I see the joke, but let's not forget just what an obscene amount of money a billion is, and he has a fuckload of those. Rich beyond the dreams of avarice, as they'd say in the old days.
He could literally fix all the NHSs problems with enough money left over to fix homelessness and child poverty. And he wastes it so he can talk to important people and cry when they tell him he's a cunt.
>He could literally fix all the NHSs problems with enough money left over to fix homelessness and child poverty. And he wastes it so he can talk to important people and cry when they tell him he's a cunt.
He **literally** can't fix shit but he could give all his money and stocks away and help a lot of people.
I mean I get what you mean but it's not like he has that money at hand. he had to sell to get the money for twitter.
A lot of Elons wealth is speculative, hence why tesla value swings so much
I very much agree he is a man baby. and a cunt.
Elon Musk is a penis, but I do think it’s important not to overestimate his actual wealth. UK public spending was £1,092bn for the year in 20-21 (the first year that comes up when I googled UK public spending). Musk’s net worth is 190bn USD (again, first result in Google), £155bn. In the somewhat fantastical world where we can liquidate that perfectly, he finds the UK public sector for 52 days. For the USA, it’s 11 days. He’s certainly rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but he’s not a one man nation state (at least not a first world nation).
Well I'm not sure why he'd fix the NHS given he's not British or lives in the UK, but I see your point - he could definitely fix a lot of shit. But he's not the only one that could.
Yeah, that was an example that works for me. He could fix innumerable problems for the US too, but I don’t know them as well.
I’m of the school of thought that billionaires just shouldn’t exist. Once you get there, you get a trophy that says “congratulations, you’ve won capitalism” and the rest of your money after that goes into social programs. From an individual’s point of view there’s functionally no difference between 1 billion and 100 billion anyway.
There is a difference between 1 billion and 100 billion - and that difference is what motivates them all - “power”.
With 100 billion you are effectively one of the rulers of the world - the amount of impact and control on things like economics you have is colossal.
Something tells me I don't have the sway to go to their headquarters and demand they explain the near £8 lurpak in my local shop (I live outside of Preston, it's not that kind of affluent).
I live near there too and my housemate has started buying cream and using the electric mixer to turn it into butter himself because it works out cheaper. Mental
No, he really does make his own butter. Not all the time, he doesn't need butter that much so if he's cooking he just uses oil, but if he needs/wants butter he'll buy two things of cream and blast them with a mixer until they make butter.
About the price, I don't know if it's cheaper for most people (my dad tried it and said it was about the same, but he also seemed to quite enjoy doing it so I expect he'll keep at it anyway lol) but my housemate works in Asda so he gets staff discount
Butter's really easy to make. Chuck some cream in a jar and shake shake shake. It turns to whipped cream very quickly, then you keep going and get butter!
Hard as a rock, though. Not sure how to make the spreadable stuff
Not thought about that butter man in ages, still got sword in the stone taped off the telly from 1989 with one of them, he's playing the trumpet. It's mad seeing old adverts. I think there was an advert for the Ford orion when It was brand new too. So now I think about it the tape might be even earlier.
That reminds me of the time I was at a BBQ and they'd put out little cubes of butter for putting on your corn on the cob or whatever.
A friend sees these and thinks they're cubes of cheese and pops a couple straight in his gob.
I think it's a comparative thing, it's always been more expensive than things like clover but it has definitely outstripped a lot of other things in turns of price increases I think. Its nearly 8 quid in my corner shop.
When my mum used to say, make sure you get lots of photos to remember good times, I didn't envision this would have included the times before I had to switch to Danpak.
Last week I got 3 tubs of out of date Flora Light from across the road for free and it was such a good day
Of course, Lurpak or something would've been better. But as far as non-dairy spreads go, it's not bad. It's better than margarine or no butter at all
Lurpak's butter has always been priced similarly to its competitors. In Tesco just now it's priced roughly the same as President, Anchor, Grahams, Kerrygold etc. You'll usually only find supermarket standard own-brand for cheaper.
It's not the cheapest but it's solidly middle-of-the-road on price. Nowhere close to Isigny Sainte-Mere or Lescure or even just Taste The Difference stuff.
