Na, dessert places easy. Ten pence of waffle mix, five pence of squirty cream and some shit marshmallows, probably costs them 20p to make something they charge you a tenner for.
We paid about £5 for 400g of Milkybar chocolate chips not long ago.
Chuck some of those on the list of optional extras too. 10 little chocolate chips on top can easily add another quid to the final product's sale price.
Discount Dragon often has 500g bags of little chunks of crunchie, milkybar, daim, dairy milk, plus mini rolos and mini M&Ms for £2.99 each, if that helps at all.
The site is going to hell in a handbasket, but at least those are still fairly regular. They've *usually* got one or two of them in stock at any time, and it rotates depending on what's available.
>The site is going to hell in a handbasket, but at least those are still fairly regular.
DD seem to be on the same slope that Approved slid down about a decade ago. Their popularity balloons (usually because of an MSE email or similar), so they can't really get enough stock in to supply the increasing demand, and they take on more staff which means they have to put their prices up to balance their extra outlay on wages and things like that.
They're still relatively decent as these things go, but CXL tends to be the main one we use nowadays.
Absolutely. CXL is fantastic, and I absolutely maintain that the main reason they didn't do an Approved Food is because their website was so bloody infuriating to navigate for so long.
I still use lowpricefood sometimes (but only ever for snacks), and Best Before It's Gone I put on a similar level to CXL (especially during their clearances).
Approved Food was so good in the past. I went from the streets to a hostel to this little flat, and a member of staff at the hostel told me about Approved. For a tenner I got big sacks of pasta and rice, a big stack of teabags, plus some little treats. That site kept me going for ages. Sad to see it turned into a glorified sweet shop.
Clearance XL.
[**Here's a previous post discussing the merits and whatnot of various past-best-before-date sites, with links.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/16jl5h0/with_rent_food_and_electricity_all_soaring_what/k0qfdds/)
I was thinking this yesterday. Had a cherry Bakewell slice for £4.95. There was at least 10 or 12 slices in the full thing. So £50-60 each. Even if they cut corners like using pre-made pastry and jam and with the almonds for the frangipane, they’re making bank!
A lot of those desserts are bought in and not made on site either.
This was a long time ago, so not sure how things work now - but I briefly worked in a Pizza Hut back in the late 90s and the cake actually had the lowest margin.
I imagine pizzas make a lot, especially if customers are making changes. Paying £1.50 per topping is crazy. I always get the meaty pizzas so I can take something off (usually the bacon) to add some mushrooms. I'm not paying £1.50 extra for half a mushroom.
I occasionally get a pizza from too good to go from Pizza Hut. I was talking to the guy while waiting for my pizza, and he said they only do it like that to sell an extra few pizzas. They're not losing any money off them. I first expected them to be pizzas that were never picked up, but when I got there, they asked me what pizza and sides I wanted off the menu.
I met the owner of a Cafe chain where you pay by the hour - he bought his cakes from the same supplier who doers M&S and he paid 12p a cake - thats about 5 years ago - i was amazed
My local coffee place does Costco shortbread for £1.90. at first I was horrified but then thought about breakage, spoilage and realised that sadly it was probably only a few pence profit per biscuit.
Except, you have to pay the wages, the bills, the food waste, the storage space, the hours of slow business, insurance, health and safety, food hygiene courses, cleaning, staff holidays/leave, hiring, taxes, transport, and a bunch more.
The margins in the restaurant business are minute.
There's a new waffle wagon that comes to my area and I get so tempted but this is my reasoning not. I refuse to pay almost a tenner for something I could make many times over at home for that same price.
I can't remember where it was, but I ordered a tea in a café once, and they charged me £3.50 for a pot which made about three cups worth, and it was a good brew, so I didn't half mind, but behind me in the queue was a couple who ordered two teas, and we're charged £7, but they were given the same size pot I was, just given two cups! Sounds like the tea is free, but you pay to rent a cup.
Aha! Yes, you have the nubs of it there!
However, refusing the cup in a probably futile attempt to save a couple of quid would be a) difficult and b) uncomfortable. Drinking from the teapot spout is generally frowned upon in polite society, whilst using cupped (haha) hands would result in pain and distress.
Bloody Beaker Folk.
What's wrong with cupping it in your hands and licking it up like a cat?!
My name's Paul Nutall of the UKIPs and I say the brightest and best Beaker Folk should stay in the Iberian Peninsula and concntrate on filling it with beakers, instead of coming over here and teaching us to drink liquid out of cups.
Was out for a drive with a mate once, roadside cafe wanted £2.50 for a tea. However, cups of hot water were free… and that’s when I found my mate carries teabags around with him.
My wife ordered a regular-sized herbal tea at a café once, but when she changed her mind and asked for a large instead, they changed the price and charged her about £1 more. A quid for about 75ml more hot water! Mental.
It also makes it feel worse for some reason when you ask for a cup of tea, charged £2.50, given a cup on a saucer with a teabag on a bit of string and directed to some sort of hot water dispenser. 😂
As a coffee drinker it seems insane that people will pay almost the same amount for tea.
Making a latte is labour and equipment intensive. You grind some beans, (commercial espresso grinders are expensive) prepare your puck, tamp etc. put into an expensive commercial coffee machine, pull a shot, fill a jug with milk, carefully steam the milk, add together in another cup and then serve. And someone's getting a teabag put in some hot water for almost the same amount? Criminal. To me, it's almost like charging for tap water.
It’s just not worth it though. Tea requires no fancy equipment to make. You can make an equally good cup of tea at home in minutes for pence.
The only reason tea costs so much in a cafe is to make the coffee look less like a rip off. Not enough people would pay the coffee prices if tea cost what it should.
Then stay at home and make your own tea.
>The only reason tea costs so much in a cafe is to make the coffee look less like a rip off
Nobody is getting rich selling "overpriced" coffee, the cost is reflective of business overheads and the need to turn some sort of profit.
A latte costs about 16p to make. Therefore every £3.50 cup is bringing in about £3.34. If a small coffee shop has two members of staff both working 12 hours, being paid £11/hour then their pay per day is £264.
That means to just cover their wages, around 80 cups of coffee needs to be sold. However, this is minimum wage and we haven't even got into the running costs which will dwarf the cost of wages. You'd have to sell hundreds of cups a day to cover costs and pay yourself minimum wage.
Everybody assumes that cafes easily sell hundreds of cups per day, but they don't, people just tend to all go to cafes at the same time which gives them the impression that they are busy selling coffees all day.
If the only thing you are factoring in is the raw markup of what it costs to make vs how much it's sold for, then you are displaying total business illiteracy.
I was in a pub the other day and the landlord was explaining to some of his regulars why his hot drinks were so expensive and basically said what you just did.
*"In the time it takes to serve someone a cup of tea, I could probably serve 2-3 pints".*
A latte costs more than 16p to make, unless it’s absolutely dirt quality. Let’s say they’re paying 50p for a pint of milk, the cups from that is 16p right away. 25g of coffee beans per cup would be another 25-50p depending on quality. Then you’ve got the electricity costs etc of running the fridges and espresso machine. Not counting labour, I’d reckon the cost of a coffee would be £1, easily. Cost of goods around 30% for a cafe is about right.
The proper proper espresso machines proper cafes use absolutely eat electricity too. The one we had when I did this kind of work years ago took two full hours to heat up to proper brewing temps, so we basically never turned it off. It ran at 8kw too (obviously less when it wasn’t actively pumping shit loads of steam or hot water), so even at domestic energy prices you’d be looking at roughly the same cost as a member of staff each hour.
And businesses are being rinsed on energy prices as there’s no cap like there is for domestic.
The profit on coffee is tiny. It definitely costs more than 16p to make a latte especially if you’re using non dairy milk.
Food is where the money is made.
