h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"But restaurateurs say it's necessary to make money from wine because margins on food are so tight or non-existent"
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27998052

This is a fine example of how messed up and ridiculous business (any business, not just restaurants) has become, although it's not exactly a recent phenomenon.

Why is the money a restaurant makes on food so small? Because they don't charge a realistic price for it. The price of any goods or service should reflect the sum of its cost plus a reasonable profit, reasonable being a hard word to pin down and quantify, of course, because it means different things to different people.

It seems quite obvious to anyone who doesn't have a dogmatic and entrenched business mind that this is how things should be. You charge what the food costs to produce, and you make a small profit on the booze.

"If we marked up our food as much as our wine we would have to charge unrealistically large prices for it, and therefore the wine sales do partially subsidise the food," says Chris Chown, an accountancy graduate who owns and runs Plas Bodegroes restaurant in Gwynedd"

Leaving aside the fact that an accountancy graduate, rather than a chef, is owning and running a restaurant...

Define 'unrealistically'. Who gets to say what is unrealistic? The only reason it seems unrealistically high is because restaurants have, for years on end, both cut costs (usually by cutting payroll and by buying the cheapest possible ingredients), and developed this idea of making more money or one part of the meal than another because of their perceptions of their customers' perceptions. The same principle applies to dessert, by the way. Restaurateurs say that they make even less money on puddings than they do on the main meal.

And if you think it would be unfair to tea-totallers if they had to pay more for the food while the topers were getting cheaper wine and beer, think again - the money a restaurant makes on non-alcoholic beverages like iced tea and fizzy drinks will make your eyes water.

Take a 32 fluid-ounce plastic glass, fill it with ice, pour in a few pennies-worth of your fizzy pop of choice (after the ice has been taken into account that comes to about 12-14 fl oz, although you advertise it as 32oz)) and charge $3.00 for it.

Take an industrial-size teabag that costs less than a dollar, use it to make three gallons of tea, then take the same plastic glass, fill it with ice and tea, and charge $3.00 for it.

The problem is that in a rush to the bottom, in terms of price, the idea that goods and services should be as cheap as possible is not just ingrained in the minds of both business and its customers, the wages paid to employees now reflects this state of affairs, and to do anything about it (ie, put up prices to reflect their true cost, including a living wage) would immediately condemn most of the population to grinding poverty.

It's rather like buying a pair of shoes for £30, where the left shoe costs £27 and the right shoe costs £3. "Because if we didn't charge so much for the left shoe, we would have to charge an unrealistically high price for the right shoe!"

Very handy in certain circumstances.

"I've got nothing against your right leg, Mr Spigot. The trouble is, neither have you."

oh don't get me started on restaurant pricing ( being one of those contributing to the low cost of food)

Oh please do, Sho. That's the whole point of a conversation

And let's not forget that minimum wage for wait staff is just $2.13/hour.

Now that, idiotic wages for wait staff, makes me just

It doesn't have to be that way! Pay them fair, make the meal fairly priced, and make tipping be truly for excellent, extraordinary service!

I'd like to do away with tipping altogether, and I speak as someone who's been in a job where, on an exceptional night, it was possible for one bartender to earn up to $300 in tips, and $100 on a good night.

It's a devious and slippery practice. Who decides which job should get tips and which shouldn't? Why should cabbies, for instance, get tips? It's already expensive to take a cab. What do they do to earn it?

There's the practice of people whose level of service can't possibly be related to any tipping potential, such as people who work in a shop which sells (including but not limited to) some kind of prepared food, or an independent coffee shop, putting a tip jar on the counter (I can think of one example of both nearby which do that). All they do is pour you a coffee or take a slice of cake out of a tray and put it on a plate, and they don't get paid $2.13 an hour.

Whatever job you do you should get a fair (and a living) wage.

Come the revolution

That is exactly the point this 0.1%er makes in this article that makes the best case for a living wage. I've been saying this for some time, trickle down economics is a proven failure yet business schools are still teaching it like gospel. It's the middle class that provides jobs and builds an economy.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html

"The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy."

(The point I meant was about the revolution. His words are that he sees pitchforks in the future for zillionaires.)

beef about restaurant pricing goes somewhat along the lines of pay your staff a decent wage and train them properly and it will enhance the dining experience. Generally here are paid badly, but not as badly as waiters - so the waiters don't really care one way or the other if they are brilliant or just so-so. And since people here don't tip that much (we tip 10% but not for average or rubbish service) there really isn't an incentive - aside of wanting to do your job properly.

But anyway if the food isn't priced properly, because of skimping on the staff wages etc, then it doesn't matter if it is the best kobe beef being served, the rubbish staff can ruin the experience.

Also - if the food is too cheap the oiks eating it don't appreciate it as much as if you took a McBurger, put a garnish on it and served it in a 3 restaurant at $100.

It does go on and on in a long and rambling way, though. I usually nod off so I might have missed some of his points.