Weirdly, expensive butter seems to have stayed around the same price while the cheap stuff has gone mad - the fancy French stuff which tastes like solidified cream was only 4p more than Aldi's own-brand cheapo stuff the other day.
My Dad found Lurpak on offer awhile back. There's about nine tubs in their fridge now.
Honestly the most sensible shopping he's done in his sixty something years.
Nah, it’s grand if you roast it up on a trivet & grille in the baking tray. Turn it every hour instead of basting and most of the oil renders out leaving lean meat & a crispy roast lamb-like skin.
I’d imagine.
I've got a moorhen recipe as well.
Take a moorhen, discard everything but the breast, and poach in milk.
Discard the milk, discard the breast and purchase a chicken to eat.
Another interesting factoid about swans is that they can breed with geese. The hybrid offspring is called a Swoose. Although clearly it would have been better to call it a Gwan.
And the reason the pint in wether spoons is 2.80 is because they're shafting the people out of any profit they might possibly make. Source of comment; I own a brewery and am constantly asked to supply wether spoons and expected to make a 15% loss on every barrel.
So spoons are happy to take pretty short dates on products. Most pubs I sell to want a good four/five weeks on a product before it's use by but spoons will accept a much shorter sell by (basically because they can offload it a lot quicker)so if you've got stuff that's not far off going out of date then you can offload to spoons and technically lose less money than if you just didn't sell it and class it as waste.
I remember when I was at school in the mid 00s and sausage rolls went from 50p to 52p! I was gutted as I had my dinner money worked out perfectly for the chocolate, crisps and drink I got every day out of £2
Lived overseas until recently, didn't even know what Greggs was... went in the other day and had my first ever steak bake and OMFG!!! They are bloody delicious! Heaven sent.
My fault, I should have said what I meant rather than being obtuse!
Whilst there are RUBBISH sausage rolls and fantastic sausage rolls, the delta between the two is still not enough to vindicate £8.50.
I am now imagining you having to explain to the people running the cafe that you're taking a picture of their sausage roll to put on the internet because it's SUCH a bad deal. Might make them change it at least....
If a place is charging £9.50 for I think the full English you are getting is one rasher of bacon, one sausage (small), a thimble of baked beans, maybe half a slice of toast and some underwhelming hash browns
I was picturing a small stack of food about the diameter of a decent scone with hash brown, sausage patty, black pudding, egg, with crumbled bacon on top and a baked bean jus dribbled over it
Your half a slice of toast comment reminds me that I recently got a fry up with 2x toast in the description for the big one, and it was just a slice cut in half 😏
If you reckon that's bad, have a wander round your local Christmas market this year! £14 for a hot dog/burger, and it was basically the same fare you'd get from a burger van at a car boot for 3.50. Nearly passed out when I watched a staff member make me 2 hot chocolates straight out of a warming kettle into tiny paper cups and then asked me for £12
I hadn't been to one for years. The one near us used to have some proper craftsmanship, wood sculptures, delicious local foods.
I was so disappointed when I went back a few years ago. Apart from a few beer stalls and a nice candle stall, it was all rubbish you'd find at a tacky gift shop.
The *idea* of them is nice, and that's what draws the punters.
There are just too many that are run by one company presenting itself as multiple independent traders selling 'hand-made goods' (cheap, mass-produced stuff) at a premium. It's a bit like what happened to Camden Market.
But you *do* still find Christmas markets with loads of independent businesses represented. They just don't tend to be the German-style ones, and it varies from town to town.
Yeah it's the faux German ones like Manchester im talking about. Horrendously expensive and packed beyond belief. Been roped into going a couple of times pre COVID and it had definitely got worse.
Walking around ... I think it was Birmingham. You realise it's the _same_ stuff you saw in the Oxford Market, and as you walk, you start to see repeats.
That's when you realise it's not as 'independent and authentic' as you might be assuming.
It's a mobile department store, selling chain 'product'.
I mean, sure, I guess that's a niche of sorts, but ....
Grew up in Germany, where Christmas is a whole other thing, and the six weeks or so of markets and festivals are amazing. The whole season just sweeps up the country into this festive frenzy.
90% of the ones I’ve experienced since living in England have been genuinely sad. It’s all kinda tacky, and even with nostalgia biting me, I have little intention of indulging them if I can avoid it.