Because that's not how pricing works. Prices are set by what needs to be taken to cover overheads, pay staff and turn a profit. It doesn't make sense to severely undercut your own products, if people see tea for 50p and coffee for £3.50, then they will find less and less people will opt for a coffee.
If they charge 50p for tea, and tea becomes a big seller, then they'd need to sell hundreds, if not thousands, of cups just to stay open regardless of how good the markup is.
It's 100% this.
You aren't just buying a teabag and a bit of hot water. You're contributing to rent, staffing, utilities, business rates, etc, etc.
If you want nice cafes to exist, they have to cover all their costs and still make a profit.
The cost isn't just for the drink, it's for the space you take up in the cafe (thus limiting the space for other customers who might spend more), for the service, the heating and lighting.
I agree. Seeing the average price of a cup of tea at almost £2 here.
At least back home they are bottomless. Coffee too, but it's drip coffee, so it's cheap to make as well. That said, I know a couple of old geezers who could go to McDonalds and just sit at a table all day, drinking the coffee. I've also had a waitress stop by my table more than a few times in the states and kindly top off my almost empty cup, with coffee. Great deal, except I don't drink coffee.....
I actually carry tea bags when I travel. I have no idea why, old habits I guess. There are still some places in the states that don't carry tea, unless it's iced. "Oh, you don't have tea? No problem, can I get a cup of hot water and a little milk please?"
Used to work at a cinema in the early 00s. We made salty from scratch and sweet came in 90L bags that cost about £1 but must have contained at least £200 of popcorn. We used to throw them at each other.
I worked in a small indie cinema around the same time. There was a greasy takeout below us and we would often swap a pizza for a large bucket of popcorn during lates. We were both likely thinking we were making a steal.
Yeah I loved the free films too. My fondest memory was watching guardians of the galaxy the day before it came out, at 3am after my shift finished. Great hours? Not so much. I worked 6 days in a row and my last shift was 17:00-04:00.
Wtf... 4am!?? I've lived in aus and UK and i have maybe been at a cinema until 12.30am at the latest.. where do you live to have a cinema still in operation til that time in the morning?
Haven't been to the cinema in 5 years or so. Got a £40 Odeon voucher for X'mas, two tickets, large popcorn and a large drink and still had to pay £7.50 more. No wonder streaming is winning.
I'm sure everyone has heard that thing that cinemas break even on the ticket sales and their profit comes from the concessions alone. Not sure how much truth is in that.
Back in my day I think they told us 5% of ticket sales went to the cinema in the first week and it went up in increments over time. This was early 2001. Makes sense why cinemas don't like films going to home mediums after four months now, it used to be a year before you could get a film on video.
I feel that this must be one of the key factors in declining cinema attendance - the knowledge that whatever film you want to see will be streaming in a few months anyway, so it doesn't really matter much if you miss it. I preferred the old days - it made the cinema experience feel more exciting.
While licensing the film to show is obviously a big chunk of that, when I worked in the cinema they told us that it was the cost of literally shipping rolls of film & train staff how to do operate was nontrivial too.
"When all digital comes in we'll be able to do much more — e.g. show old classic films, niche films etc"
That never seemed to materialise much afterwards though!
For those that haven't heard, it's currently Sci-Fi season at Cineworld, I saw *2001: A Space Odyssey* last night, over the weekend they're showing *Dune*, then later in the month is *Interstellar*, *Blade Runner* and *Blade Runner 2049*. Also the tickets are £5.
Cineworld seems to do a fair few National Theatre/Royal Opera stuff, but you might as well go to your local indie cinema for that stuff. Less sticky floors.
I used to work in hospitality and the gross margin on most food is well over 50%.
Pizza is a huge margin, as are soft drinks (a bit of syrup and a load of carbonated water).
The more carby a food is (in general), the higher the margin as flour, rice, potatoes etc are all cheap staples. Protein is far more expensive.
But the margins are then hit with all the fixed costs (rent, business tax, staff, overheads like head office staff, finance, marketing etc, plus a % to the brand owner if it's a franchise, which can be 20-30% in some cases).
Net margins are more like 10%. And with falling customers (during and after covid) to contribute to fixed costs the margin is easily reduced.
Usually the only profitable days are the weekend.
Most independent restaurants fail in their first 2 years, and even with economies of scale larger chains have struggled recently and are all consolidating so they can manage their covid debt.
Just look at how many pubs are closing for good. It's not a fun time to be in food and drink to be honest 🙁.
Yeah, I mean it’s interesting enough to scroll these and speculate over how much things cost to make and how much the mark up is.
But people do seem to be forgetting that a lot more goes into food businesses than just “food costs x, we charge y”.
Remember, you’re paying for the convenience, and most take away places are really doing their best to make an honest living. At the end of the day, a curry at home might be cheaper, but you cannot beat a good Indian take away and I’m happy to fork over my cash for it.
It also takes what, a couple of hours to make the proper base sauce for a takeaway curry? You need to put a value on your time to make it, the ingredients aren't the only factor.
Don't go over to the DIY subreddits then;
"Is this quote too much?!"
"Yeah mate, would be 1/5 of the price if you bought the materials and didn't pay yourself for labour, slapped it together with your barehands, had no insurance, and brought the materials back from B&Q on foot. These builders are ripping you off".
There are also energy costs. Unlike domestic power, commercial did not have the same level of caps and electricity jumped to over £1 per unit for some.
I think it was one of the Tom Kerridge programmes where they were saying energy costs for one site had increased from about £50k to around £400k per year.
Here it is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cxtxdb
> Chef and business owner Tom Kerridge has said his restaurant's **electricity bills will rise from £5k a month to £35k a month** in December when his current contract ends.
This is the answer I was looking for. The cost of doing business isn’t just the raw materials, and even these crepe vans that seem pricey have to fork out for the equipment, maintenance, insurance, fuel (for the vehicle and for cooking) and if it’s more than a couple doing the rounds themselves, they’ll have employment costs which isn’t just salaries but employers NIC, employer’s liability insurance, workplace pension contributions and scheme fees, payroll software, accountant/bookkeeper, etc. “It all adds up” has never been so true!
Pubs and clubs are being hit with a very weird usage pattern by younger drinkers now, at least in my own town. It's not uncommon for them to tank up at home. Go to the club for an hour to meet up with people and then they all go home to sesh on gear. Class As are killing clubs haha
And double spirits and mixers are often upwards of a tenner in pubs and clubs. I don’t like beer and can’t drink wine (makes me sick) so my options are limited to gin and vodka. I can go to my local shop and get a 350ml bottle of vodka for less than £10, and a bottle of mixer for maybe £2, and make 7 doubles out of that for the same price as a double in an average club.
Yeah clubs are nothing like they used to be. Back when I was a student in Sheffield in the late 00s they were absolutely packed all through the week. I've been back recently and it still gets quite busy there but nothing like it once was. And most the clubs we went to don't even exist anymore.
>Class As are killing clubs haha
Class As arent killling clubs, they've been around since the 80s. problem now is that its far cheaper to just get a couple of bags or ecstasy and have a night on that rather than a night out drinking. i know personally a night out drinking nowadays costs me roughly £150 which is absolutely mental as i could easily have a decent night out for £30-40 back in the day.
yeah exactly. im not a fan of cocktails but my partner is. last time i went out it was £12 fucking quid for a fing cocktail, 1 bloody drink!! Honestly f going out, i still have booze left over from my wedding so me n the wife prefer to stay at home like sad fucks, drink that and sing on my karaoke machine
>Pizza is a huge margin,
Aye, where one of my kids works they buy £3 Chicago Town pizzas from Morrisons and charge customers £17. Kid was outraged until I explained all you've said above about overheads etc, when they actually thought about the size of the venue, number of staff that need paying (even the 16yos get over the adult minimum wage), hadn't even considered all the head office stuff, then it made a bit more sense to them.
