.T. looked just like a normal sandwich anyone could quickly make at home. It wasn’t like a sky high volume of premium bacon or anything exotic on it. Total rip-off.

I just made a BLT at home for dinner and it probably cost all of $4.50, even buying the "good" bacon. I made my own bread, too. It was delicious.

No way am I going to pay a more than 300% mark up on an extremely basic sandwich just because someone else assembled it for me. People need to start just walking away from these prices. It used to be that even at a place with $15 sandwiches, you could get a BLT, grilled cheese with bacon, or cheese and tomato sandwich for less than $10, because obviously these sandwiches have relatively cheap ingredients and are easy to make. This is 100% a deli saying "let's charge $18 for this and just see what happens -- if they still pay it, we can double our profit margin on them." So don't pay it!

Welcome to the cost of "living wages" for unskilled jobs. Jobs like these were never intended to support a person or family on. I understand that many of these people are supporting themselves and/or family on these jobs, but the wage scale should not be designed around that.

But what do you expect businesses to do when you have increased the hourly wage from $7.25/hr to $17.00/hr and current statistics have not yet caught up to pre-pandemic mode. Additionally, the businesses are paying for the 6-7% inflation and all of the ingredients and supplies they purpose are costing more. You expect businesses to operate in the red and eat those costs? Of course not. Their costs have gone up about 250%, so eateries are passing those cost increases on to the customer.

Not everyone can go to college and land UMC jobs. There aren't enough of them. We outsourced the union wage working class jobs for the most part. The services are what's left.

You can't run an economy like that. It's in Adam Smith's book. So pretty soon, we'll have bigger problems to deal with than an $18 BLT. It's not going to be pretty.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

+1. It’s been a long time since I had restaurant food that tasted better than okay.

The food is just terrible at most places now. We eat at home almost exclusively- even for special occasions- and I don’t miss going out at all. The rising prices don’t affect us, but it just got to a point where nothing was as enjoyable as what we could prepare ourselves. I even get up extra-early and cook or make sandwiches to pack in a cooler for long car trips because hardly anything is edible. I guess it’s not just us who thinks this!

That’s a bit of an exaggeration

I know it sounds over the top, but it’s honestly how we feel. We started cooking at home almost exclusively during Covid and it was like a palate cleanser. When you eat fresh food prepared at home, you realize how unappetizing most restaurant food is. Or how meh it is.

Sorry to anyone in the restaurant business.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

Exactly. My humble $18 B.L.T. looked just like a normal sandwich anyone could quickly make at home. It wasn’t like a sky high volume of premium bacon or anything exotic on it. Total rip-off.

I just made a BLT at home for dinner and it probably cost all of $4.50, even buying the "good" bacon. I made my own bread, too. It was delicious.

No way am I going to pay a more than 300% mark up on an extremely basic sandwich just because someone else assembled it for me. People need to start just walking away from these prices. It used to be that even at a place with $15 sandwiches, you could get a BLT, grilled cheese with bacon, or cheese and tomato sandwich for less than $10, because obviously these sandwiches have relatively cheap ingredients and are easy to make. This is 100% a deli saying "let's charge $18 for this and just see what happens -- if they still pay it, we can double our profit margin on them." So don't pay it!

Welcome to the cost of "living wages" for unskilled jobs. Jobs like these were never intended to support a person or family on. I understand that many of these people are supporting themselves and/or family on these jobs, but the wage scale should not be designed around that.

But what do you expect businesses to do when you have increased the hourly wage from $7.25/hr to $17.00/hr and current statistics have not yet caught up to pre-pandemic mode. Additionally, the businesses are paying for the 6-7% inflation and all of the ingredients and supplies they purpose are costing more. You expect businesses to operate in the red and eat those costs? Of course not. Their costs have gone up about 250%, so eateries are passing those cost increases on to the customer.

So you deserve a living wage, but not these workers?

Well, yes, because she presumably has a job that requires specialized skills and a college degree.

Nope. That’s now how this works. Not just the coddled few deserve a living wage.

That's exactly how this works. These people are going to find themselves right back where they started, no job, never mind a living wage and no skills to get a better paying job.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

+1. It’s been a long time since I had restaurant food that tasted better than okay.

The food is just terrible at most places now. We eat at home almost exclusively- even for special occasions- and I don’t miss going out at all. The rising prices don’t affect us, but it just got to a point where nothing was as enjoyable as what we could prepare ourselves. I even get up extra-early and cook or make sandwiches to pack in a cooler for long car trips because hardly anything is edible. I guess it’s not just us who thinks this!

That’s a bit of an exaggeration

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We pretty much stopped eating out because restaurant prices are crazy expensive.

+1
And I'm consistently disappointed with what we get for the inflated prices.

+1. It’s been a long time since I had restaurant food that tasted better than okay.

The food is just terrible at most places now. We eat at home almost exclusively- even for special occasions- and I don’t miss going out at all. The rising prices don’t affect us, but it just got to a point where nothing was as enjoyable as what we could prepare ourselves. I even get up extra-early and cook or make sandwiches to pack in a cooler for long car trips because hardly anything is edible. I guess it’s not just us who thinks this!