Tell HN: Food is too expensive now | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Food is too expensive now

22 pointstechsin10154 comments

Groceries are expensive but eating out has now become very expensive, I find myself almost not getting any take outs or eating at restaurants. Maybe once every quarter. And When I do eat out I'm always annoyed how not only prices are almost 2x, but actually it's less and taste crap compared to just 2 years ago. Imagine your favorite food spot of 10+ years suddenly trash and expensive.

This has objectively lowered quality of my life, I don't really buy any electronics, my phone is 6+ years old, and computer is 5 years old. I like to buy to simplest clothes in bulk 10 for $X. Because happiness from stuff just isn't there for me, I'd rather get quiet time at beach and watch sunset with a friend, or engage in intellectual debate. So food was only thing I enjoyed getting. Now it cost $170+ for family portion, and $25+ at cheapest place for 1.

Sure It's affordable for me at my tech salary, but I'm not going to be spending more on food than rent. Is there hope on the horizon? why wont' govt do something to bring prices down, bring deflation.

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Learn to cook.

Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk.

There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fancy expensive stuff.

Ik it takes more effort than eating at restaurants or ordering takeout, but it really is so much better to learn how to cook good food yourself.

I'll throw in Sam The Cooking Guy as well. I learned how to make a sheet-pan pizza and a simple burger from him. Both were good enough that my kids prefer them over restaurant equivalents, which got us into a good routine that allowed me to add a few more reliable recipes into the rotation, and now we rarely go out to eat. Maybe once a month.

Kenji Lopez-Alt should be on the list, too. His kitchen videos will prove you can cook great food with borderline equipment.

I’ve been watching Gordon Ramsays Ultimate Cookery Course from 10 years ago. There’s also a book you can find that has all the recipes in the vids

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTzMGnJjrsSyDJU9XClzZtuJ6...

I find Joshua Weissman difficult to watch because of the forced unfunny zoomer humour and ADHD editing style

I chuckled at the stereotypically american answer "dont rely on society, just do it yourself".

Even if you know how to cook, life is significantly better in a society with quality inexpensive restaurants. Most cities around the world have this.

I usually eat out socially, im not going to invite people to cook for them because its weird, and very inconvenient. When im on a vacation or visiting a friend in another city im usually not cooking either.

Op's complaint is valid, life has been worse since food doubled in price. If I want to unwind and grab food or drinks with friends on a weekend, I am easily spending $80+, that is absurd. When I lived outside of the US I would not spend more than $20.

It's still a first world problem being "annoyed" that eating out or getting take out is more expensive than it once was.

No, it's not, I lived in a "3rd" world country and in some ways quality of life was better because some things were just so much cheaper. I was with people who weren't rich by any measure, living paycheck to paycheck and both parents working to get by. But despite that, it was STILL affordable to go out as a family every week and have great dinner or ice cream. Also here it's unheard of to get "custom-made" stuff, there it was not too expensive to get anything custom made, need a bigger bed, call the carpenter. Need some shelfs, call the carpenter, Need a door that fits you odd sized hole in the wall, call metal worker. Need pillows of certain size, go to a factory area not too far away and give them sizes, they are making 1000s a day, they can make you one too. There is STILL milk delivery at your door step, an old tradition around the world, but now it's UBER-approach. Quality of life is better because even with low salary you can get lot of stuff... which is a side effect of production being close to you, no sales taxes, and also lack of 1000 rules making 1 man operation feasible. People eat out there like it's free food.

This is so true. I can eat steak everyday if I buy it from costco

I also notice that restaurants make food "better" tasting by adding more salt and oil. More "profitable" by reducing healthy components for cheaper, ie more carbs and less meats and veggies. Its so much healthier to cook for yourself, and you can learn so much about your body when you are able to control what is going in.

What I find sad is masses making average salary, quietly suffering in silence with their heads down and feeling ashamed for not being able to buy even common fruits in quantities as they used to just a few years ago.

This is no longer the solution. I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

> I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

Yeah, that's what you do when it's expensive to eat. Stretch a pot of beans, rice and hamhocks over a week. Buy canned vegetables and Hamburger Helper. Shake and Bake chicken and au gratin potatoes out of a box. Stock up on bollilos, ramen and vermicelli. Stop expecting every meal to be an experience, you're not living to eat anymore, you're eating to live.