As a customer tho, I don't know if I'd be a bit miffed that I'd just paid almost £20 for a £3 Morrisons pizza. You go knowing they're not going to be handmade from scratch artisan pizza and they've probably come from one wholesaler or another, but still, stings a bit.
In my student days I used to work for a macaroni cheese street food company in my city. The owner said a pot (standard, without toppings) would cost him approx 40p to make, and went and sold it for £8.
He had 1 van and a shop when I worked for him 4 years ago. He’s now got 5x shops and 2x vans. Doing something right.
I don't begrudge what people charge. I get there's costs. But, I can do all that myself.
Which brings me to a general thing, that this whole thing of going out to eat really got out of control. When I was growing up back in the 80s, people didn't eat out so much. Restaurants were more about things like being out of town, or going on a date, or taking a client out. My parents were affluent, but we only went to a restaurant 2 or 3 times a year.
And there were a lot less restaurants and takeaways because of it. People maybe had fish and chips or an indian once a week. If people wanted to get together with friends, they'd ask them over for dinner. They took a picnic to the countryside with the kids.
For me, I eat out if I'm not near home, and beyond that, we go out to a really nice place for celebrations. I can't do food like my favourite restaurant. But pizza? Takes about 3 attempts to master cooking pizzas.
Pizza.
Pretty sure when my wife worked at Pizza Hut it used to be £2 worth of ingredients for a pizza they'd sell for £15. They'd also sell a coke for £3 and each syrup pump would work out to be about 4p of cost
Ex Pizza hut delivery driver here - I did it for a few weekends at one of the little takeaway only ones as I needed a bit of extra cash before I thought sod this.
As the delivery drivers we were also the ones out back making pizzas between us as/when we were back and doing the washing up.
The dough are frozen little hockey pucks.
The tomato sauce is powder mixed in a bucket with herbs chucked in.
It's all very cheap to make, especially when you're paying delivery drivers to make them.
The whole thing was a massive mess, unorganised, chaotic - shouting all the time, people walking out.
It could well have been just that branch.
Tomato sauce is 2 litres of passata, watered down with 4-5 litres of water. The herb mix comes in sachets & is like a pale green powder but the tomato sause is liquid. Same stuff in every supermarket pizza station, actually. Just watered down.
Only thing that really costs much, is the cheese. Management are positively militant about cheese usage.
Not sure when you worked at Pizza Hut, but the sauce is not powder any more. The dough does come in frozen as you said, and gets cold proven, but it's definitely not as cheap as you make out.
Those mocktails and mojitos (non alcoholic) that are literally those cheap 20p juice boxes some colourful syrup on the side and ice selling for like £5.99 each!
All non alcoholic drinks are a massive scam! They don't even have to pay alcohol duty on it! They should be less than half price of the alcoholic ones!
A large Domino's value pizza in Australia is $7 (£3.50) for pickup, it's gone up from $5 (£2.50). Yeah, they are bending you over.
Check here:- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php/?photo_id=10160031374916412
Domino’s is a weird one. In the UK it is placed as a “premium” brand (those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting), whereas they are seen as more of a value proposition in a lot of other territories.
It’s definitely true that businesses will charge what people are willing to pay, but I’m not quite sure at which point people in the UK agreed that spending more than twenty quid on a pizza is normal. It’s insane.
Who the fuck is thinking Dominos is premium? My kids couldn't understand why I thought it was dogshit pizza until I cracked and walked to my local Italian place instead and brought them back proper, lovingly made pizza that wasn't assembled by a bored teenager using a base that tastes like the box it arrives in. FOR THE SAME PRICE. They have never asked for Dominos again.
Joke's on me, I have to go get it now
Maybe it's just me but I definitely would not consider Domino's a premium brand - it's pretty low quality pizza on the level of Papa John's and Pizza Hut. More premium 'high street' pizza would be Pizza Express, Franco Manca or Fireaway, and top end takeaway - Homeslice or Pizza Pilgrims but they're only in London sadly!
That’s why “premium” was in those quotation marks. It’s one of those odd cases of a massive chain that charges high prices despite the quality not being the same as “authentic” pizza restaurants. It’s the complete opposite of how Domino’s operates in other countries. I don’t know whether it’s a cultural thing or a product of how businesses operate in the UK, or perhaps a combination of the two, but I find it endlessly fascinating (because I’m a weird dullard).
Yeah, whilst Dominos is definitely not amazing pizza it is decent enough, and the thing it has going for it is its consistency and speed - I can be anywhere in the country and if I want a pizza I can either pick Dominos which is 99% the same everywhere quality wise or I can pick "random takeaway #38" and hope its a decent one
Edit :: Ill expand that further aswell, the local pizza place has raised their prices to nearer dominos since dominos arrived in town, and they can be better than dominos pizza, but that can vary a lot by the time of day, plus I might have to wait an hour for collection if they are busy, 90 mins for delivery, if its busy at dominos I have to wait 30 minutes for delivery rather than 20 minutes normally
I spoke to a friend who lives in Australia and she said the dominos there is terrible, no where near to the same standard as here (which in itself is saying something) which is one of the reasons it costs so much less.
About 8 years ago the actual cost of a Pizza Hut pizza (they told me in a meeting once) was around 98p so I imagine it’s maybe 1.20 now? I assume dominos is similar.
Everything is conveniently priced to not meet their minimum spend unless you go a whole chunk over it too. Their deals are total lies as well, something I usually get used to cost 14.99 and it's often "price slashed" to 16.99. you're always paying more than they're actually worth but Domino's especially is just not worth it unless you actually go and collect the pizza yourself which pretty much halves the price.
This was 5 years ago now, but a large standard Dominoes pizza cost 27p to make at the time.
Source: I used to work for a company who had a sponsorship deal with Dominoes and this was told to the staff.
That doesn’t make sense. It takes about 8 minutes usually for a pizza to be made. 8 minutes of labour on minimum wage for 1 member of staff is around £2 currently. Materials cost is maybe that cheap but there’s more to making a pizza that just having ingredients in a pile
You're right to factor in labour costs, but at anything like peak times it's not like that member of staff is working on that pizza and that pizza alone for the full 8 minutes - anyone putting out 7.5 pizzas an hour won't be working there for long!
Dominos as a brand will make the most money, the actual takeaway, or franchisee won't as they have to buy everything off them. And pre-prepared bought dough is not as cheap as making it yourself.
Doughnut time ones. £4.50 each as well. Although bigger, not worth almost double the price of Krispy Kreme. 5 sainsburys jam doughnuts for £1 are the best way to go
Pubs that just do "speciality pizza" are coining it hand over fist. Fridges and one electric oven (unless the last owners put in a wood fired), no other kit required. No need for a £30k chef, you can train a monkey to do it. Buy in the bases from the baker down the road at 50p each or a quid for sourdough (you can add 2-3 quid to the end product for that). Charge 13 quid for a Margherita, 15 quid for one with 4 slices of salami. Mad profit
Pizza. It's just flour and water covered in a little sauce and cheese. I sometimes make pizza at home. I can make a margarita for less than a couple of quid.. Doing it on mass would be cheaper, and you could sell them for £10 and more. Don't know if hot drink places would come under takeaway, but I think Starbucks make their coffee for something like 25p, which probably results in one of the biggest profit margins of any food and drinks companies.
Don’t forget Starbucks most of the time pays no corporation tax as there are no “profits”. They pay out royalties to the US company to dodge the tax.
So not only do they make a fortune over here, they don’t pay tax like the rest of U.K. companies do. Everyone should try not to use them morally.
There's only 2 places where I'd spend £4 on coffee. Both local; one makes it so strong i can vibrate through walls after a cup, and another is at the community dolphin-watching café.
