And what I really noticed in my own habits is that I eat out less because of the increase in prices. I had lunch yesterday a a Greek restaurant and with tip, a gyro was $20. Once in a while, okay but not as regularly as I used to go. And I do love eating lunch out!
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Math quibble. If two = $25, four = $50. 
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H and I eat fast food around us (Hardees, Chick Fil A, Arby’s, Subway) and it almost always costs < $20 for the two of us even though we don’t always get the smallest size. We let the server keep the change.
I’m guessing HCOL areas are higher. We’re in an average COL area. Places around us are paying > $12/hour though according to signs. It’s not necessarily wages that are the difference, but perhaps pure COL issues (rent, taxes, etc)?
We went to one of our favorite Italian restaurants last night. This is a pizza place that also serves Italian dishes, and burgers. The bill for four of us (no wine or beer) was $100. In the past, it’s been more like $75. The place was packed both inside and out. They had only two waitstaff, and one host. I really felt sorry for all of them. We were there over two hours because that’s how long it took them to serve us, and for us to eat. We left the waitress a huge tip.
And we will go back.
We don’t eat out dinner all that much…usually lunch. So this is a nice treat and conveniently located.
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Between rising prices, staff shortages, and the apparent expectation that the overworked waitstaff should get huge tips, I have little desire to eat out. But then, we never did it much before the pandemic, either.
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I recently saw a McDonalds offering $500 sign up bonus and $15 an hour.
Anyway, overall, at sit down restaurants service is down and prices are up. So unless I am traveling it’s nicer to cook for myself.
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My parents rarely ate out. It was a special treat. Most of their entertainment involved dinner parties at home with friends. We dined out much more often as adults. Sometimes it was a treat. Often it was simply habit. Or perhaps most of my generation included two working professionals, too tired to plan and create at-home meals every night. My children eat out (or used to) far more often than we did. Now that they’re working from home with less time needed for commutes, and more time at home, they have started eating from home more often as well. Rising prices (as well as Covid) add to that scenario.
Pehaps we’ll see more take-out options, and more at-home entertainment like our parents?
During pandemic we started to enjoy home cooked meals more. Now when we returned to eating out we discovered that the quality of the food in restaurants around declined and the prices went up by much. Service is very slow and bad . So we eat out mostly when we travel or take out from few places that still offer good quality and moderate prices
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Lol that’s why I’m an English teacher, not a math teacher.
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Without question (pre-covid at least) people in general ate out more often than they did a generation ago. As a kid, we rarely went out to eat. And no one I knew did either. It was something special. A few times a year. Now its common for people to go out to eat a few times a week. And certainly a few times a month.
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I just said the same thing to my husband. We ate out while on vacation and at most places they were way understaffed. Unless we can call ahead for take out, we are eating at home more than we used to pre covid.
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Never eat at a restaurant that has a Now Hiring sign. Service will be slow.
That rules out most restaurants that I have seen in my area. They may be wanting to get applications on file so they have people to call when current staff quit.
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In my neck of the woods too.
When we were on vacation, we had a couple of places where we waited 45 minutes for our drinks before even ordering food. Staff were super apologetic and we were able to be patient since we were on vacation but we have bagged even attempting to do meals out before timed events now.
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We just spent the weekend at the Finger Lakes, the woman who owned the bed and breakfast where we stayed said restaurants are having a real problem getting and retaining staff and keeping them well trained. She’s taken guests places where the service has really suffered this past year and one where she said the staff just turned people away even though they had room on a night when the chef was out. He was furious when she told on them!
Her problem isn’t staff since she does it all herself, but getting things repaired. Her washing machine is broken and she’s using her neighbor’s machine right now because she can’t get it fixed or replaced.
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We don’t often go out to eat anymore, but when we do, it’s lunch outside. Service is typically slow, but the servers have been very pleasant & work extra hard. We usually go somewhere to walk, like a local park, then we relax & unwind at lunch. We don’t have any place to be at a particular time, so we’re fine with slow service. I wouldn’t want to eat out if I had a time crunch.
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^^^ And for many of us in cold winter places (like you @kelsmom) eating outside becomes less and less available - or pleasant - when cold weather sets in. So probably another winter of LESS eating in, MORE take out or cooking at home.
In other words, I don’t know that restaurants are going to be in any better of a spot till spring.
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@saillakeerie, as a kid, we never ate out (Chinese food on Sundays once a month maybe). We didn’t eat out that much, but as we traveled a lot and became more affluent and had more affluent friends, we started to eat out a lot more. We are now not eating out at all. Since we live in the exurbs, bhte takeout isn’t great so we are doing a lot more cooking (actually ShawWife is doing a lot more cooking). I’m doing a lot more shopping and cleaning.
Our kids live in San Francisco and they were eating out a lot pre-pandemic and then were doing a lot of takeout. I wonder how the price increases area affecting them.
My dad (bless him, so wonderful) roadtripped with a dear friend to his 60th medical school reunion in Kansas City this past weekend. He and his travel companion noted that the hotels and restaurants in that metro area were woefully understaffed. I think that when there is competition for labor and the resultant options, the hospitality industry is struggling, but when options are few, things may look different.
We’ve been fortunate in our travels - haven’t really noticed any problems other than plenty of Help Wanted signs.
Maybe it’s the places we choose (often ethnic like Thai or other smaller mom & pop types - rarely any sort of chain), the fact that we tend to eat off “crowd” hours (even pre-Covid), tip well anyway because we like to support those truly “working” for a living (even pre-Covid), and cost isn’t usually a biggie for us. Fast food still costs the two of us < $20 if we want less expensive and quick. We do either Take Out or eat in pending whim of the time. Right now on our trip it’s all Take Out because the view from our deck is far better than inside any restaurant - see the Photo thread if curious.
Folks on here might be eating out less, but that doesn’t seem to have affected the number of people eating in places. When we drive by at popular hours, places seem full. It’s likely good that more are choosing to eat at home balancing things out.
For me, I’m not fond of cooking even though I like what I cook. We’ll continue supporting places willing to take that job on for me a few times per week!
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