Cooking can easily take up 2-4 hours a day. 1 hour for prep, 1 hour for cooking, 1 hour for cleaning up afterwards (stove, utensils, dishes, table, kitchen floor, sink, etc)

Frankly, it only takes that long if you're really bad or really inexperienced at cooking. I frequently have dinner on the table (spaghetti and meatballs, Japanese curry, flank steak or chicken tacos) for my family of six with 30-40 minutes of total time invested, prep to cleanup. Even my most elaborate recipes (bibimbap and baked ziti) require about an hour of total time investment. My simpler recipes (instant pot carnitas, slow cooker shaker steak) take less than 20 minutes, usually because a kitchen device is doing the hard or time consuming work.

There were times in my life when these meals would have required twice as much time to execute, but repetition and experience (and necessity, given the busy evening schedule during my kids' soccer season) have led to these timings.

Ethan (mentioned above) has a series of fun videos where he races a Doordash driver (or a friend doing the same thing) to see if he can prepare a similar meal in his home kitchen before the order arrives. He usually finishes a bit earlier than the restaurant order, and I wouldn't say he rushes his cooking.

Lots of subjective variables, of course. Do you enjoy cooking? Are you productive at home while waiting for your delivery order? Is time spent in a restaurant relaxing? Do you count driving to/from the restaurant as part of the "work" of the meal? Don't you still have to clean up after a delivery order?

There is an economic side to cooking if you don't optimize and there is a lot of content out there that helps you optimize. Excluding eating, I spend 30 minutes cooking and washing each day

Suggestion: Learn to make use of a slow cooker and pressure cooker and/or instant pot. You can cut a lot of hands-on time using these tools.

FWIW: I cook multiple meals (often borderline gourmet / better than any local restaurant) for my family of 5 and it doesn't take this many hours. The more experience you gain, the faster your prep. Combining ready ingredients (I'll use that boxed pho broth rather than making from scratch / I'll start with a canned marinara rather than scratch) and being able to reconstitute leftovers can go a long way toward only having to do a major cooking event every-other or every-three days.

Buy a home wok burner, a wok and a rice cooker. There's an entire genre of cooking built around making things in 10 minutes. Chinese, Thai, Indian food.

Western home stoves are underpowered compared to the typical asian home stove. So western recipes are designed for slow western stoves.

Once you use a wok for the first time you realize you've been using the stove equivalent of a car that can only go 30mph all your life.

Nonsense, my wife whips up a delicious meal in under 30 minutes with everything included. Most days we use disposable sal leaf plates so she just tosses the pans in the dishwasher and we’re done.

Agreed. My wife is some kind of wizard in the kitchen. Most meals about 30 minutes, though some dishes might push an hour depending. Better than any restaurant I've been to - completely spoiled.

Sal Leaf Plates, I didn't know that existed, this might make a hUGE difference.

What are you cooking that it takes 2 hours of prep and cleanup?

Cook in bulk and eventually can also be more efficient.

If I'm cooking, I'm missing chances to leave my house, which with all the WFH are harder to come by

So clearly there's a range of restaurants, and I suspect most fees a family for under $170,so I'm going to assume you are thinking more high-end places here, not necessarily day to day eating.

It's worth noting that food costs in restaurants is only a part of the puzzle. Rent is a huge part (especially in SF/SV) then there's labour, decor etc. And I'm guessing you are not eating "local" so assume some serious transport and energy cost.

It's interesting that in a money-driven culture like the US you see it as the role of govt to reduce prices. Surely pricing isn't govt responsibility? That's just the free market in action.

Also, be careful about wanting deflation - that's much worse than inflation (see Japan in the 80s and 90s). Inflation promotes spending, which increases "the economy". Deflation encourages not-spending, so you'll end up going out even less.

Of course nothing compares to home-cooked, using quality local ingredients. That's ultimately the solution to cheaper, better, healthier food. There are some restaurant dishes I can no longer order out because it's always a disappointment, I make better at home.

Looking to the govt to somehow change pricing for, well everything, that goes into determining restaurant pricing seems to be "unamerican" (in the culture sense, not patriotic sense.) Restaurants are just part of a free-market economy, just like everything else.

So I'm not really sure what govt policy you are assuming is to blame for high prices? Or what policy they should take? Maybe raise taxes to reduce consumer spending to lower demand?

> see Japan in the 80s and 90s

Japan’s CPI doesn’t include fresh food.

> Maybe raise taxes to reduce consumer spending to lower demand?

Come on. The poster is clearly talking about a supply-side solution.

> Rent is a huge part (especially in SF/SV) then there's labour, decor etc.

The government artificially restricts supply of the first two items you list. Relaxing those restrictions would be a decent place to start.

OK, I buy that. Instead of focusing on demand, govt could look at the supply side.

Let's be generous and assume lower wages is not the solution. I doubt the goal here is cheaper food at the cost of misery to others.