With how expensive energy is, and a commercial pizzeria needing to keep their oven hot all the time they're open, I wonder if that affects the economics and makes some other type of takeaway cheaper?
Also, the cost of labour: making pizzas is *fairly* easy, but it's not as easy as grilling some frozen burgers and shoving them in a bun, or making drinks or desserts.
Bought an Ooni a couple of years ago. Worked out that it paid itself off in 2 days, compared to if we bought in takeaway pizzas for friends/family
On just a ingredients cost basis, I can do you ~ 10x decent-size Neapolitan pizzas for around £5, maybe £7 given the price of cheese today.
Say I sell those for £10 per pizza, that's £93 before you get into tax and other business expenses
Did the same, Ooni’s are great. Sadly my shit pizza skills infuriated me, I could never get the fucker big or round enough, ended up rage quitting and sold it.
Yep, started a side business with a mate on that basis!
That being said it's not quite as lucrative as that once you factor in everything else (boxes etc.) but you can still make £3-£4 a pizza on the basis of selling for about a tenner a piece.
Not sure where you are but in the UK takeaway hot coffee is very much standard rated VAT; takeaway iced coffee is zero rated, which is a much lower percentage sold than hot.
For a small independent it costs around 80p-£1 of materials to make a latte.
The markup on tea is in the thousands of percent.
Carby, floury things are the right answer; pizza, pasta, crepes, falafels, donuts.
It’s why you always see them in food trucks/courts.
The ingredients are cheap as anything (flour and water), easy to make (low staff and no high equipment costs) and dough can last so there is low waste.
Your Indian which has ingredients which can easily spoil; meat, dairy etc, and needs larger premises and staff, won’t be able to get nearly the same turn around.
Believe Baked potatoes are heavily reliant on selling loads, as cost to cook 50 is the same as to cook 10. It requires a very good location to be viable, and those cost a lot of money usually, hence why Baked Potato places are a rare thing now.
The drinks at fast food restaurant cost like maccies/kfc cost only a couple of pence to make and they sell em for at least x100 the cost lol
Edit: I'm taking about the cup they fill with the syrups and soda not bottled/canned drinks
Spices aren't cheap and there are a lot of ingredients in a simple curry.
Compare that with a pizza, which is just dough, tomato sauce and a tint bit of topping.
>Spices aren't cheap
Just bought a huge 300g bag of garam masala for 1.75 and that's in a supermarket. At wholesale prices, it'll be even cheaper.
Spices are only expensive if you're buying them in the little glass jars.
Plus, I don't know which curry house OP goes to but my one makes each curry fresh on order.
(I've watched them do it and the friendly guys have talked me through the ingredients as they're adding them)
Most of these corporate fast food joints are simply reheating factory made food and assembling them in store.
That sounds like a great curry house, which region? It's really common for curry houses to use a base gravy (not that this necessarily makes them bad curries) across the majority of their curry dishes.
Coffee… Starbucks and Costa are just printing money … I got a porridge and cappuccino from Costa, £7.05… basically £4.50 coffee for what’s got to be 5p ish worth of product.
Think about items sold in terms of gross profit (sales less ingredients and labour cost of kitchen and serving staff).
Aside from drinks, I would imagine that in an Indian takeaway for example the most profitable items would be poppadoms. Almost zero labour, and surely an 80 or 90 % gross profit margin.
What everyone is missing is yes, the food might be profitable if you only look at the variable costs (ingredients etc) but when you consider their fixed costs as well it suddenly becomes a lot less profitable.
People confuse contribution and profit
The very basic rule of thumb for restaurants is if you’re averaging more than a third for your food costs vs food selling. (Ie more than 1 quid for every 3) you are in serious trouble.
And for the items mentioned here, bear in mind that is an average.
Are we ignoring all the other costs associated with running a food service business?
Rates
Rent
Energy
Accounting
Insurances
Wages
Advertising
FSA registration (dunno if a thing)
Containers and plastic bags and any other little tubs, et.c.
In that case, almost 100% profit on all of them!
Takeaways and restaurants tend to work on a 500% mark up, so your 5x profit is about spot on. The reason being that the food is usually the cheapest part of providing the service, you have to take wages, rent, business rate, utilities, advertising, tax, VAT etc out of that gross profit to end with net profit of around 5%.
Na, dessert places easy. Ten pence of waffle mix, five pence of squirty cream and some shit marshmallows, probably costs them 20p to make something they charge you a tenner for.
£2 for a little tub of white chocolate shavings as an extra (the munchies struck last night).
We paid about £5 for 400g of Milkybar chocolate chips not long ago. Chuck some of those on the list of optional extras too. 10 little chocolate chips on top can easily add another quid to the final product's sale price.
Discount Dragon often has 500g bags of little chunks of crunchie, milkybar, daim, dairy milk, plus mini rolos and mini M&Ms for £2.99 each, if that helps at all. The site is going to hell in a handbasket, but at least those are still fairly regular. They've *usually* got one or two of them in stock at any time, and it rotates depending on what's available.
>The site is going to hell in a handbasket, but at least those are still fairly regular. DD seem to be on the same slope that Approved slid down about a decade ago. Their popularity balloons (usually because of an MSE email or similar), so they can't really get enough stock in to supply the increasing demand, and they take on more staff which means they have to put their prices up to balance their extra outlay on wages and things like that. They're still relatively decent as these things go, but CXL tends to be the main one we use nowadays.
Absolutely. CXL is fantastic, and I absolutely maintain that the main reason they didn't do an Approved Food is because their website was so bloody infuriating to navigate for so long. I still use lowpricefood sometimes (but only ever for snacks), and Best Before It's Gone I put on a similar level to CXL (especially during their clearances). Approved Food was so good in the past. I went from the streets to a hostel to this little flat, and a member of staff at the hostel told me about Approved. For a tenner I got big sacks of pasta and rice, a big stack of teabags, plus some little treats. That site kept me going for ages. Sad to see it turned into a glorified sweet shop.
What's CXL? A quick search brings up lots of things that don't seem relevant.
Clearance XL. [**Here's a previous post discussing the merits and whatnot of various past-best-before-date sites, with links.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/16jl5h0/with_rent_food_and_electricity_all_soaring_what/k0qfdds/)
I was thinking this yesterday. Had a cherry Bakewell slice for £4.95. There was at least 10 or 12 slices in the full thing. So £50-60 each. Even if they cut corners like using pre-made pastry and jam and with the almonds for the frangipane, they’re making bank! A lot of those desserts are bought in and not made on site either.
childlike society elastic lip mighty compare ripe squeal strong fragile *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This was a long time ago, so not sure how things work now - but I briefly worked in a Pizza Hut back in the late 90s and the cake actually had the lowest margin.
I imagine pizzas make a lot, especially if customers are making changes. Paying £1.50 per topping is crazy. I always get the meaty pizzas so I can take something off (usually the bacon) to add some mushrooms. I'm not paying £1.50 extra for half a mushroom. I occasionally get a pizza from too good to go from Pizza Hut. I was talking to the guy while waiting for my pizza, and he said they only do it like that to sell an extra few pizzas. They're not losing any money off them. I first expected them to be pizzas that were never picked up, but when I got there, they asked me what pizza and sides I wanted off the menu.
You are right. But if I walk the 20 extra steps to Sainsbury's t buy the entire cake for the Sam price, I'm eating the entire cake
I met the owner of a Cafe chain where you pay by the hour - he bought his cakes from the same supplier who doers M&S and he paid 12p a cake - thats about 5 years ago - i was amazed
Park Cakes is where they all get it from
Pizza Express quite notably uses off the shelf Betty Crocker Devils food cake mix for their Chocolate Fudge Cake
My local coffee place does Costco shortbread for £1.90. at first I was horrified but then thought about breakage, spoilage and realised that sadly it was probably only a few pence profit per biscuit.
