I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
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@kwf you're very wise as usual, kenneth
@MLE_online I'm a poison and the wisdom dulls the pain.
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"Alcohol is a poison. It's good that alcohol is too expensive now."
Shut up and go away
@MLE_online I *almost* feel that way about cigarettes (I smoked for 20 years). I still get the craving and urge for one now and again, but at $15+ a pack, I’m too cheap to buy one (not to mention it would start me back smoking again)
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@disorderlyf If they're not putting alcohol in their drinks, they should be much, much cheaper, but those mocktails are expensive as hell, too. They just charge way too much for all of it
@MLE_online @disorderlyf They’re not increasing prices just for the hell of it. Most places run with such thin margins that they’re trying to increase just enough to survive without running customers off to a bar that’s a dollar cheaper.
Mocktails cost nearly the same as alcoholic beverages because the alcohol is nearly negligible to the business’s overall cost of the beverage. Their rent doesn’t care if a drink has alcohol or not. Their bartender and door person and cleaning crew and manager and utilities and rent all have to get paid, and each seat has to contribute towards paying the bills. Cutting a dollar of two of alcohol results in a dollar or two of price difference because that’s their cost of doing business.
Bars and restaurants are struggling with the cost of living just like the rest of us. It hits them even harder because, as you point out, when times get tough it’s a lot cheaper to stay home with a bottle.
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online It kind of amazes me that the pandemic DIDN'T spawn a burst of alcoholism. People stuck alone at home for months and months? With (at least in the case of the USA) an incredibly stupid government making idiotic choices?
But if you make a habit too expensive, people will do something else instead.
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@kilroy_was_here @MLE_online Ain’t saying that alcohol doesn’t have it’s drawbacks, it can be some nasty stuff, too
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@kilroy_was_here @MLE_online Ain’t saying that alcohol doesn’t have it’s drawbacks, it can be some nasty stuff, too
@kilroy_was_here @MLE_online Glad you were able to quit
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"Alcohol is a poison. It's good that alcohol is too expensive now."
Shut up and go away
@MLE_online
Substitute oil and I’m on board … -
@MLE_online met an old friend for dinner the other night. I haven't been a regular drinker in years, but I thought why not, I'll have a margarita.
It was $13! I didn't get the tiny one in the shot glass, but still: $13 is insane. I know we have inflation but pre-covid the cost was closer to $8. Even with inflation that should be just over $10. The drink cost as much as my actual meal.
Restaurants have no one to blame but themselves for failing to recruit the next generation of alcoholics.
@stiv @MLE_online If your drink was $13, and your food was the same, then your food would have been $16-17 without the drink. Many restaurants, specifically those which offer alcoholic beverages, price their food as a loss leader. With high costs and low prices, food nearly breaks even. All of their profit (and it ain’t much) comes from drinks’ higher margin. Without the lower priced food to bring people in to purchase drinks, people would walk next door.
It’s the same with desserts, though I haven’t seen those brought up in this thread. I’m sure most of us who skip drinks at dinner due to the price will also be skipping dessert for the same reason. The only different for me is that I grew up skipping dessert because my parents couldn’t afford it. We might have something at home, but (almost) never at a restaurant.
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@MLE_online I *almost* feel that way about cigarettes (I smoked for 20 years). I still get the craving and urge for one now and again, but at $15+ a pack, I’m too cheap to buy one (not to mention it would start me back smoking again)
@FurryBeta @MLE_online I love that being able to afford to smoke cigarettes is slowly becoming a flagrant show of wealth.
I imagine some silly future scene where some dude rolls up in a Bentley and another person in a leather jacket's like, "oh yeah?" and then casually lights a cigarette (that costs the same as that car.)
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@FurryBeta @MLE_online I love that being able to afford to smoke cigarettes is slowly becoming a flagrant show of wealth.
I imagine some silly future scene where some dude rolls up in a Bentley and another person in a leather jacket's like, "oh yeah?" and then casually lights a cigarette (that costs the same as that car.)