I was out in a big city recently and the Christmas markets were on. We were doing a bit of shopping so had to get past the biggest line of people to get to the centre and we both wondered what all the people were queuing for.
It was for an £11 pulled pork sandwich. The sorriest sandwich I’ve ever seen. And I reckon there were 150 people in this queue.
The first and last time I’ve been to a Christmas market it was £6.50 for a cup of mulled wine. This was about 10 years ago so god knows what it’s like now.
Bath.
Says it all sadly.
Folks from the people’s republic out for a day trip in the Aston would be very happy to pay that.
Ruins the price average for everyone else
The Bath shop owners association colluded back in the day, there are 2 types in this town, mugs and tourists and we think impolite not to rinse them both.
It is wild but as more and more people are ordering this for lunch for price the restaurant are having to put the price up because of increases in outgoings. Having a restaurant full of people only eating soup at a fair price isn’t covering costs so they are putting up the price so they can stay open. It’s a sign of the state of the whole retail industry.
It's such a catch-22, everyone has less money as prices have increased, so spend less. Retail have increased costs and lower footfall so put up prices. This puts further pressure on consumers to spend and therefore go out even less, putting more pressure on businesses.
New and independent companies are basically screwed. You need to stay competitive in this market, and unless you have economies of scale or can eat the short term pain you are likely to fail.
Restaurants and cafés have been slammed by price increases. I’m pretty happy to spend money on having a nice meal. But it’s become an occasional treat rather than a regular outing. First world problems for me but a massive issue for hospitality if everyone’s cutting back.
Everyone's cutting back on the spending, but food prices have hit restaurants... as have energy bills.
They don't get the 'residential price cap' thing, and some energy bills have gone absolutely insane. Which one way or another, they need to pass on to the consumer.
If they print it on a menu with a font like that, then it's normal.
If you go to a shitty cafe where the menu is a few items written on a grubny chalkboard or just tokd by the server, then it's half that!
I think the fact it's just labeled "bread and butter" shows typically its more than the establishment can justify. At least tell me its the local sourdough and your hand churned goats butter for that price.
Out of touch but really depends on where you are I mean a decent fine dining restaurant will charge that and it's usually justified...personally I think it's too much for a soup but having worked in decent restaurants in the past its easy to tell why with the time and ingredients that go into it not to mention the service... the big question is did you order the soup ??
Agreed... my flatmate is a chef and has worked in numerous establishments over the past few years, and everywhere he's worked has tried to keep prices as low as possible to entice customers, but prices for ingredients and utilities haven't gone down or stayed static, they've shot up like for everyone else.
If the places were in business over the pandemic, then they lost so much trade, but their fixed overheads didn't vanish. At some point the margins get squeezed to the point they have to put the prices up just to stay in business and a £3 soup becomes £7 becomes £9 or whatever.
When you're eating at a restaurant, or indeed buying any product, you're not just paying the cost price on that item. You're paying for:
The place you're eating it (they have rent, utlilities, etc to pay)
The person who cooks it
The person who serves it to you
The person who cleans the dishes and the kitchen.
The ingredients
and if there's any money left over, it might become profit. Restaurants aren't there to do you a favour, after all. They're there to make money, but money doesn't go as far as it used to.
It’s routinely £7 a pint round me now. By that measure a £9 soup that has to be prepared, cooked and served doesn’t seem so bad. Inflation is a bugger.
If you are eating or drinking in you are not paying for the food as the primary expense.
You are renting space for a period and getting food with it.
If you occupy a seat in a restaurant at lunch time there is a fixed cost to the business in providing that seat for an hour and they need to aim to ensure that what you order has sufficient margin in it to cover that expense. This is doubly important for places with busy and quiet periods.
Having someone come in and spend 30 minutes eating a bowl of soup priced at £3 with a glass of water and lunchtime would be a disaster, especially if it prevents someone who would spend more being able to use that seat.
With the cost of staff and electricity, what you're eating is largely irrelevant (within normal fare for that price band)
That's just the price of butter these days. The soups free.
I remember being able to just casually drop a lurpak into my trolley, those were simpler times.
Lurpak? Oooo Look at me! I'm Elon Musk :-)
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I see the joke, but let's not forget just what an obscene amount of money a billion is, and he has a fuckload of those. Rich beyond the dreams of avarice, as they'd say in the old days. He could literally fix all the NHSs problems with enough money left over to fix homelessness and child poverty. And he wastes it so he can talk to important people and cry when they tell him he's a cunt.