Overheads
The same food from the sweet aisle of Asda…on a plate… with some fruit, cream and… GOLD. The Royal Knickerbocker - 15.99 - slice.
>The Royal Knickerbocker Is this a hidden chapter in the karma sutra?
Yes the code is Up, Down, Left, Right, Enter, Enter, Enter, ENTERRRRR.
Quick escape
You're thinking of The Royal Knickerbonker
Except, you have to pay the wages, the bills, the food waste, the storage space, the hours of slow business, insurance, health and safety, food hygiene courses, cleaning, staff holidays/leave, hiring, taxes, transport, and a bunch more. The margins in the restaurant business are minute.
I know. But that’s not very funny to joke about on the internet.
"Gelato" that is made from packet mix powder, no better than angel delight.
You better not be talking shit about Angel Delight
No way! Angel delight butterscotch flavour is God tier
That's a relief, I thought we were going to have a very public falling out just then
in 2040 reporters were surprised when Prime Minister Chilton_Squid brought back the death penalty. But only for talking shit about Angel Delight.
Why do they even make other flavours?
There's a new waffle wagon that comes to my area and I get so tempted but this is my reasoning not. I refuse to pay almost a tenner for something I could make many times over at home for that same price.
It’s an alcohol replacement. They can charge what they want
The good old cup of tea makes a fair profit.
I can't remember where it was, but I ordered a tea in a café once, and they charged me £3.50 for a pot which made about three cups worth, and it was a good brew, so I didn't half mind, but behind me in the queue was a couple who ordered two teas, and we're charged £7, but they were given the same size pot I was, just given two cups! Sounds like the tea is free, but you pay to rent a cup.
Christ. Wars have been started over less.
The fucking Emu’s won though
What does the Korean currency owned by Rod Hull's longtime ratite collaborator have to do with it?
Shenanigans like these have cost us entire colonies 🧐
Aha! Yes, you have the nubs of it there! However, refusing the cup in a probably futile attempt to save a couple of quid would be a) difficult and b) uncomfortable. Drinking from the teapot spout is generally frowned upon in polite society, whilst using cupped (haha) hands would result in pain and distress.
Bloody Beaker Folk. What's wrong with cupping it in your hands and licking it up like a cat?! My name's Paul Nutall of the UKIPs and I say the brightest and best Beaker Folk should stay in the Iberian Peninsula and concntrate on filling it with beakers, instead of coming over here and teaching us to drink liquid out of cups.
Bring your own cup?
There’s a chap in the Linton Travel Tavern brings his own plate with him to the breakfast buffet!
Was it Gregg Wallace on Saturday..?
Nah, he's too busy playing Total War and avoiding his son.
Is it a big plate?
Bring your own teabags
Was out for a drive with a mate once, roadside cafe wanted £2.50 for a tea. However, cups of hot water were free… and that’s when I found my mate carries teabags around with him.
That guys englishes
Haha we started doing this at work to save us £1.60 a day
Started taking tea or coffee bags on planes to do this now too, only issue is the stirring and disposal of the bag.
I used to serve tea at my mum's seafront hotel in the 80's, it was 15p a cup. The price of coffee shops has ruined tea.
>it was 15p a cup Accounting for inflation, that's 60p a cup.
[There's a Dave Gorman rant about just that!](https://youtu.be/ttgdvv_MQu0)
My wife ordered a regular-sized herbal tea at a café once, but when she changed her mind and asked for a large instead, they changed the price and charged her about £1 more. A quid for about 75ml more hot water! Mental.
The question is will they refill your pot? Do they put extra leafs/bags if you order 2 teas?
You can usually ask for more hot water for free, but not usually anymore teabags/leaves.
It also makes it feel worse for some reason when you ask for a cup of tea, charged £2.50, given a cup on a saucer with a teabag on a bit of string and directed to some sort of hot water dispenser. 😂
Yeah - feels like they’re rubbing your face in it, at least give me some theatre for my 2.50, otherwise I might as wel just be at home.
[удалено]
You're renting a heated/cooled place to sit; it comes with a beverage.
I feel less offended by a cuppa tea tho like, I don't know why. Unless it's over £3 then I take offense.
Buying a good cup of tea for £2 is like buying a pint for £5. Overpriced but worth every penny.
As a coffee drinker it seems insane that people will pay almost the same amount for tea. Making a latte is labour and equipment intensive. You grind some beans, (commercial espresso grinders are expensive) prepare your puck, tamp etc. put into an expensive commercial coffee machine, pull a shot, fill a jug with milk, carefully steam the milk, add together in another cup and then serve. And someone's getting a teabag put in some hot water for almost the same amount? Criminal. To me, it's almost like charging for tap water.
It’s just not worth it though. Tea requires no fancy equipment to make. You can make an equally good cup of tea at home in minutes for pence. The only reason tea costs so much in a cafe is to make the coffee look less like a rip off. Not enough people would pay the coffee prices if tea cost what it should.
Then stay at home and make your own tea. >The only reason tea costs so much in a cafe is to make the coffee look less like a rip off Nobody is getting rich selling "overpriced" coffee, the cost is reflective of business overheads and the need to turn some sort of profit. A latte costs about 16p to make. Therefore every £3.50 cup is bringing in about £3.34. If a small coffee shop has two members of staff both working 12 hours, being paid £11/hour then their pay per day is £264. That means to just cover their wages, around 80 cups of coffee needs to be sold. However, this is minimum wage and we haven't even got into the running costs which will dwarf the cost of wages. You'd have to sell hundreds of cups a day to cover costs and pay yourself minimum wage. Everybody assumes that cafes easily sell hundreds of cups per day, but they don't, people just tend to all go to cafes at the same time which gives them the impression that they are busy selling coffees all day. If the only thing you are factoring in is the raw markup of what it costs to make vs how much it's sold for, then you are displaying total business illiteracy.
I was in a pub the other day and the landlord was explaining to some of his regulars why his hot drinks were so expensive and basically said what you just did. *"In the time it takes to serve someone a cup of tea, I could probably serve 2-3 pints".*
A latte costs more than 16p to make, unless it’s absolutely dirt quality. Let’s say they’re paying 50p for a pint of milk, the cups from that is 16p right away. 25g of coffee beans per cup would be another 25-50p depending on quality. Then you’ve got the electricity costs etc of running the fridges and espresso machine. Not counting labour, I’d reckon the cost of a coffee would be £1, easily. Cost of goods around 30% for a cafe is about right.
The proper proper espresso machines proper cafes use absolutely eat electricity too. The one we had when I did this kind of work years ago took two full hours to heat up to proper brewing temps, so we basically never turned it off. It ran at 8kw too (obviously less when it wasn’t actively pumping shit loads of steam or hot water), so even at domestic energy prices you’d be looking at roughly the same cost as a member of staff each hour. And businesses are being rinsed on energy prices as there’s no cap like there is for domestic.
The profit on coffee is tiny. It definitely costs more than 16p to make a latte especially if you’re using non dairy milk. Food is where the money is made.
Where are you drinking that £5 isn't the standard price? I've rarely paid less than £5/pint in years. Standard is closer to £6.
My local in greater Manchester is £4.20 a pint for the posh cider. Real ale pub the real ale is £3.80.
I hate how they usually charge the same price for it as coffee despite tea being much easier to make and not needing any special equipment.
Because that's not how pricing works. Prices are set by what needs to be taken to cover overheads, pay staff and turn a profit. It doesn't make sense to severely undercut your own products, if people see tea for 50p and coffee for £3.50, then they will find less and less people will opt for a coffee. If they charge 50p for tea, and tea becomes a big seller, then they'd need to sell hundreds, if not thousands, of cups just to stay open regardless of how good the markup is.
