Am I taking crazy pills or have sandwiches/wraps/paninis/etc. practically doubled in price in just a few years?

[Hubbs]

(I have a theory though that places get away with price increases now because of debit cards. When people carried cash, there was a psychological thing where we wanted to hand someone a five or a ten or a twenty. So, a McDonalds lunch was under $5. Because sometimes all you had was a fiver. Now, it can be $5.78 and who cares. It's not real money. I was always much more aware of my actual financial resources when I would take out a few hundred bucks on a Friday and use that to live on. Now, it's just some weird, vague number on my phone).

I actually bet that's a big part of it.

[DeaconTheVillain]

Does PotBelly's still have those amazingly delicious sammiches for $5 or have they gone up too?

Side note: Five Guys upped their burger prices by almost $2

---------- Post added December-20th-2012 at 06:31 PM ----------

I actually bet that's a big part of it.

I don't know if that is a part of why prices have gone up so much for food, but I can vouch for it being easier to hand someone a card to pay the bill than realizing you need to give away that $20 and maybe having 2nd thoughts.

I did this recently at BW3s. Ordered more and didn't care because I was using a card, had I had cash, I probably would have not gotten those damn soft pretzels with wings

[skinsmarydu]

Fuel costs more to transport items to stores, and that gets put into the consumer price.
The drought caused a lot of food to not even be grown, so what you do get comes from farther away, hence the fuel cost, etc.
Immigrant workers being pushed out of the fields for fear of being deported, well that just led to a lot of food that could be harvested going to waste.(We lost a LOT of food here in GA last year alone, estimates were at $2 BILLION.)
Every utility has increased in price--this includes water, which is why a 90-cent gallon of iced tea now costs about $3 to make, gets passed on to the consumer. (Trust me, we went to Bugaboo Creek (Longhorn/Rare Hospitality Co.) and paid $2.39/each for iced tea.) In the future, water will ONLY INCREASE in price. It will only become more valuable, as society continues to waste it.
Choose your food, and where you dine carefully. Those of us in the biz want you happy. If you're not, then we're not. Return guests are the best, and our best advertisement.

[shuler74]

Vace Italian deli in bethesda has a italian coldcut for 5.25

[PleaseBlitz]

I havent eaten McDonalds since 2008. It doesnt taste good, its horrible for you, and its expensive. Why would anyone pay for that? I don't get it. You pay for the ease and consistency. I try to not be that lazy and I don't eat any fast food enough for me to care about the consistency.

I will say that my favorite deli (The Deli, in fairfax) is like $28.00 for my wife and I to both get a sandwich. However, they are so big they are 2 meals, unless I am feeling particularly gluttonish. The Super Smokey is about the size of my leg from knee to foot.

---------- Post added December-20th-2012 at 07:09 PM ----------

Oh, you know what surprises me? FOOD TRUCKS. You are selling food out of the side of a ****ing truck, why do 2 tacos cost $11 with no drink?

[FanboyOf91]

Russia, Crippled by Drought, Bans Grain Exports

Grain prices set records as U.S. drought, food worries spread

[GoSkins0721]

Timely thread as I was just telling my wife this today: I'm so glad I don't work in an office because eating lunch out everyday is so freaking expensive. I paid almost $13 for a sandwich, drink & cookie at Panera last week.

If I worked in an office I'd be brown bagging it every day for lunch.

[Koolblue13]

Fast food down here is way more expensive and sucks beyond belief (except Wendys that uses all organic stuff(I know their supplier)) and a trip through the drive thru is minimum 25 minutes and that's generous. We only have one wendys and 2 micky Ds. Micky Ds on a Sunday is an hour wait easy.

Being from the east coast makes it so hard to live any where else. I want a freaking large tasty cheap slice of pizza so bad. A freaking hoagie I don't want to admit what I'd do.

[Kosher Ham]

Prices will go down if people start to carry a lunchbox.
However the demand for lunch meat and such may increase at a similar rate if those companies are forced to make more sliced turkey, and the store has to carry more.
Lose-Lose it seems.

But they have gone up by about 23% (I believe) over the last 7 years.

The restaurants that care will just drop an item from the menu because of cost instead of taking the hit themselves or passing it along. It is good business.

[Koolblue13]

shuler you suck. I googled hoagie pictures after seeing your post.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I do fast food a few times a month, I think I usually pay around $7-8. But it's almost alway chick fil a or subay.

I'm usually amazed that they're able to sell it so cheap. What do you suppose their average ticket is, $10 or so? And you figure they probably average 50 tickets per hour over the course of an entire day... That's what, $7500 per day or so?

I figure they operate on a 50 margin. So that's $3250 gross margin for the day. Geez, after you factor in rent, utilities, payroll (have you seen how many freakin people they have working at those places?), insurance, MRO.... That doesn't leave a whole lot

I might be way off on my estimates but I don't think I am. I might be overstating... Seems like I've heard the average fast food joint does about $1.5 million, which would be about half the above income scenario

Maybe their margins are much higher, I dunno

I know a guy that owns a Dairy Queen. I think the vast vast vast majority of his profit actually comes on sodas. The markup is several hunderd percent on that, because Coke essentially pays you to use their syrup for the advertising.

I don't think it's a lot of fun to be a McDonalds franchisee though.

[PleaseBlitz]

I know a guy that owns a Dairy Queen. I think the vast vast vast majority of his profit actually comes on sodas. The markup is several hunderd percent on that, because Coke essentially pays you to use their syrup for the advertising.

I don't think it's a lot of fun to be a McDonalds franchisee though.

You are correct on the sodas. The only real cost to the restaurant is the 3 cent cup. The rest is profit. That is the major reason why they push "Value Meals" so hard, to the point that if you try to just order a sandwich, they will ask you if you want the meal. "No *******, i ordered exactly what i ****ing want, i'm pretty sure I got it right." The reason they do that is they need to push that soda out the door, it's almost pure profit.

And I think its a TON of fun to be a McDonalds franchisee, those things make money hand over fist. I think it sucks to be a McDonalds MANAGER.

[Hubbs]

Micky Ds on a Sunday is an hour wait easy.

Hold on. You're surrounded by people who would wait an hour for food from McDonald's?

[Koolblue13]

Hold on. You're surrounded by people who would wait an hour for food from McDonald's?

It teaches you patience to live here. It's called island time.

[SWFLSkins]

I do fast food a few times a month,
I might be way off on my estimates but I don't think I am. I might be overstating... Seems like I've heard the average fast food joint does about $1.5 million, which would be about half the above income scenario

Maybe their margins are much higher, I dunno

Actually the margins used to be quite high and have also taken a huge hit over the last 10 years. The operators used to average about 10% of gross, and that in some cases could be as low as 3-4% now. So 2 mil. in sales is 60k-80k in income. One store operators are really hurting, when you think of all the work it takes to pull off a year.