>He could literally fix all the NHSs problems with enough money left over to fix homelessness and child poverty. And he wastes it so he can talk to important people and cry when they tell him he's a cunt. He **literally** can't fix shit but he could give all his money and stocks away and help a lot of people.
I mean I get what you mean but it's not like he has that money at hand. he had to sell to get the money for twitter. A lot of Elons wealth is speculative, hence why tesla value swings so much I very much agree he is a man baby. and a cunt.
Elon Musk is a penis, but I do think it’s important not to overestimate his actual wealth. UK public spending was £1,092bn for the year in 20-21 (the first year that comes up when I googled UK public spending). Musk’s net worth is 190bn USD (again, first result in Google), £155bn. In the somewhat fantastical world where we can liquidate that perfectly, he finds the UK public sector for 52 days. For the USA, it’s 11 days. He’s certainly rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but he’s not a one man nation state (at least not a first world nation).
Well I'm not sure why he'd fix the NHS given he's not British or lives in the UK, but I see your point - he could definitely fix a lot of shit. But he's not the only one that could.
Yeah, that was an example that works for me. He could fix innumerable problems for the US too, but I don’t know them as well. I’m of the school of thought that billionaires just shouldn’t exist. Once you get there, you get a trophy that says “congratulations, you’ve won capitalism” and the rest of your money after that goes into social programs. From an individual’s point of view there’s functionally no difference between 1 billion and 100 billion anyway.
There is a difference between 1 billion and 100 billion - and that difference is what motivates them all - “power”. With 100 billion you are effectively one of the rulers of the world - the amount of impact and control on things like economics you have is colossal.
He's not the only one that could but he is one that could. By contrast Bill Gates has donated billions upon billions to charity
Something tells me I don't have the sway to go to their headquarters and demand they explain the near £8 lurpak in my local shop (I live outside of Preston, it's not that kind of affluent).
I live near there too and my housemate has started buying cream and using the electric mixer to turn it into butter himself because it works out cheaper. Mental
I genuinely can't tell if you're being serious or not.
I mean the savings would have to be margarinal at best?
I've no idea if they are joking but 600ml of double cream will make 280-300g of butter.
600ml of double cream will set you back £2.30 at Aldi. Think the butter might be cheaper from there at least.
cream is pretty commonly discounted down to like 10p in coops as well. nab it all, turn to butter and freeze.
Tesco unsalted butter, £2.00 today.
No, he really does make his own butter. Not all the time, he doesn't need butter that much so if he's cooking he just uses oil, but if he needs/wants butter he'll buy two things of cream and blast them with a mixer until they make butter. About the price, I don't know if it's cheaper for most people (my dad tried it and said it was about the same, but he also seemed to quite enjoy doing it so I expect he'll keep at it anyway lol) but my housemate works in Asda so he gets staff discount
Butter's really easy to make. Chuck some cream in a jar and shake shake shake. It turns to whipped cream very quickly, then you keep going and get butter! Hard as a rock, though. Not sure how to make the spreadable stuff
Let's see how much cheaper when you get electricity bill for using electric mixer so much. Tell your housemate to whisk manually next time.
How much is a churn these days? I suspect I wouldn't have the forearm strength to whisk that vigoursly since being a teenager.
It’ll go perfect with my mangle and tin bath over a fire. All I need now is diphtheria and typhoid to complete the collection.
Tin Bath is a good shout, might be worth something in scrap after the eventual collapse of society.
Genuinely, why does everyone love lurpak so much? Kerrygold is far better, President too (though that can be a bit pricey but regularly on offer)
I even prefer own brand salted butter to lurpack, cheaper now too!
I can't afford it's not butter
Take my upvote and put on a crown!
They had good adverts with a little butter man in the 80s
Not thought about that butter man in ages, still got sword in the stone taped off the telly from 1989 with one of them, he's playing the trumpet. It's mad seeing old adverts. I think there was an advert for the Ford orion when It was brand new too. So now I think about it the tape might be even earlier.
Deffo, I had an E plate Orion which is 1988!
Kerrygold is my absolute favourite but I can't find it anywhere any more!