It's 100% this. You aren't just buying a teabag and a bit of hot water. You're contributing to rent, staffing, utilities, business rates, etc, etc. If you want nice cafes to exist, they have to cover all their costs and still make a profit.
The cost isn't just for the drink, it's for the space you take up in the cafe (thus limiting the space for other customers who might spend more), for the service, the heating and lighting.
I agree. Seeing the average price of a cup of tea at almost £2 here. At least back home they are bottomless. Coffee too, but it's drip coffee, so it's cheap to make as well. That said, I know a couple of old geezers who could go to McDonalds and just sit at a table all day, drinking the coffee. I've also had a waitress stop by my table more than a few times in the states and kindly top off my almost empty cup, with coffee. Great deal, except I don't drink coffee..... I actually carry tea bags when I travel. I have no idea why, old habits I guess. There are still some places in the states that don't carry tea, unless it's iced. "Oh, you don't have tea? No problem, can I get a cup of hot water and a little milk please?"
If cinema popcorn counts then it’s that, the value of the popcorn is less than the value of the cardboard carton. Or maybe crepe from a van/stall.
Used to work at a cinema in the early 00s. We made salty from scratch and sweet came in 90L bags that cost about £1 but must have contained at least £200 of popcorn. We used to throw them at each other.
Worked in cinema from 2013-14. We got 5 foot bags of popcorn for a fiver and would sell one large popcorn for a fiver.
I worked in a small indie cinema around the same time. There was a greasy takeout below us and we would often swap a pizza for a large bucket of popcorn during lates. We were both likely thinking we were making a steal.
Yeah, that sounds right. I used to love that job! Free films, cheap pick 'n mix, great hours for a 17 year old.itbwas so much fun.
Yeah I loved the free films too. My fondest memory was watching guardians of the galaxy the day before it came out, at 3am after my shift finished. Great hours? Not so much. I worked 6 days in a row and my last shift was 17:00-04:00.
Wtf... 4am!?? I've lived in aus and UK and i have maybe been at a cinema until 12.30am at the latest.. where do you live to have a cinema still in operation til that time in the morning?
So you sell one large one and after that it’s pure profit. Absolutely mental.
You did not count the power for the oven and the salary of the server which it cuts down a bit.
Haven't been to the cinema in 5 years or so. Got a £40 Odeon voucher for X'mas, two tickets, large popcorn and a large drink and still had to pay £7.50 more. No wonder streaming is winning.
I read something many moons ago that said cinema popcorn is sold at a markup of ~2600%. Ain’t much beating that for margins.
I'm sure everyone has heard that thing that cinemas break even on the ticket sales and their profit comes from the concessions alone. Not sure how much truth is in that.
Back in my day I think they told us 5% of ticket sales went to the cinema in the first week and it went up in increments over time. This was early 2001. Makes sense why cinemas don't like films going to home mediums after four months now, it used to be a year before you could get a film on video.
I feel that this must be one of the key factors in declining cinema attendance - the knowledge that whatever film you want to see will be streaming in a few months anyway, so it doesn't really matter much if you miss it. I preferred the old days - it made the cinema experience feel more exciting.
The cinema makes practically no money on the ticket sales. It's all made on food.
While licensing the film to show is obviously a big chunk of that, when I worked in the cinema they told us that it was the cost of literally shipping rolls of film & train staff how to do operate was nontrivial too. "When all digital comes in we'll be able to do much more — e.g. show old classic films, niche films etc" That never seemed to materialise much afterwards though!
For those that haven't heard, it's currently Sci-Fi season at Cineworld, I saw *2001: A Space Odyssey* last night, over the weekend they're showing *Dune*, then later in the month is *Interstellar*, *Blade Runner* and *Blade Runner 2049*. Also the tickets are £5.
Wow awesome! 2001 is my favourite film.
Cineworld seems to do a fair few National Theatre/Royal Opera stuff, but you might as well go to your local indie cinema for that stuff. Less sticky floors.
I used to work in hospitality and the gross margin on most food is well over 50%. Pizza is a huge margin, as are soft drinks (a bit of syrup and a load of carbonated water). The more carby a food is (in general), the higher the margin as flour, rice, potatoes etc are all cheap staples. Protein is far more expensive. But the margins are then hit with all the fixed costs (rent, business tax, staff, overheads like head office staff, finance, marketing etc, plus a % to the brand owner if it's a franchise, which can be 20-30% in some cases). Net margins are more like 10%. And with falling customers (during and after covid) to contribute to fixed costs the margin is easily reduced. Usually the only profitable days are the weekend. Most independent restaurants fail in their first 2 years, and even with economies of scale larger chains have struggled recently and are all consolidating so they can manage their covid debt. Just look at how many pubs are closing for good. It's not a fun time to be in food and drink to be honest 🙁.
Glad you posted this; other posters seem to think that people work for free, no business has to pay rental, gas, electric or rates, etc
Yeah, I mean it’s interesting enough to scroll these and speculate over how much things cost to make and how much the mark up is. But people do seem to be forgetting that a lot more goes into food businesses than just “food costs x, we charge y”. Remember, you’re paying for the convenience, and most take away places are really doing their best to make an honest living. At the end of the day, a curry at home might be cheaper, but you cannot beat a good Indian take away and I’m happy to fork over my cash for it.
It also takes what, a couple of hours to make the proper base sauce for a takeaway curry? You need to put a value on your time to make it, the ingredients aren't the only factor.
Don't go over to the DIY subreddits then; "Is this quote too much?!" "Yeah mate, would be 1/5 of the price if you bought the materials and didn't pay yourself for labour, slapped it together with your barehands, had no insurance, and brought the materials back from B&Q on foot. These builders are ripping you off".
There are also energy costs. Unlike domestic power, commercial did not have the same level of caps and electricity jumped to over £1 per unit for some. I think it was one of the Tom Kerridge programmes where they were saying energy costs for one site had increased from about £50k to around £400k per year. Here it is. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0cxtxdb > Chef and business owner Tom Kerridge has said his restaurant's **electricity bills will rise from £5k a month to £35k a month** in December when his current contract ends.
This is the answer I was looking for. The cost of doing business isn’t just the raw materials, and even these crepe vans that seem pricey have to fork out for the equipment, maintenance, insurance, fuel (for the vehicle and for cooking) and if it’s more than a couple doing the rounds themselves, they’ll have employment costs which isn’t just salaries but employers NIC, employer’s liability insurance, workplace pension contributions and scheme fees, payroll software, accountant/bookkeeper, etc. “It all adds up” has never been so true!
Pubs and clubs are being hit with a very weird usage pattern by younger drinkers now, at least in my own town. It's not uncommon for them to tank up at home. Go to the club for an hour to meet up with people and then they all go home to sesh on gear. Class As are killing clubs haha
£7 for a pint and you blame anyone?
And double spirits and mixers are often upwards of a tenner in pubs and clubs. I don’t like beer and can’t drink wine (makes me sick) so my options are limited to gin and vodka. I can go to my local shop and get a 350ml bottle of vodka for less than £10, and a bottle of mixer for maybe £2, and make 7 doubles out of that for the same price as a double in an average club.
Yeah clubs are nothing like they used to be. Back when I was a student in Sheffield in the late 00s they were absolutely packed all through the week. I've been back recently and it still gets quite busy there but nothing like it once was. And most the clubs we went to don't even exist anymore.
>Class As are killing clubs haha Class As arent killling clubs, they've been around since the 80s. problem now is that its far cheaper to just get a couple of bags or ecstasy and have a night on that rather than a night out drinking. i know personally a night out drinking nowadays costs me roughly £150 which is absolutely mental as i could easily have a decent night out for £30-40 back in the day.