@ArchiteuthisFlux @MLE_online It’s pretty much the same as lighting cash on fire anymore. Not quite as flamboyant as lighting a cigar off of a C bill, but getting there
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@MLE_online Hmm. Am I just running a business with diminishing cultural relevance in an unraveling economy? No, it's the people who are wrong.
@thriftwicker @MLE_online omg without the text this meme is a perfect depiction of waking up after drinking *right on the edge of* too much and just powering through through it like an adult.
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@ArchiteuthisFlux @MLE_online It’s pretty much the same as lighting cash on fire anymore. Not quite as flamboyant as lighting a cigar off of a C bill, but getting there
@FurryBeta @MLE_online This gives me an idea for increasing international demand for US dollars...
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online But they do drink less indeed.
Yes, they know they could buy cheaper alcohol from stores and drink it wherever. And some do. However, the overall alcohol consumption is lower in the younger generation.
So while they are being priced out by restaurants' alcohol prices, there is more going on.
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There are limits, and if I can buy two bottles of vodka from the grocery store for the price of a single cocktail, I'm going to opt to not have that cocktail most of the time
@MLE_online sugar is retail $8.00 for 20 lb, which ferments to 3.5 gallons of vodka. If the energy source is retail propane, the cost to triple distill 3.5 gallons is about $10. So, grocery store vodka is inherently worth about $1/fifth, federal tax on it is $2.70, California state tax is another $0.66. So even for the cheap stuff, price is dominated by packaging and distribution.
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@ljrk if you think people should drink less, that's fine, but it's a different issue than what i am talking about
@MLE_online You claim that people younger generations like to drink anymore. I concur. And I also think that the framing of this to be something that inherently needs fixing is bad.
And yes, I'd rather have less alcohol induced domestic violence or traffic deaths, as well as any number of other issues.
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online How dare you not spending 3 hours of pay on a drink! Won't you think of the CEOs in the killing-people-thru-liver-failure industry?
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online @blogdiva good, fuck bars. They've been all too happy to churn out drunk drivers for decades.
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@stiv @MLE_online If your drink was $13, and your food was the same, then your food would have been $16-17 without the drink. Many restaurants, specifically those which offer alcoholic beverages, price their food as a loss leader. With high costs and low prices, food nearly breaks even. All of their profit (and it ain’t much) comes from drinks’ higher margin. Without the lower priced food to bring people in to purchase drinks, people would walk next door.
It’s the same with desserts, though I haven’t seen those brought up in this thread. I’m sure most of us who skip drinks at dinner due to the price will also be skipping dessert for the same reason. The only different for me is that I grew up skipping dessert because my parents couldn’t afford it. We might have something at home, but (almost) never at a restaurant.
@ClickyMcTicker @stiv @MLE_online
A lot of restaurants sold the food at a bit above cost and made profits on the drinks. When their costs went up, they had to increase the costs of the drinks to cover it, because increasing the price of food would send people to competitors. Unfortunately, this just made people drink less.
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online @lisamelton I volunteer at what’s basically a beer co-op that’s open to the public. No one gets paid (not even tips directly, those go to the bartender party fund), no owner takes a cut, no usurious landlord; it’s the cheapest bar in town, largely because there’s no profit motive. Standard beer is $1.25. And I know our numbers because I count and drop the till when we close—they’re very noticeably down since pre-pandemic. It isn’t *only* cost, there’s something bigger.
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I keep seeing articles like this, about how people choosing to drink less is hurting bars and restaurants, and it's almost always framed as people, especially younger generations, don't like to drink.
They never seem to bring up the fact that a cocktail is like $20 now unless you go to a really divey dive bar. It's the same kind of reporting they on how no one goes to the movies anymore. It's always about changing habits, and never that movie tickets just cost a lot now.
@MLE_online well ticket prices would be bearable if it weren't for all the people that now take their phones out all the time and talk all through the movies. And movie theaters don't do anything about it. Usually it also doesn't come up in that reporting as well
