Beans on toast in a cafe, how much is reasonable to pay?

Lysander said:
How much would you think it reasonable to pay for baked beans and two slices of toast in a cafe? When I say "a cafe" I mean a greasy spoon, not an upmarket hipster cafe serving organic haricots on sourdough bread with cracked sea salt and Wiltshire chives.

Personally I think around £2.95 maximum. More in the region of £2.60. Anything above £3 is extortion and anything below £2.50 is a bargain.
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depends on area just outside london i would see for 3.5 to 4
 
mattyg said:
Theres so many variables

Some costs that most people wont know about

PPL/PRS in order to play background music it can cost £1000's per year.

Up until last year we had to pay the council £150 per outside table per year for the pavement licence.

Postmix is more expensive than bottles of coke. That was a shock for me.

Electrical safety cert. Ok only every 5 years but it still cost nearly £1000

Canopy certification for insurance

10+ appliances in the kitchen all 3kw. Most on full whack everyday

Commercial fridges and freezers at £2k a pop because domestic ones cant handle being opened and closed 100 times a day, and killing someone because your fridge temps are now 14c doesn't sit well.

Post covid. Extra staff to do the same amount of work.

Rent, Business rates. Telephone, Internet. PDQ machines, The dang till system is the best part of £100 pm

PL insurance
EL insurance
Most business will need the above but may not have such tight margins
Bins cost £100 per week to be emptied.

And all that is before, Website, advertising etc.

I put some retractable awning up this year to help with the winter trade and when it rains. £20k
Screens to create a barrier outside and double up as covid dividers inside just over £5k



Theres so many other "hidden" costs.

Most kitchens I know get around 55% GP. You can design a menu that is 70% GP easy. But thats without any wastage. It doesn't take too many dropped plates or burnt burgers. Or customers ordering the wrong thing but swearing blind they didn't to hurt your GP.

Everything takes time. The plates need clearing before going in the dishwasher. Dishwasher cleans and sanitises a full load in 3 mins so you know that aint cheap. Cutlery needs someone to polish it etc

Some places can run on less than 30% staff costs. I know when I ran an Oneill's we got 27% of the previous weeks takings to spend on staff for the following week. Restaurants post covid would struggle to do that now.

Its VERY easy to lose money.

Commercial equipment can be pretty expensive. Our espresso machine was £10k. Glasses get broken. Our coffee cups and saucers cost just over £5 each. When the staff drop a tray it brings a tear to my eyes.

The baked beans on toast is a good argument.

All of the previous posters costings might be correct. But then factor in them going to the supermarket to buy the ingredients. Then the time it takes for them to cook it, then the time to tidy up afterwards and then the costs for throwing away the packaging that those ingredients came in £4.50-5.00 doesn't seem a lot anymore.

Don't forget your also paying to help keep the place open when winter hits and trade drops off to 30-40% of the VERY short summer season.

Since owning a business in hospitality I have a very different outlook.


I also run a team of nearly 50 drivers and that is way easier than 2 restaurants with 10 staff.



I saw a nice Ferrari drive past the other day. My mrs said you could have had a couple of them but no! you wanted a restaurant

Owning a restaurant id the most expensive way to eat for free.

Wow. I can waffle on
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What’s your net profit margin? I guess they’re only really viable if you own more than one business.
 
mattyg said:
PDQ machines, The dang till system is the best part of 100pm
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So many people pay way too much for these, check your fees, if you are paying more than 0.3% on debit and 0.5% on Credit get it reviewed or shop around. Likewise phone & e-comm payments, so many companies stick an extra 0.5% surcharge on when it's totally not needed, authorisation fees, not needed!. Visa only charge them about 0.04% for non secure payments so why charge the merchant more than 10 times that? a lot of providers just rip merchants off that's why!
 
It’s not the hardware that costs the money, it’s the service contract to have someone on standby 24/7 to fix it when it goes wrong. It doesn’t matter if it’s IT or an oven, when it goes wrong it can cost you thousands in lost revenue if not fixed promptly. That’s how a toll system can cost you £100/month and still be cheaper than the labour needed to do it all by hand.


When I worked in the sector the GP % on products was all over the place but at the end of the day, the menu was priced to what people would pay not a fixed %. Drinks have a huge margin where as we made next to nothing on kids meals. Customers are willing to pay a fraction of the price of their own meal on their kids food.

Sides and desserts normally have bigger margins which is why staff always push them. Up selling as much as you can on top of main courses (which tend to have lower margins) is generally the make or break in terms of profitability in most places.
 
Iamzod said:
So many people pay way too much for these, check your fees, if you are paying more than 0.3% on debit and 0.5% on Credit get it reviewed or shop around. Likewise phone & e-comm payments, so many companies stick an extra 0.5% surcharge on when it's totally not needed, authorisation fees, not needed!. Visa only charge them about 0.04% for non secure payments so why charge the merchant more than 10 times that? a lot of providers just rip merchants off that's why!
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There is something ironic in this statement about a provider ripping off a merchant for a service, when we are discussing the P&L, running costs etc behind the price of a product which that merchant is themselves selling.
 
Umm, what's the price of your local cheapest-but-hopefully-not-horrible brand? Assuming that can's price + 2/XX of your local cheapest-and-probably-pretty-horrible-brand-since-they'll-toast-them loaf's price + X amount of labour which isn't much like a pound max really. So, that should be about your price there!
 
BDEE said:
There is something ironic in this statement about a provider ripping off a merchant for a service, when we are discussing the P&L, running costs etc behind the price of a product which that merchant is themselves selling.
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True, some merchant account providers really take the pee though. I've seen a hotel with a 20m turnover paying close to 1m in card fees, they were making about 900k profit on that one.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
the menu was priced to what people would pay
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good point - if there was somewhere doing beans on toast at a camping/music festival they could be a tenner and would prob still sell

or even worse on a ship, not like you can go anywhere else...I wonder how much beans on toast is on a ship
 
£2.40 for 2 slices of toast with beans on at a cafe round the corner from me,
they are a pretty cheap cafe though as their full English is only £3.95 and you get.... 2 sausage, 2 bacon, 1 egg, black pudding, 1 slice of toast, beans or tomatoes
 
Cainer thats proper prices for a good brekfast, ok im getting old now.We used to work in london doing roofing, £3.00 would get you a full english, 2 bacon 2 eggs sausage mushrooms tomatoes,toast and tea or cofffee + refills.

We won't even think about working there now, parking will set you back £25/30 a day.And getting rid of materials....Hahaha >.<
 
I'd say about £2.50, depends a bit on how many tables they have, if only a few they might not want people hogging tables with a small spend.
 
the only cafes i do are ones with views so i pay £3.60 for a large oat milk latte i would expect maybe £4 to £5 or so. maybe higher but obviously its about hoovering tourists money down here and the residents get caught up in this
 
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