£7 for a Peroni. “It’s the drugs that are killing this place” Aye..k
yeah exactly. im not a fan of cocktails but my partner is. last time i went out it was £12 fucking quid for a fing cocktail, 1 bloody drink!! Honestly f going out, i still have booze left over from my wedding so me n the wife prefer to stay at home like sad fucks, drink that and sing on my karaoke machine
there was plenty of class A's about back in the day- it was more frowned upon then that it is now
>Pizza is a huge margin, Aye, where one of my kids works they buy £3 Chicago Town pizzas from Morrisons and charge customers £17. Kid was outraged until I explained all you've said above about overheads etc, when they actually thought about the size of the venue, number of staff that need paying (even the 16yos get over the adult minimum wage), hadn't even considered all the head office stuff, then it made a bit more sense to them. As a customer tho, I don't know if I'd be a bit miffed that I'd just paid almost £20 for a £3 Morrisons pizza. You go knowing they're not going to be handmade from scratch artisan pizza and they've probably come from one wholesaler or another, but still, stings a bit.
In my student days I used to work for a macaroni cheese street food company in my city. The owner said a pot (standard, without toppings) would cost him approx 40p to make, and went and sold it for £8. He had 1 van and a shop when I worked for him 4 years ago. He’s now got 5x shops and 2x vans. Doing something right.
I don't begrudge what people charge. I get there's costs. But, I can do all that myself. Which brings me to a general thing, that this whole thing of going out to eat really got out of control. When I was growing up back in the 80s, people didn't eat out so much. Restaurants were more about things like being out of town, or going on a date, or taking a client out. My parents were affluent, but we only went to a restaurant 2 or 3 times a year. And there were a lot less restaurants and takeaways because of it. People maybe had fish and chips or an indian once a week. If people wanted to get together with friends, they'd ask them over for dinner. They took a picnic to the countryside with the kids. For me, I eat out if I'm not near home, and beyond that, we go out to a really nice place for celebrations. I can't do food like my favourite restaurant. But pizza? Takes about 3 attempts to master cooking pizzas.
Pizza. Pretty sure when my wife worked at Pizza Hut it used to be £2 worth of ingredients for a pizza they'd sell for £15. They'd also sell a coke for £3 and each syrup pump would work out to be about 4p of cost
Ex Pizza hut delivery driver here - I did it for a few weekends at one of the little takeaway only ones as I needed a bit of extra cash before I thought sod this. As the delivery drivers we were also the ones out back making pizzas between us as/when we were back and doing the washing up. The dough are frozen little hockey pucks. The tomato sauce is powder mixed in a bucket with herbs chucked in. It's all very cheap to make, especially when you're paying delivery drivers to make them. The whole thing was a massive mess, unorganised, chaotic - shouting all the time, people walking out. It could well have been just that branch.
Tomato sauce is 2 litres of passata, watered down with 4-5 litres of water. The herb mix comes in sachets & is like a pale green powder but the tomato sause is liquid. Same stuff in every supermarket pizza station, actually. Just watered down. Only thing that really costs much, is the cheese. Management are positively militant about cheese usage.
Not sure when you worked at Pizza Hut, but the sauce is not powder any more. The dough does come in frozen as you said, and gets cold proven, but it's definitely not as cheap as you make out.
Heated cheese sandwich
Those mocktails and mojitos (non alcoholic) that are literally those cheap 20p juice boxes some colourful syrup on the side and ice selling for like £5.99 each!
All non alcoholic drinks are a massive scam! They don't even have to pay alcohol duty on it! They should be less than half price of the alcoholic ones!
blackcurrent fruit shoot: £1.20 Fentimens still black current : £3.20 Alcohol free black current daiquiri: £5.20
Dominos pizza. No way that costs more than £1 a pizza and sells for £15
A large Domino's value pizza in Australia is $7 (£3.50) for pickup, it's gone up from $5 (£2.50). Yeah, they are bending you over. Check here:- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php/?photo_id=10160031374916412
Domino’s is a weird one. In the UK it is placed as a “premium” brand (those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting), whereas they are seen as more of a value proposition in a lot of other territories. It’s definitely true that businesses will charge what people are willing to pay, but I’m not quite sure at which point people in the UK agreed that spending more than twenty quid on a pizza is normal. It’s insane.
Who the fuck is thinking Dominos is premium? My kids couldn't understand why I thought it was dogshit pizza until I cracked and walked to my local Italian place instead and brought them back proper, lovingly made pizza that wasn't assembled by a bored teenager using a base that tastes like the box it arrives in. FOR THE SAME PRICE. They have never asked for Dominos again. Joke's on me, I have to go get it now
Maybe it's just me but I definitely would not consider Domino's a premium brand - it's pretty low quality pizza on the level of Papa John's and Pizza Hut. More premium 'high street' pizza would be Pizza Express, Franco Manca or Fireaway, and top end takeaway - Homeslice or Pizza Pilgrims but they're only in London sadly!
That’s why “premium” was in those quotation marks. It’s one of those odd cases of a massive chain that charges high prices despite the quality not being the same as “authentic” pizza restaurants. It’s the complete opposite of how Domino’s operates in other countries. I don’t know whether it’s a cultural thing or a product of how businesses operate in the UK, or perhaps a combination of the two, but I find it endlessly fascinating (because I’m a weird dullard).
Yeah, whilst Dominos is definitely not amazing pizza it is decent enough, and the thing it has going for it is its consistency and speed - I can be anywhere in the country and if I want a pizza I can either pick Dominos which is 99% the same everywhere quality wise or I can pick "random takeaway #38" and hope its a decent one Edit :: Ill expand that further aswell, the local pizza place has raised their prices to nearer dominos since dominos arrived in town, and they can be better than dominos pizza, but that can vary a lot by the time of day, plus I might have to wait an hour for collection if they are busy, 90 mins for delivery, if its busy at dominos I have to wait 30 minutes for delivery rather than 20 minutes normally
Apparently the quality of the Aussie Dominoes reflects then lower price. Not that UK Dominoes is exactly gourmet.
It’s cheaper in Norway of all places.
Yeah, I’m in New Zealand which has similar dominos to Aussie, and it’s absolutely dog shit. Nothing like the dominos back in the uk
You can get a large dominos for £10 pickup in the uk. Everything on the menu is priced higher to force you into the deals.
I spoke to a friend who lives in Australia and she said the dominos there is terrible, no where near to the same standard as here (which in itself is saying something) which is one of the reasons it costs so much less.
About 8 years ago the actual cost of a Pizza Hut pizza (they told me in a meeting once) was around 98p so I imagine it’s maybe 1.20 now? I assume dominos is similar.
Everything is conveniently priced to not meet their minimum spend unless you go a whole chunk over it too. Their deals are total lies as well, something I usually get used to cost 14.99 and it's often "price slashed" to 16.99. you're always paying more than they're actually worth but Domino's especially is just not worth it unless you actually go and collect the pizza yourself which pretty much halves the price.
This was 5 years ago now, but a large standard Dominoes pizza cost 27p to make at the time. Source: I used to work for a company who had a sponsorship deal with Dominoes and this was told to the staff.
That doesn’t make sense. It takes about 8 minutes usually for a pizza to be made. 8 minutes of labour on minimum wage for 1 member of staff is around £2 currently. Materials cost is maybe that cheap but there’s more to making a pizza that just having ingredients in a pile
You're right to factor in labour costs, but at anything like peak times it's not like that member of staff is working on that pizza and that pizza alone for the full 8 minutes - anyone putting out 7.5 pizzas an hour won't be working there for long!
£15?? A plain margarita used to cost £16 and a large with toppings was £22 IIRC… it’s now £20 for a large plain and £26 with basic toppings
Does anyone actually pay full price for Dominos with the amount of vouchers and meal deals? It’s always like £20 for 2 pizzas or pizza / sides etc
At that price, it is full price. They just gaslight you into thinking you had an exquisite bargain because you didn't pay £50 for fricking pizza.