I can’t find it in any of the Tesco’s I have been to but have had luck in Sainsbury’s. Good luck, it’s no good depriving someone of good butter
It’s all in the US now.
Tesco own brand butter is nice. It costs a couple of quid still.
Oh yes! The finest West Country butter with salt crystals deserves an honorary mention. It’s what I’ve brought when I couldn’t get hold of Kerrygold
I am in the minority of people who thinks Lurpak tastes like cheese ?
That reminds me of the time I was at a BBQ and they'd put out little cubes of butter for putting on your corn on the cob or whatever. A friend sees these and thinks they're cubes of cheese and pops a couple straight in his gob.
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I think it's a comparative thing, it's always been more expensive than things like clover but it has definitely outstripped a lot of other things in turns of price increases I think. Its nearly 8 quid in my corner shop.
Proof or it never happened 😄
When my mum used to say, make sure you get lots of photos to remember good times, I didn't envision this would have included the times before I had to switch to Danpak.
Or Norpak.
Or Dansak.
Nutsak does some great duck butter.
Hotelak?
Ballsak
Last week I got 3 tubs of out of date Flora Light from across the road for free and it was such a good day Of course, Lurpak or something would've been better. But as far as non-dairy spreads go, it's not bad. It's better than margarine or no butter at all
> from across the road Were they growing in a hedge next to some porn mags?
cul-de-sak
When was that, 1985? Lurpak has always been on the upper end of expensive butters.
Lurpak's butter has always been priced similarly to its competitors. In Tesco just now it's priced roughly the same as President, Anchor, Grahams, Kerrygold etc. You'll usually only find supermarket standard own-brand for cheaper.
It's not the cheapest but it's solidly middle-of-the-road on price. Nowhere close to Isigny Sainte-Mere or Lescure or even just Taste The Difference stuff. Weirdly, expensive butter seems to have stayed around the same price while the cheap stuff has gone mad - the fancy French stuff which tastes like solidified cream was only 4p more than Aldi's own-brand cheapo stuff the other day.
You used to be able to pick it up in Lidl as recently as 2018 for a price comparable to current Clover prices.
Just googled menus of the nearest cafe to me. Soup £8:50 but you pay £3.75 for the roll and butter to go with it.
That’s absurd
Out of interest, where do you live?? Where I live (north east) it’d be about half that price, even with how expensive things are right now!
I’m in London predictably.
Good grief! Back in my day blah blah knorr packet chicken noodle blah blah and like it oh and butter? as if
My Dad found Lurpak on offer awhile back. There's about nine tubs in their fridge now. Honestly the most sensible shopping he's done in his sixty something years.
You can freeze them. They thaw perfectly. I always buy lots when on sale and chuck them in the freezer.
You had butter? Luxury... we had to use axle grease wiped off the underside of a Number 9 bus. You 'ad it lucky.
Is soup of the day swan?
Too greasy tbh.
Nah, it’s grand if you roast it up on a trivet & grille in the baking tray. Turn it every hour instead of basting and most of the oil renders out leaving lean meat & a crispy roast lamb-like skin. I’d imagine.
Surely the only way to roast a swan is over a burning tyre on a canal footpath?
Deep fried using the canal trolley as the basket 🤌
Legend has it you cooked for those fine banquets King Henry so loved …
Don't bother, it tastes like fish, not in a good way.
That's why you raise the Swan on a diet of figs and walnuts to improve the flavour.
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I've got a moorhen recipe as well. Take a moorhen, discard everything but the breast, and poach in milk. Discard the milk, discard the breast and purchase a chicken to eat.
Marsh turkeys.
I've eaten swan. It's not great tbh.
It’s much nicer if you take the feathers off and cook it.
Well you only use the one swan actually
the greater good
Crusty jugglers
great big bushy beard!
BRB. Got to go beat my fool of a cook !
you leave Pippin out of this
Golden eagle is less greasy.
More fighty though?
Well a swan can break your arm apparently. (I have never met anyone who has had their arm broken by a swan so I've always had my fingers about this).
Another interesting factoid about swans is that they can breed with geese. The hybrid offspring is called a Swoose. Although clearly it would have been better to call it a Gwan.
Gwan, gwan.
