So when do people stop going out to eat?

[fan4ever]

I have a customer who owns 5 Mexican Food Cafes here in the Phoenix area. The past few years we've reprinted their menus 6 times...always to accommodate higher prices. Their typical cost now is about $18.00 per entree...Mexican food.

On a personal note I stopped by a McDonald's today and paid $4.96 for a large order of fries. There's got to be a breaking point for most folks.

[crispystl]

I was getting pretty close to the breaking point, but yesterday I paid $11.72 for a cold ass personal pan pizza and that did it for me. I brought a sandwich today .

[fan4ever]

The restaurants/businesses here in Scottsdale have a affordable housing issue. The restaurants/stores can't hire people to work for $15 an hour because the people who might be interested in filling those jobs have to commute a great distance to work there and it's not worth it to them. We have plenty of kids growing up in our community but it seems they're not filling the jobs either.

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by crispystl

I was getting pretty close to the breaking point, but yesterday I paid $11.72 for a cold ass personal pan pizza and that did it for me. I brought a sandwich today .

I paid $24 for a pan pizza at the Phx airport last weekend and it was terrible. Pretty ridiculous

[HonestChieffan]

$23 bucks for a fast food burger meal for two is bad but then they spi the pay gizmo and they expect a tip? **** that. Went in to buy bagels 2 weeks ago. dude tosses 12 bagels in a sack and does the spin for tip move.....nope, aint ever gonna happen

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by HonestChieffan

$23 bucks for a fast food burger meal for two is bad but then they spi the pay gizmo and they expect a tip? **** that. Went in to buy bagels 2 weeks ago. dude tosses 12 bagels in a sack and does the spin for tip move.....nope, aint ever gonna happen

We were in a rush the other day and ordered pizza from Domino's. We ordered via the online app and I went to the drive-thru window to pick it up.

The lady at the window handed me my stuff and then asked if I wanted to leave a tip. I love my service people (both of my daughters worked in food service until their owner died recently) and I generally tip handsomely. I did end up leaving a tip but it wasn't much. I thought it was kind of silly to even ask.

[ToxSocks]

It's all relative. Considering the cost of groceries, eating out aint always all that bad.

Also, the Apps help a lot, as do coupons and promos.

[displacedinMN]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

We were in a rush the other day and ordered pizza from Domino's. We ordered via the online app and I went to the drive-thru window to pick it up.

The lady at the window handed me my stuff and then asked if I wanted to leave a tip. I love my service people (both of my daughters worked in food service until their owner died recently) and I generally tip handsomely. I did end up leaving a tip but it wasn't much. I thought it was kind of silly to even ask.

a tip for handing it out the window? No.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

a tip for handing it out the window? No.

I always tip, that's just me. But I'm not above tipping 50 cents for something stupid like what I described.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

a tip for handing it out the window? No.

Yeah. You don't get a tip for handing me something or wrapping up a burrito when your job is burrito wrapper. That's just ridiculous.

[Shiver Me Timbers]

Not food or groceries but-
My power bill (gas and elect) was close to 900 bucks last month. A year ago it was 380
I refused to let them put a smart meter on my house. Guess they are making me pay for it now

[crispystl]

Originally Posted by tooge

We can afford to eat out, but it has become the principal of it at this point. I'm not paying $70 for the wife and I to go to a restaurant just to eat food I can make at home. I started shopping at AlDI more and it's amazing how much less expensive that place is. Plus, I really enjoy cooking so it hasn't been a sacrifice at all.

Yeah that's where I'm at too. I always tell my wife I feel like I get so much better value from going out to a nice steak dinner for a couple hundred bucks than I do paying 60-80 dollars to eat at one of the shithole corporate restaurants.

[FlaChief58]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

a tip for handing it out the window? No.

Fast food joints will never get tipped from me, especially now that they're making $15 an hour. No Tyler, I'm not giving you a tip for putting my food in a sack and handing it to me. Sit down restaurants with actual servers are a different story. I start at 15% and based on the quality of service, it goes up or down.

[George Liquor]

I got chipotle last night. $13 for a Burrito filled with crunchy rice and chicken as dry as tree bark.

15 dollars an hour my ass

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by BDj23

I got chipotle last night. $13 for a Burrito filled with crunchy rice and chicken as dry as tree bark.

15 dollars an hour my ass

Im ready for the robots

Shit they make a minimum of $14.50 an hr at Wal-Mart now to be a reerun

$15 an hr is $31,200 a year. My first job outta college in 08 or 09 was $34,000. Got damnnnn

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by FlaChief58

Fast food joints will never get tipped from me, especially now that they're making $15 an hour. No Tyler, I'm not giving you a tip for putting my food in a sack and handing it to me. Sit down restaurants with actual servers are a different story. I start at 15% and based on the quality of service, it goes up or down.

Yeah, the tipping culture is out of hand, even worse than normal.

The ethical challenge for me is that I want people to make a livable wage, and a lot of jobs don't do that.

Having said that, if the person at the fast food window is making $17 an hour now, and then getting (total guess here) another $5 an hour in tips, that's a full-time equivalent of almost $46,000 per year. In Denver, that actually qualifies as a livable wage, and I wonder how it compares to a lot of new college grad jobs.

Good for them if they can make a livable age at the fast food window, I guess. But they'd better be doing a really good job of giving me fast service and good food.