The High Cost of Eating Out in America

I don't eat out because I'm chronically cheap. But after I stopped drinking magically the cost of eating out came down to Earth. But post Pandy, it's not just the cost of eating out. It's also the service, if you can find any. Most restaurants are wildly understaffed and the staff is terrible. I've worked service jobs most of my life before switching to tech so I understand more than most how rude customers are and how terrible these jobs are. This is something different. This is a pre-primed anger toward the customer.

In Austin, most of the restaurants suck and are expensive. Even the pizza is terrible. Tacos are everywhere, but burritos not so much. There are a few good places. But there's really no point when I can cook better than 99% of them.

A similar situation is true with meal delivery because DoorDash and Favor drivers deliver cold, shitty, expensive food that's often wrong. They suck.

Regular Amazon can barely deliver order 30% of the time, with most packages being stolen or discarded by the drivers, and 50% of the time they are delivered in the wrong place in public areas. So I don't use Amazon.

Oh, and Whole Foods, despite being headquartered here, carries very little diversity of items. You can't even get actual pita bread or lavash at the Whole Foods' flagship store. It's bland and optimized for profits because most Whole Foods shoppers in Austin aren't all that sophisticated but have money to burn.

H-E-B does a bit better, but it's essentially a big box store with aisles of unhealthy food in enormous quantities.

Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord) is about the only decent grocer in town.

California has infinitely more choices and there's nothing like Berkeley Bowl in Austin with Wheatsville being a tiny shop compared to the "Whole Earth Access"-adjacent Berkeley Bowl.

Costs in all major areas have increased. The cost of goods has gone up. That’s the ingredients, beverages (alcoholic or not), and indirect items (linens, silverware, dish soap, etc.). The cost of transporting the goods to establishments has gone up. Not just fuel, but the labor in warehouses and driving vehicles, not to mention maintaining those vehicles (usually semi trailers). The cost of real estate has generally gone up where food establishments are located. The cost of labor has gone up, not just in the restaurants but also the industries that service or supply restaurants. It would be impressive if the cost of eating out hadn’t gone up.

Pre pandemic, sit down prices were $16-22 for mains and $28-30 if you're ordering something really fancy like fresh fish or a steak (non steakhouse). If you go out now, a simple pasta will cost you 20+ and the fancier ones go north of $40. Eating out is now a luxury.

But at the same time, fast food is also not cheap. Ordering for two from Burger King or Wendy's or Chipotle can easily cross $40 if you're not careful.

Fast food prices have been unhistorically low for a few decades, due to a combination of increasing worker productivity and suppressed demand due to the great recession.

Three bean burritos at Taco bell costs $1.89 where I lived from 1992 through about 2011. Far, far cheaper than I could make bean burritos myself, especially as a single man cooking for one. It was a godsend while I was a starving grad student, but lets face it, that can only go on so long.

When I was growing up, going to McDonalds was a rare treat. Now it is once again.

This has been one of the biggest motivators for why I decided to get better at cooking. Nowadays I feel that I can make a better burger than just about any burger joint I can find in my city.

The big mac index seems a bit trickier to calculate now that mcdonalds app users pay half price for one.