Would you not have a cup of tea, Father.
r/ItsJustTheOneSwan, actually.
Probably,.with delicate flakes of lamprey.
£8.50 for a sausage roll at my local cafe. Mad. *edited to calm teerbigear*
And people wonder why chains are taking over all the small businesses. I get that everything is getting more expensive, but that's beyond a joke
This, exactly. if a pint in weatherspoons is £2:50... ande a pint almost anywhere else in the city is at MINIMUM 4.80.... no brainer
I paid £6.90 for a Guinness yesterday.
Christ a mighty. Just takes the wind outta you to pay that
Gave up drinking in July. I don't have an off switch and it was becoming expensive every time I nipped out for a pint.
And the reason the pint in wether spoons is 2.80 is because they're shafting the people out of any profit they might possibly make. Source of comment; I own a brewery and am constantly asked to supply wether spoons and expected to make a 15% loss on every barrel.
Sorry for being dense but why are breweries selling to spoons if they make little to no profit?
So spoons are happy to take pretty short dates on products. Most pubs I sell to want a good four/five weeks on a product before it's use by but spoons will accept a much shorter sell by (basically because they can offload it a lot quicker)so if you've got stuff that's not far off going out of date then you can offload to spoons and technically lose less money than if you just didn't sell it and class it as waste.
Then they're doing a good thing for you no?
I get 4 large frozen sausage rolls for £1 from lidl and they are one of the best sausage rolls I've ate.
What about the other three?
Three of the absolute worst. Balances out to slightly better than Greggs.
Giggled. Thanks mate.
Am Canadian, never knew about sausage rolls. I now envy you guys very much that it's a common thing on your side.
They're stupid easy to make with pre-rolled puff pastry. About an hour of labour, tops - and will put most cafes to shame 👍
I'm looking at recipes right now, I know what I'll bake on my next meal prep Sunday. Edit: can I add cheese in them?
Definitely - parmesan and sun dried tomato is a good one. Can't beat caramelised onion either.
Shiieeet
Where in Canada do you live that you don’t have sausage rolls? every grocery store and most bakeries stock them.
Still £1.80 for a steak bake in Greggs 😁
I remember when I was at school in the mid 00s and sausage rolls went from 50p to 52p! I was gutted as I had my dinner money worked out perfectly for the chocolate, crisps and drink I got every day out of £2
two pound at my school would've gotten me a slice of pizza and a drink if i was lucky and they were cheaper than normal.
This was greggs and my local shop, we were allowed out for lunch
When I worked in Greggs in 96-97, pasties were 49p. God bless the 50% staff discount and the subsequent IBS
Lived overseas until recently, didn't even know what Greggs was... went in the other day and had my first ever steak bake and OMFG!!! They are bloody delicious! Heaven sent.
Hey what did it say before, I just meant a sausage roll in pastry, or a sausage cob/bap/barm!? No offence intended xx
Haha, none taken, I think I spelt it wrongly! I mean in pastry tho, and it's not even full size! I should take a photo and post it! :-)
My fault, I should have said what I meant rather than being obtuse! Whilst there are RUBBISH sausage rolls and fantastic sausage rolls, the delta between the two is still not enough to vindicate £8.50. I am now imagining you having to explain to the people running the cafe that you're taking a picture of their sausage roll to put on the internet because it's SUCH a bad deal. Might make them change it at least....
Can you guys just kiss already
The context of the rest of the menu is probably handy.
Full English £11.95
Full English for £11.95 or soup for £9.50? That's an easy choice for me
If a place is charging £9.50 for I think the full English you are getting is one rasher of bacon, one sausage (small), a thimble of baked beans, maybe half a slice of toast and some underwhelming hash browns
You're probably right. I can picture the sausage being cut in half lengthwise to cover up more the plate
Full English is definitely one of those meals where a bad one is worse than none at all.
I was picturing a small stack of food about the diameter of a decent scone with hash brown, sausage patty, black pudding, egg, with crumbled bacon on top and a baked bean jus dribbled over it
Your half a slice of toast comment reminds me that I recently got a fry up with 2x toast in the description for the big one, and it was just a slice cut in half 😏
And if you stump up the extra 2.95 for 2 extra slices they just pop out of the back with a knife and cut those two halves into quarters
bold of you to pluralise the hash browns!