As for trickle down economics. I'm not sure what they're teaching in business school economics classes but on the economics course I've just finished it was all about Keynes. And I've been vaguely following economics since I took it at A-level 30+ years ago and all I ever think whenever I hear "trickle down" is that it is a perverse twisting of the Keynsian concept of the multiplier

Nonsense. at least in the UK, IMO. Justification despite evidence, for overcharging for drinks, IMO; From friends who still work, as landlord, running a pub (he's actually a chef, and a baker by trade, so does a lot of the kitchen stuff himself), food cost price to pub, (including overheads, etc, plus ingredients, staffing etc), X2 = price charged at t table, so basically 1/3 of the price you pay was/is for cost of them getting it onto your table/plate.
Same justification is used to try justify why pubs charge so much for beer, here thesedays, yet, apparently they claim they make no money on it... yeh. same beer 1 hour 20 minutes from Cambridge is a quid cheaper because.... nope, it can't all be differnces in rents or staffing, there isn't that big a differnce as far as I can tell, even here in rediculusly expensive city to live in, crap wages are still crap wages, for bar staff... but, here, they can get away with c charging up for the beer, but in other areas they can't, and so don't and for their next trick, the energy companys explain how they need to rise prices by a further 25% in order to retain an ever increasing divident for their shareholders, and screw over the customers again, whilst justificying it with made up lies supported by their major shareholders and directors, otterwise known as the torry government. first against the wall when ....

Come the revolution, all beer will be a sold at a reasonable price, nay a state-subsidised price, nay free on the NHS!!!

But in the meantime we live a world of capitalism and market forces, and although you might think some pubs are over-charging for beer it's quite possible that others are undercutting, and to our modern perception, which has been shaped by years of business culture telling us that low low prices are the most important thing, regardless of the consequences, it looks like the more expensive ones are ripping people off, in much the same way that we used to think supermarkets were cheap compared to the family-run shops we used to buy our food from, but now the supermarket price is seen as the norm and the corner shop is ripping us off with those high prices. That's definitely arse-uppered.

Then there's the insidious practice of pubcos charging unreasonably high rents and prices for beer - "An 11-gallon keg of Carling from Enterprise costs Beverley £138. A meter in her pipes checks she doesn't buy it from a wholesaler for £80. She buys their Holsten Pils at £32 per case instead of £16 in a supermarket." http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2010/08/working-all-the-hours-for-none.html - to their tied managers and tenants (which other publicans don't have to pay) so that they have to either charge whatever their local market will take, or go out of business, which is usually what the pubcos want because they can make short term money by selling off the property, which to them is preferable to keeping it open and running it as a going concern, and which is one of the biggest reasons why so many pubs have closed in recent years.

Plus, we've been through the discussion about how, in terms of the hours you have to work in order to buy a pint of beer, it's relatively cheaper now than it was 40 years ago, at least by my calculations.

Don't assume that just because one place is charging more for the same product that they're a ripoff. They might, for instance, be paying their staff a decent wage rather than paying minimum wage, or (in the case of at least one nationwide pub chain I know of) relying on zero hours contracts in order to keep their prices down. A despicable practice in my view.

Ahh. none of the pubs of which I speak are chains, all freehouses Cambridge beer now more expensive than anything I can recall in recent years in London pubs, becasue, there are rich people in Cambridge, who'll pay it... and, £4.50 a pint of Diet coke, made from co concentrate? yeh, they're coke is useually more expensive by a few tens of pence, than the beer.; and I'm not drinking much at the moment, so going out is just lookign a waste of time, as most don't do any soft drinks cept cola and other simular rubbish I won't touch

Mind. whilst away recently, we were paying £10.50 for just four cups of coffee, which wasn't even particularly decent stuff... so its not just beer and in pubs that are ripping the consumer off IMO I get over 54 cups of coffee, from about £12 or £14 worth of beans, and I'm making it a lot* stronger than the cafe ones Mind, can't complain, 50% of my monthly benifits now goes on gas and elec despite having spent all the on insulation, new windows, new boilers etc, that one has to do in order to reduce the cost Good job I can cook or I'd not be able to afford to eat after paying essential household bills Another good reason to give up drinking any I guess, if only the non-alcoholic alternatives weren't even more expensive

I strongly advise against giving up drinking unless it's doctors' orders. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for even thinking about it. No nipple clamps for you, young man

Not exactly 'giving up;, just more 'not bothering'... An occasional pint or two may still pass my lips but... I'm getting so fed up with pubs.... They're just so... not like pubs... not nice places to be, and full of people I don't want to be near... There are a couple pubs near here, in cambridge, which are soemtimes alright, and one at least I know of in Norwich, and one or two back in Lowestoft/Oulton Broad, but, asides that... and, anyhow, don't think I'm meant to drink whilst I'm on teh Melatonin from the GP, and being able to sleep, and* be awake is, actually kinda nice. I even did all the housework today, and laundry, before I realised I'd decided to do it and even spent a while this afternoon looking at job adverts for potential consideration I doubt I could ever give up entirely.... mind... I think my family would disown me hmmm... having said which anyhow, might be out tomorro night, or Thursday I think, with a friend Just hope I can spend less than a weeks food bill, on two or so beers at a pub, plus some 'takeout' and a cab home Hmmm.... Maybe I just need to 'turn pro', to make enough cash to drink maybe set up a beer therapy clinic... or bread therapy... or towel therapy clinic

There's always homebrewing. y'know

I don't like drinking at home... haven't really done so in oo, a decade or so... I just like going out to pubs... only the pubs are... moreoften than not, now places I don't wanna be actaully, really, I'm just getting boared with drinking... seriously... kinda been there, done that... in the same way I got boared with drugs about err... quite some years ago, and just couldn't be bothered with em anymore anyhow... there are alternative methods for achieving the same chemical 'high' in the brain, and producing the release of the same endorphins, serratonin etc, without the need for ... delaterious external err... things... I'm far more off my head anyhow, without drugs and booze I think I scared people at the Manc meet.... anyone who'd met me before, hadn't ever met me before, sober Mind... its not like I've given up drinking for a reason of* giving up drinking, so I'm not like avoiding it entirely or anything, afterall, nothing better than a pint of beer, on a hot summers' day sitting ou in the beer garden, looking out over the river, sea, or broads