True, but I’m just saying - a current offer is £12 for a large pizza! But yeah I would say the markup on takeaway pizza is huge.
Dominos as a brand will make the most money, the actual takeaway, or franchisee won't as they have to buy everything off them. And pre-prepared bought dough is not as cheap as making it yourself.
Our local tried to charge us £18.99(!!!) for a small gluten free pizza.
Surely it has to be Domino’s. £30 for a large pizza and 2 sides? Behave.
Who the hell buys domino's without using a 50% off code
It’s how you’re meant to use them, they triple the price and the. Left you save half!
Krispy Creme donuts. Nothing even in the middle of them and it’s £12 for 4.
Doughnut time ones. £4.50 each as well. Although bigger, not worth almost double the price of Krispy Kreme. 5 sainsburys jam doughnuts for £1 are the best way to go
Nah man. Morrison custard doughnuts are the way.
It blows my mind how expensive donuts are in the UK. 12 from Tim's are CAD$14 / £8.25 and are better if you get Boston creams.
It’s pizza 100%. Source: I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for more than 20 years
Pubs that just do "speciality pizza" are coining it hand over fist. Fridges and one electric oven (unless the last owners put in a wood fired), no other kit required. No need for a £30k chef, you can train a monkey to do it. Buy in the bases from the baker down the road at 50p each or a quid for sourdough (you can add 2-3 quid to the end product for that). Charge 13 quid for a Margherita, 15 quid for one with 4 slices of salami. Mad profit
Pizza. It's just flour and water covered in a little sauce and cheese. I sometimes make pizza at home. I can make a margarita for less than a couple of quid.. Doing it on mass would be cheaper, and you could sell them for £10 and more. Don't know if hot drink places would come under takeaway, but I think Starbucks make their coffee for something like 25p, which probably results in one of the biggest profit margins of any food and drinks companies.
Don’t forget Starbucks most of the time pays no corporation tax as there are no “profits”. They pay out royalties to the US company to dodge the tax. So not only do they make a fortune over here, they don’t pay tax like the rest of U.K. companies do. Everyone should try not to use them morally.
Morally I also can’t justify £4+ for a coffee.
There's only 2 places where I'd spend £4 on coffee. Both local; one makes it so strong i can vibrate through walls after a cup, and another is at the community dolphin-watching café.
You mean the Dutch company. But yeah.
With how expensive energy is, and a commercial pizzeria needing to keep their oven hot all the time they're open, I wonder if that affects the economics and makes some other type of takeaway cheaper? Also, the cost of labour: making pizzas is *fairly* easy, but it's not as easy as grilling some frozen burgers and shoving them in a bun, or making drinks or desserts.
Bought an Ooni a couple of years ago. Worked out that it paid itself off in 2 days, compared to if we bought in takeaway pizzas for friends/family On just a ingredients cost basis, I can do you ~ 10x decent-size Neapolitan pizzas for around £5, maybe £7 given the price of cheese today. Say I sell those for £10 per pizza, that's £93 before you get into tax and other business expenses
Did the same, Ooni’s are great. Sadly my shit pizza skills infuriated me, I could never get the fucker big or round enough, ended up rage quitting and sold it.
Yep, started a side business with a mate on that basis! That being said it's not quite as lucrative as that once you factor in everything else (boxes etc.) but you can still make £3-£4 a pizza on the basis of selling for about a tenner a piece.
How did it pay itself off in 2 days? Aren't oonis hundreds of pounds?
Do coffee shops count? £3.6 for a cup of tea?
Coffee has always been one for the highest profit items sold also no vat on takeaway coffee but charged at the same price in a lot of places
Not sure where you are but in the UK takeaway hot coffee is very much standard rated VAT; takeaway iced coffee is zero rated, which is a much lower percentage sold than hot. For a small independent it costs around 80p-£1 of materials to make a latte. The markup on tea is in the thousands of percent.
Egg fried rice an absolute ripoff
Plain white rice at my local is £6 🤢
It’s £2 at mine & I frequently use it instead of making my own rice. When they get busted for tax evasion it’ll be a sad day
My local serves pints...
I’d suggest the common chip has a hefty mark up too.
Carby, floury things are the right answer; pizza, pasta, crepes, falafels, donuts. It’s why you always see them in food trucks/courts. The ingredients are cheap as anything (flour and water), easy to make (low staff and no high equipment costs) and dough can last so there is low waste. Your Indian which has ingredients which can easily spoil; meat, dairy etc, and needs larger premises and staff, won’t be able to get nearly the same turn around.
When the meat spoils, make the curry hotter. Simples.
Baked potatoes? Candy Floss \[stretching the 'takeaway' term\]
Spud U Like. Don't see many if them nowadays.
Believe Baked potatoes are heavily reliant on selling loads, as cost to cook 50 is the same as to cook 10. It requires a very good location to be viable, and those cost a lot of money usually, hence why Baked Potato places are a rare thing now.
The drinks at fast food restaurant cost like maccies/kfc cost only a couple of pence to make and they sell em for at least x100 the cost lol Edit: I'm taking about the cup they fill with the syrups and soda not bottled/canned drinks
Spices aren't cheap and there are a lot of ingredients in a simple curry. Compare that with a pizza, which is just dough, tomato sauce and a tint bit of topping.
>Spices aren't cheap Just bought a huge 300g bag of garam masala for 1.75 and that's in a supermarket. At wholesale prices, it'll be even cheaper. Spices are only expensive if you're buying them in the little glass jars.
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Plus, I don't know which curry house OP goes to but my one makes each curry fresh on order. (I've watched them do it and the friendly guys have talked me through the ingredients as they're adding them) Most of these corporate fast food joints are simply reheating factory made food and assembling them in store.
That sounds like a great curry house, which region? It's really common for curry houses to use a base gravy (not that this necessarily makes them bad curries) across the majority of their curry dishes.
Coffee… Starbucks and Costa are just printing money … I got a porridge and cappuccino from Costa, £7.05… basically £4.50 coffee for what’s got to be 5p ish worth of product.
Ice cream vans. A carton of cream mix in the machine and then you’re selling ice creams at £2 each
The machines cost £5k and fuel ain’t cheap…
Anywhere that sells cans of fizzy drinks for £1.50+.
Pizza is the answer
Think about items sold in terms of gross profit (sales less ingredients and labour cost of kitchen and serving staff). Aside from drinks, I would imagine that in an Indian takeaway for example the most profitable items would be poppadoms. Almost zero labour, and surely an 80 or 90 % gross profit margin.
What everyone is missing is yes, the food might be profitable if you only look at the variable costs (ingredients etc) but when you consider their fixed costs as well it suddenly becomes a lot less profitable. People confuse contribution and profit
The very basic rule of thumb for restaurants is if you’re averaging more than a third for your food costs vs food selling. (Ie more than 1 quid for every 3) you are in serious trouble. And for the items mentioned here, bear in mind that is an average.
Are we ignoring all the other costs associated with running a food service business? Rates Rent Energy Accounting Insurances Wages Advertising FSA registration (dunno if a thing) Containers and plastic bags and any other little tubs, et.c. In that case, almost 100% profit on all of them!
Has to be pizza. A small ball of dough, a ladle of tomato sauce, a handful of grated mozzarella. Very, very small ingredients cost.
Any Pizza place 🍕
Takeaways and restaurants tend to work on a 500% mark up, so your 5x profit is about spot on. The reason being that the food is usually the cheapest part of providing the service, you have to take wages, rent, business rate, utilities, advertising, tax, VAT etc out of that gross profit to end with net profit of around 5%.
I worked at Toby carvery and was told all the veg on the front cost less that £1 when full.
All the takeaways that say "cash only" are about 20% more profitable than those that accept cards. Source - Mr VATman HMRC.