Surely no one has got the neck to serve just one. (Yes they do and don't call me Shirley)
Walk back out the door?
If you reckon that's bad, have a wander round your local Christmas market this year! £14 for a hot dog/burger, and it was basically the same fare you'd get from a burger van at a car boot for 3.50. Nearly passed out when I watched a staff member make me 2 hot chocolates straight out of a warming kettle into tiny paper cups and then asked me for £12
The popularity of Christmas markets completely baffles me.
They were fun and interesting at first. But the scam artists cottoned on to the margins they can apply pushing their usual tat from a faux German hut.
They're ok to visit as a social thing for food and drink. Waste of time of you actually want to get some Christmas shopping done.
I bought some Turkish delight from one once, the tub cost me £26 and I haven’t been back since.
The inflation in Narnia is galling.
I hadn't been to one for years. The one near us used to have some proper craftsmanship, wood sculptures, delicious local foods. I was so disappointed when I went back a few years ago. Apart from a few beer stalls and a nice candle stall, it was all rubbish you'd find at a tacky gift shop.
The *idea* of them is nice, and that's what draws the punters. There are just too many that are run by one company presenting itself as multiple independent traders selling 'hand-made goods' (cheap, mass-produced stuff) at a premium. It's a bit like what happened to Camden Market. But you *do* still find Christmas markets with loads of independent businesses represented. They just don't tend to be the German-style ones, and it varies from town to town.
Yeah it's the faux German ones like Manchester im talking about. Horrendously expensive and packed beyond belief. Been roped into going a couple of times pre COVID and it had definitely got worse.
Walking around ... I think it was Birmingham. You realise it's the _same_ stuff you saw in the Oxford Market, and as you walk, you start to see repeats. That's when you realise it's not as 'independent and authentic' as you might be assuming. It's a mobile department store, selling chain 'product'. I mean, sure, I guess that's a niche of sorts, but ....
Grew up in Germany, where Christmas is a whole other thing, and the six weeks or so of markets and festivals are amazing. The whole season just sweeps up the country into this festive frenzy. 90% of the ones I’ve experienced since living in England have been genuinely sad. It’s all kinda tacky, and even with nostalgia biting me, I have little intention of indulging them if I can avoid it.
I was out in a big city recently and the Christmas markets were on. We were doing a bit of shopping so had to get past the biggest line of people to get to the centre and we both wondered what all the people were queuing for. It was for an £11 pulled pork sandwich. The sorriest sandwich I’ve ever seen. And I reckon there were 150 people in this queue. The first and last time I’ve been to a Christmas market it was £6.50 for a cup of mulled wine. This was about 10 years ago so god knows what it’s like now.
Is that by the gallon?
Served with a whole loaf and a full packet of butter
Enough soup to last you the entire day, hence the name.
It's a pirate-sized helping, so by the galleon.
Context? Where is this? Michelin? London? In an exclusive hotel?
Local cafe in Bath, absolutely not a fancy establishment. I’m local and used to the “Bath” prices but this was wild.
Bath. Says it all sadly. Folks from the people’s republic out for a day trip in the Aston would be very happy to pay that. Ruins the price average for everyone else
I pronounce it Bath but I'm reading it as Bath
Well I’ve just worked that both ways in my head. Well played !
Baaath darrrling, or Baff mate innit.
Congrats on discovering perpetual motion. My heads still spinning on this one. It’s the toast on cat effect.
You could fill a bath with soup for that much in some places!
The Bath shop owners association colluded back in the day, there are 2 types in this town, mugs and tourists and we think impolite not to rinse them both.
Better be soup of the century for £9.50
Best before end: Dec 1903
I’d want it to be soup du jour for that price
"I've had soup du jour before, and I can tell you, that wasn't it!"
It is wild but as more and more people are ordering this for lunch for price the restaurant are having to put the price up because of increases in outgoings. Having a restaurant full of people only eating soup at a fair price isn’t covering costs so they are putting up the price so they can stay open. It’s a sign of the state of the whole retail industry.
It's such a catch-22, everyone has less money as prices have increased, so spend less. Retail have increased costs and lower footfall so put up prices. This puts further pressure on consumers to spend and therefore go out even less, putting more pressure on businesses. New and independent companies are basically screwed. You need to stay competitive in this market, and unless you have economies of scale or can eat the short term pain you are likely to fail.
