Is the middle class being priced out of a nice dinner out with the family? Photo: Pheelings Media.
Have you had a look at restaurant menus lately?
A couple of outings lately necessitated a hunt for lunch spots. I quickly discovered that without taking out a second mortgage, some of these menus were for Canberrans who lived on more rarified budgets than mine.
The cost-of-living crunch is a great appetite suppressant when you’re scanning through a menu looking for main under $40 and finding anything with red meat doesn’t get you much change out of a $100.
Lamb used to be the national dish – just ask Sam Kekovich on Australia Day – but that once staple has slipped off most menus.
Where is all that lamb going? Probably not the family table on a Sunday if restaurants can’t even afford it.
Anything that resembles a steak starts with a six.
Even if you’re vegetarian, putting together a satisfying meal could melt the plastic.
Couples and families used to be able to splash out for a special occasion and not have to resort to peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the week.
Now that romantic dinner won’t have you out of there for less than a couple of hundred. And that doesn’t include the wine.
Those days of panic-free dining now seem like some nostalgic memory.
Restaurants are cutting corners, trimming servings and reshaping menus to cover their rising costs, but the result could be a death spiral unless they rely on the interest rate-immune or Canberra’s high flyers.
If people are like me, the hoi polloi can now be found in the small cafes serving up $5 caffeine fixes, the local Indian or Chinese takeaway or having a feed with a clown (are they really “lovin’ it”?)
The Canberra region has developed an enviable reputation in recent years for a food and wine offering that was generally accessible, but rising inflation and incomes unable to keep pace are now eating into that hard-earned foodie culture.
The hospitality industry is battling as Canberrans curtail their discretionary spending. Restaurant failures have become so common that news outlets have stopped reporting on all but the most notable ones.
It’s not their fault. Margins in this sector have always been tight and often alcohol sales have subsidised menus. However, fewer people are drinking wine or beer, so that is also hitting their bottom lines.
Chefs are trying to source affordable ingredients without compromising quality and are becoming more inventive to cut costs, but I wonder how they’ll survive.
Perhaps we have had it good for so long that we forget that, at least for my working-class family, dining out was once rare.
But there were a lot fewer quality restaurants.
Is this the great resetting where anything like fine dining will be, for most, an exceptional event? Because without incomes recovering the bang for their buck or interest rate falls restoring some heft to the mortgage belt, how can people justify the expense?
I fear there is going to be a lot more pain to come in the hospitality industry.
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