So there's rent as the obvious contender. In some parts of the country rent is high because supply is low. In NY there's not much one can do about supply, but in say SF property supply is very much under govt control. So loosening up zoning there, and allowing for more development would be a step. Of course there are a lot of people invested in that not happening - specifically landlords - which means the govt has to pick winners and losers (or more accurately choose different winners, since they are already choosing winners and losers.)

Now granted the original poster was clearly talking in the context of restaurant food prices, not actual "food prices" - but its worth noting that zoning changes wouldn't affect general food prices, and the impact on restaurant rents would be long term, not short term.

The other big input cost, direct and indirect, is energy. Fuel for cooking, and perhaps more significantly for transport.

I'm not sure the govt can do a whole lot there - yes there are taxes in there, but they are low compared to global standards, and reducing them just means making them up elsewhere. (which might not be a bad thing, but tax policy moves very slowly.)

The price of oil is not really in govt hands, pricing there is international and very fluid. Unlike most oil-producing countries, the US does not determine local supply.

So we're back to labour? But even there labour isn't over controlled by govt. Min wage is already pretty low, and given the high employment rate labourers can afford to hold out for higher pay. Its not like people working is restaurants are rich, even most owners barely break even, so again this doesn't look like an area where govt could do much - except encourage poor immigrants maybe? (in the UK low-end posts are getting hard to fill since brexit)

And I'm not sure lower restaurant prices at the cost of human misery is really the goal here.

So, in summary, what other govt options are in play? Zoning would have an effect in some locations. Is there anything else that would have an impact? Especially in a short time scale?

Most of the price of eating out is the cost of wages. After all, someone else is cooking the food, cleaning the dishes, etc. If the cost of labor goes up, so must the cost of eating out. Nothing the government can do about that.

You would hope the economies of scale of cooking large amounts of food at a restaurant would help bring down the costs though.

I’m not sure that there are economies of scale, except perhaps in special situations.

Someone has to chop all the vegetables, slice all the fruit, bake all the desserts, fold all the napkins, mop the floors, clean the restrooms, etc, etc. The staff often begin work hours before opening, and leave hours after closing. Those costs don’t go down if you have more customers, they go up.

Batch cooking only works in some cases: you can bake a whole cake and then sell it by the slice, so there is an economy of scale there. Do the same thing with spaghetti noddles, on the other hand, and half your customers will get overcooked noodles. I suppose buffet–style restaurants benefit more from economies of scale, since they can cook a whole tray of something and take it out to the buffet all at once. Or cook a whole roast or ham and then carve some off for each customer. But then I suppose you have to pay someone to stand there and carve, so perhaps not.

Thanks, now I’m hungry, and there’s not a Luby’s within a thousand miles of here.

I think Luby’s exited stage left pursued by a virus.

Ok I stand corrected it’s still around.

Good. I would be sad to learn that they had closed.

Labour in restaurants does not scale well.

Servers can only serve x tables, chefs and cooks can only make x meals per hour. Valets, barmen, bussboys all scale pretty linearly.

Plus rent doesn't scale well either. More meals translates to more staff, more staff translates to more space. And that's also linear.

Food-scale happens in factories, think frozen meals in your supermarket not restaurants.

Too much of what you pay goes to the rentier that owns the premises. Inflation of ingredients, inflation of wages, inflation of utilities. It all adds up. Something gets squeezed, either the experience or your wallet. As other posters have said, climate change, war adds to it too. And the world has just about reached peak-population outside of Africa. The developed world including all the industralial powerhouses of Asia definitely have. You are already ahead of the curve with your enjoyment of 'free' experiences.

What you've noted is the beginning of the secular decline in consumptive/material living standards for at least the next 60-80 years after which earths population would have declined to 5-6 billion and the population pyramid is more balanced and all the current 'humps' in it have died off.

> goes to the rentier that owns the premises

Was looking at some premium clothing with my partner at the primest spot in town, discounted from 300 euros to 100 when I realised all the margins go to the property owner…

Most of peoples wages go to pay rents too…

future historians would probably remember this era as post-industrialization hyper rent sucking era fueled by short-sighted govt policies, lobbyists/interest groups, and greed.

Sorry, but that's a tons of horse**. You can rent a villa with a pool today in Ubud, Bali for as little as $30 per night. You can get reasonable food at a restaurant for as little as $3. I also booked a flight from Istanbul to Ankara (one-way/mid-August) for $28.

This is a US problem. Yes, the world is going through serious inflation right now but nothing comes close to the US.

> I also booked a flight from Istanbul to Ankara (one-way/mid-August) for $28.

> Yes, the world is going through serious inflation right now but nothing comes close to the US.

Turkey is actually at 60% inflation right now.