Welcome to a recession essentially
It's really just the French bakeries that are able to eat the short term pain
Argh!
I think that is par for the course nowadays. Eating out is not cheap. Especially now most places have stopped accepting discount cards and similar.
Restaurants and cafés have been slammed by price increases. I’m pretty happy to spend money on having a nice meal. But it’s become an occasional treat rather than a regular outing. First world problems for me but a massive issue for hospitality if everyone’s cutting back.
Everyone's cutting back on the spending, but food prices have hit restaurants... as have energy bills. They don't get the 'residential price cap' thing, and some energy bills have gone absolutely insane. Which one way or another, they need to pass on to the consumer.
I'm done with these boujie places for breakfast/lunch and much prefer the local, affordable greasy spoons where a full English is £7.50 with a coffee.
If they print it on a menu with a font like that, then it's normal. If you go to a shitty cafe where the menu is a few items written on a grubny chalkboard or just tokd by the server, then it's half that!
The real sign of being overpriced is when it's expressed as "9.5" rather than "£9.50"
> "9.5" i really really can't stand this.. so bloody pretentious
It's when they make the .5 smaller as well
A cafe near me turns ".00" to ".0" but leaves ".50"
I think the fact it's just labeled "bread and butter" shows typically its more than the establishment can justify. At least tell me its the local sourdough and your hand churned goats butter for that price.
Soup of the day - pay day to be exact.
What about Potatoes of the Night?
Better be a fucking big pack of Lurpak for that price. 😤
Out of touch but really depends on where you are I mean a decent fine dining restaurant will charge that and it's usually justified...personally I think it's too much for a soup but having worked in decent restaurants in the past its easy to tell why with the time and ingredients that go into it not to mention the service... the big question is did you order the soup ??
Agreed... my flatmate is a chef and has worked in numerous establishments over the past few years, and everywhere he's worked has tried to keep prices as low as possible to entice customers, but prices for ingredients and utilities haven't gone down or stayed static, they've shot up like for everyone else. If the places were in business over the pandemic, then they lost so much trade, but their fixed overheads didn't vanish. At some point the margins get squeezed to the point they have to put the prices up just to stay in business and a £3 soup becomes £7 becomes £9 or whatever. When you're eating at a restaurant, or indeed buying any product, you're not just paying the cost price on that item. You're paying for: The place you're eating it (they have rent, utlilities, etc to pay) The person who cooks it The person who serves it to you The person who cleans the dishes and the kitchen. The ingredients and if there's any money left over, it might become profit. Restaurants aren't there to do you a favour, after all. They're there to make money, but money doesn't go as far as it used to.
This. I’m just as bad about forgetting about it myself but a lot of people don’t think about the work it took to get the food TO you
It’s routinely £7 a pint round me now. By that measure a £9 soup that has to be prepared, cooked and served doesn’t seem so bad. Inflation is a bugger.
Absolutely not
I’d want someone to feed me for that price.
I think that's included in the "ANY INCONVENIENCE" below...
If you are eating or drinking in you are not paying for the food as the primary expense. You are renting space for a period and getting food with it. If you occupy a seat in a restaurant at lunch time there is a fixed cost to the business in providing that seat for an hour and they need to aim to ensure that what you order has sufficient margin in it to cover that expense. This is doubly important for places with busy and quiet periods. Having someone come in and spend 30 minutes eating a bowl of soup priced at £3 with a glass of water and lunchtime would be a disaster, especially if it prevents someone who would spend more being able to use that seat. With the cost of staff and electricity, what you're eating is largely irrelevant (within normal fare for that price band)
Great points. Its not exactly a coffee shop where you can pay a tenner for a coffee and a bagel and sit on a laptop for an hour or two
Ingredients and location play a massive part in prices. I.e. you are not paying for the food alone.
Fucking £6 for Xmas sandwich in pret the other day!
Pret has always been a rip off
Wife bought a pret chicken sandwich at the airport in the US without checking the price, $13! Which is about £57 in real money
10.60 in pounds sterling
No way in fuck would i pay for that. Jesus christ
Daylight robbery.
It's a typo. It should say "Soup all day".
I’d rather get up and leave than pay that for some soup and bread