I used to enjoy eating out, until I turned 40. Now, I can stare at a cheeto and gain 1.5 pounds. Curse aging!
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Us too, but if we were struggling to buy groceries, eating out would be curtailed.
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Thanks for bringing this up. I grew up with “eating out is for special occasions” and so I am also flabbergasted at the lines, difficulty in getting a reservation (if one is needed), and overall crowds. Seems to include fancy places, basic places, and even the sit-down tables at my local grocery store!
Coolguy- I gained 1.5 lbs. just reading your post!!!
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What I’ve noticed, in Austin as well as Portland, is that we have to wait to get a table but then when we are seated notice that there are quite a few empty tables. Restaurants in both cities just don’t have the staff to fill up all those tables.
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I have always found eating out tedious. Put on presentable clothes. Time driving to restaurant. Time waiting for a table. Then the meal time. Time driving home. All for food that is mediocre at best unless you are willing to spend large amounts of money. Usually I can go get food and bring it home and it will be 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of going to a restaurant. My better half doesn’t mind that much because I am one going to get the food. I refuse to get food delivered. Such a waste of money. We get food on average 2.5 times a week and cook the rest.
That being said we can’t wait until we are empty nesters and can have cereal for dinner if we want.
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With a few exceptions, I’ve reached a point where I don’t really enjoy eating out much these days. We can afford it, but choose not to. With many places short staffed, and prices for even basic things like a hamburger, it’s just not the same experience usually. My husband and I are good cooks. When we eat out now, often I look at the final bill and think, I can’t believe we are paying this much money for something we can make, just as good or sometimes even better, for a lot less money. Service has gone downhill, typically as a result of not having enough staff. I get that, and don’t necessarily blame the wait staff.
As a result, we don’t eat out much these days. When we can’t or don’t feel like cooking, we’d rather just get carryout from one of our favorite local places and eat at home.
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I just had cheetos.
But I am going to round this off with cereal for dinner. I did do this yesterday.
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@gpo613 looks like we have similar thoughts! Even right down to not having food delivered!
We’ve noticed that also. The lines are because they can only seat what they have staff to wait on.
We’ve also found that local places are closed a few days a week. On Sunday we went to dinner and although we did find a place, it wasn’t our first second or even 3rd choice.
Chains are open everyday, locally owned places are closed on average 2 days a week.
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I don’t eat out as much because the food is terrible. But I’m going out soon, celebrating my daughter’s birthday. I hope the restaurant is not close. But I will bake a nice cake instead and not buying one.
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@deb922 we had something similar happen in February. My daughter wanted to get sushi for her birthday but Dh was going to be out of town so we had to go earlier in the week. We went out the day after Valentine’s Day, a Tuesday. I figured it wouldn’t be busy anywhere since most people would have eaten out the night before. We live in a tourist town with lots of restaurants. Showed up at the sushi place. Closed. Walked down the street to a couple of other places we like, all closed. I remembered there was another good sushi place several blocks away so before walking there, I called to make sure they were open, then we walked there. What I didn’t think to ask was whether there was a wait - um, an hour! On a Tuesday night. I guess because so many other places were closed. A school night, we couldn’t wait that long so walked across the street to a little Italian place we hadn’t been to in years. Not what we really wanted, but pleasantly surprised to have a fabulous meal there.
Since then, I’ve noticed there are quite a few locally owned places that are closed on either Mondays or Tuesdays that prior to the pandemic were always open those days.
I learned that I can’t trust what I eat during inflation. I feel like the Indiana Jones, when the knight told him, “You must choose…choose wisely. The right one will bring life…the wrong one will take it from you.”
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We haven’t seen open tables or restaurants closed on unusual days at any of the places we’ve been in the past month.
In my town, many restaurants closed for lunch or were opened fewer days in general during the pandemic because of staffing shortages. We seem to have returned to normal operating hours in the last few months for most places.
The one noticeable difference is at some of the bigger chain restaurants where they are only opening up one section of the restaurant because of they don’t have enough servers.
Wow, some of y’all would cry if you saw my food bill. I don’t cook and order in and dine out regularly. I love good restaurants. And yes the lines here are crazy. Texans don’t love to cook. lol
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Could it be that your area has many people who benefited from the pay increases that are a driver of inflation? If so, then they have more money to spend in restaurants etc.
I’d agree if it were only in my area, but as I said, in just the past month (week for some of it), we’ve been to areas in western NY, eastern NC, around DC, and places in between and seen the same thing everywhere. Today was local, but our first local eating out in over a week.
As I think about it, we were also on Amtrak for some of the places in between heading to Western NC, etc, and the restaurants we could see from the track in NC were also quite full at suppertime.
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It’s like that even in London recently, some restaurants are packed, much worse than previous years.
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I didn’t read the article, but as someone who probably counts as “upper middle class”, it hasn’t really impacted me to the extend of curbing my spending though of course it’s been noticed. i cringe when I see my car taking $70 of gas, but i make enough money that I can do it. Lesser incomed people may not have that luxury. I feel like you get like 50% of groceries for what groceries used to cost… but again, I can afford it, begrudgingly. I feel for those who can’t.
We’ve been eating out a lot and it’s most definitely more expensive than it was but between work and school I haven’t had much time to cook. I’ll probably get back to cooking more after I graduate in 2 months.
That being said, I got a new position at work with a 20% raise right before covid, and have gotten another 10% or so of incrases during the past few years, so I’m probably one of the few whose salary has kept up with the increases of things.
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