I think the flight price will be adjusted to the USD/gas prices; I don't think they'll be subsidizing those out of there pocket (it's a touristic country). Yes, I'm aware they are going through rampant inflation, but I'd expect any arbitrage to be played out fairly efficiently.

I think this is mostly a US problem. While food prices have risen everywhere, restaurant prices haven't risen as dramatically as they did in the US (I haven't been to Europe lately, so maybe it's the same).

Also, Uber Eat is worse than crap. It has menu prices higher than seat-in prices, cost around $10 for delivery and want me to tip on the whole order + it has its own fee. If I were to get a regular meal, it'd cost around $35. (That's $70 for two meals, or $2.100 per month; even a high tech salary can't afford that).

In my opinion, something gotta give in the US pretty soon. Prices are unsustainable for most of the places I've been. Airbnb prices have also gone berserk.

> I think this is mostly a US problem. While food prices have risen everywhere, restaurant prices haven't risen as dramatically as they did in the US (I haven't been to Europe lately, so maybe it's the same).

Restaurant prices in Poland had gone up dramatically, sometimes by 50% (depending by the place). First, the restaurants hiked prices after they were allowed to open again after lockdowns, and then they were hit by a combo of rising energy costs, rising wages and general inflation, and increased prices again.

I can only see prices continue to go up due to climate change, wars, pandemics etc.

Governments are just puppets for the rich. I wouldn't expect any meaningful change from there.

The cost of takeaway/delivery has gotten absurd. I was looking at my deliveroo account the other day (UKs door dash) which has my order history all the way back to 2018. The drop-off in my usage and the increase in price post-Covid is interesting to look at. The nice thing about being in the UK is I can save myself a few bucks and just walk down the street to pick up the food myself. To be honest though, prices are so ridiculous I don’t even bother doing that anymore. It’s significantly cheaper to just do it myself (and I find myself eating healthier).

Highly recommend learning how to cook. There are a lot of easy dishes out there that you can throw in a crock-pot or oven with almost no prep, the trick is all in the spices. Chicken, pasta (with lean ground turkey!), salmon.. all low maintenance. Get yourself a steamer/rice cooker and most of the “cooking” is just waiting for your timers to go off.

Well yes, wages have gone up for low paid industries in the UK after COVID and Brexit due to shortages of workers (my local McDonalds is advertising at £12 an hour now), and fuel and gas is largely being driven up by cutting off Russia. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but historically going out to a restaurant or eating outside the home was a big deal. As a child I can recall we only went out to eat if it was a very special occasion. For (both sets of) my depression-era grandparents it was a darn big deal to get to go even to the local greasy spoon - it just wasn't done as it was considered an enormous expense. Even when we travelled in the summer, we always carried a picnic rather than stopping for fast food etc. The trend of the past decade+ toward people ordering takeout nightly is not normal in the majority of places. Perhaps in metro areas where there is a high density of restaurants competing for your dollar, but not elsewhere.

> Imagine your favorite food spot of 10+ years suddenly trash and expensive

Did you try to talk about it with the food joint's owner/server/cook? I'm interested in their take. Maybe, they've a new chef who's not that good.

Oil is expensive, which has cascading effects. Also, the increase in minimum wage has to come from somewhere, hint - customer. I understand: it may not be applicable here directly, but there are so many vendors involved in the restaurant supply chain.

Raising minimum wage wouldn’t have the exaggerated effect mentioned in the original post .[0] Especially since not all of those involved in the process are making just minimum wage. Labor is expensive, but there are certainly lots of other costs involved as well as markup for the business to make a profit.

0. https://fee.org/articles/what-the-minimum-wage-does-to-food-...

All I know is Asian (chinese, indian,thai,japanese too but mostly bento boxes) places have large enough portions to make the cost worth it. If you are getting burgers and bbq, if the cost is an issue then they are fairly easy to replicate at home.

There are prepared frozen foods as well with competitive pricing. <$10 frozen pizza vs $20(with tax+fees+tip) for delivery pizza for example.

Eating out in the US, especially given the quality and portion sizes, was unreasonably cheap compared to cooking your own food.

Recently I ordered a medium pizza and wings from Domino's or Pizza Hut and was surprised that it cost 40 dollars.

I went with my wife to eat today and it was $50. Not even worth it, especially considering we both had to walk around with our toddler half the time, so we might as well have been eating on the couch at home.

This problem will only grow with increasing capitalism and climate change. The only way to turn it around is to come together and push for policys and technology that lowers the costs for food and housing. The rich can get their profits elsewhere than on our basic human needs.

The answers to your question would either lead to being downvoted into oblivion or shadowbanned here, lol

Because it's all orchestrated to make the rich richer. It's no more complicated than that.

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