Tim Hayward writes for the FT on the inflation fear stalking restaurants — and whether we should pay more for our food
Last week I picked up the bill for an average meal for two with a bottle of wine in a well-regarded but non-Michelin-starred restaurant in the West End. It was just over £400.
A few weeks before that, I ordered a pie in a Mayfair restaurant that cost £95. I shared the meal with a slightly bemused German journalist. “It’s good,” he said, “but not £95 good.” In the end, a pie is just a pie.
I couldn’t do the work I do if I didn’t believe that people with money have a right to spend it however they damn well want, but this was something different. In the year to March, food inflation in the UK ran at 19.2 per cent, against a headline figure of 10.1 per cent.
This is anecdotal but, as a reviewer, comparing the bills I’m paying weekly, I’m seeing prices in mid-range restaurants rising much faster than that.
As a restaurateur, I’m struggling as hard as I can to make price rises manageable. As a reasonably well-informed industry watcher, I’d say the economics of this are ill-understood. But as a punter? Well, just like you, I’m getting that weird vertigo that marketers refer to as “sticker shock”.
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