Yesterday’s Globe and Mail carried a column titled “As food costs skyrocket, the restaurant generation pays a hefty tab”, which wonders how we can afford to eat out so much:
We are the restaurant generation. Many of us have raised our kids to think that eating out in restaurants is no big deal, something you do, well, when you’re hungry. But in a rising tide of consumer debt, how can we all afford it? And more importantly, how will they continue to afford it once they’re on their own?
I’m surprised that the column didn’t mention (but the readers were quick to point out in the comments section) what is perhaps the biggest downside to eating out frequently - it can’t be very good for our health. CBC recently featured a story on the high calorie count (even in supposedly “healthier options” such as salads) in food from restaurant chains. Our propensity to eat out so much is perhaps one more contributor to our alarming obesity rates.
But, I’m not all that sure that eating out is as big a problem as the column makes it out to be. According to Statistics Canada, households spend an average of about $7,000 on food, including eating out in restaurants. If 30% of food expenses were spent in restaurants, it works out to $40 per week, which would suggest eating out at an average of once a week. Of course, the average experience doesn’t mean that frequent eating out isn’t a problem for some families.
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17 responses so far ↓
1 moneygardener // May 14, 2008 at 11:34 pm
It seems that there are more restaurants out there now than when I was a kid. Dual income families make more money = less time = more eating out.
2 Michael James // May 14, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I’ve been eating out less because the cost of restaurant meals seems to be increasing far faster than inflation, and I have been enjoying eating out less because of poor service and poorly-prepared meals.
3 Four Pillars // May 15, 2008 at 12:45 am
I think that diet is the main reason I don’t like to eat out as much as I used to. You can always find cheap places to eat which aren’t necessarily more expensive than cooking at home.
4 Phil S // May 15, 2008 at 1:35 am
Eating at the company cafeteria isn’t much more expensive than buying a microwave lunch from the grocery store and the cafeteria has healthy options as well. I think most people equate cafeteria food to burgers and fries, but these days there are plenty of options - there are soups and salads, fresh sandwiches, stir fried asian dishes, etc.
As for going out to restaurants, who has time for doing that on a daily basis? At most sit-down restaurants I’ve been to, the service takes longer than just cooking something at home myself. And at home, I can watch TV, surf the internet, open my mail, pay my bills, do a load of laundry and hang out in my PJs while cooking.
5 Jim Somerville // May 15, 2008 at 2:01 am
It’s not that hard to put together a decent meal in about 30 minutes. It’s going to take longer than that to go out to a restaurant, at least in Canada. I think the problem really relates to time spent getting groceries. If the groceries run out before you find time to make the next trip to the supermarket, then I can see packing up the family and going to one of the jillions of roadhouse style restaurants that dot suburbia. There they get to “enjoy” an unmemorable meal and if they’re lucky, barely acceptable service.
Then there’s stores like M&M which sells frozen prepared meals. With so many families no longer eating together, this allows the older kids to just microwave up their own meals. Sad, yes, but so many families operate this way. Perhaps going to a restaurant is one of the only ways for such parents to get the family together for a meal.
Another factor which may be influencing the stats are teenagers. They have a lot more disposable income these days and seem to really enjoy spending it on meals with their friends in the roadhouses not to mention fast food joints.
All this dining out is extremely unhealthy. Meals are loaded with fat and salt since customers seem to want taste over health, and most restaurants are happy to hide the nutrional information so customers don’t have to feel guilty about it.
I tend to save my weekly $40 roadhouse money and instead go and enjoy fine dining a few times per year. Now those meals are memorable.
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6 brad // May 15, 2008 at 6:58 am
As the person who does all the food shopping, meal planning, and cooking in our family, I have to say that those things do take time and effort that should be factored into the equation. Figuring out what to eat takes time: I pore over cookbooks, think about what we’ve eaten in the past week and figure out what sounds appetizing for the days ahead. I reckon I spend a couple of hours a week just planning meals and writing up shopping lists. I don’t always have time or the inclination to plan a week’s menus in advance, so often end up going to the market every day or two. That usually takes 45 minutes to an hour roundtrip for getting there, buying groceries, and getting back to to the house. Then there’s cooking and prep time, which is usually 30-40 minutes, and the cleanup time. Time is at a premium these days for most people, and the convenience of not having to plan, shop for food, or clean up after your meal are probably the main motivating factors for people to eat out. The other one is energy: after a busy and hectic work day, lots of people can’t face the prospect of preparing supper. You can make meals that provide plenty of leftovers for the next few days, but ideally you need to prepare a variety of those meals so you’re not eating the same leftover lentil soup for lunch and supper for three days running.
We go out to eat about three times a month, which is a lot more than we used to — my girlfriend comes from a culture where eating out is rare, and when I first met her she was reluctant to eat out more than two or three times a year. My brother, in contrast, never keeps food in the house and eats all of his meals out.
7 Lisa // May 15, 2008 at 8:12 am
Brad,
You hit the nail on the head. We are a double income family with small kids. Time is a premium. I enjoy cooking and would love to prepare healthy meals at home for my family. However, the amount of time and energy it takes doing so would take away “park / play time” with my boys. Because my time is precious, I pay the higher fees to buy already prepared hot/ food from Longos or the Superstore. Although not the same as home made, I find the food to be somewhat healthier than eating out at a resturant and as a bonus, I don’t have to keep reminding my kids to behave. If this counts as eating out we eat out 3 - 4 times a week.
8 guinness416 // May 15, 2008 at 9:14 am
When I lived in small apartments I ate out a lot - a combination of cabin fever plus stinking up my whole home every time we cooked, I think. We lived in New York then though, and my friends & colleagues here eat out a LOT less than my NY friends, which may be because the sales tax is significantly less there than Toronto?
Nowadays it’s the time crunch mentioned up above that has us eating out - we both came home exhausted at around 8 yesterday and just walked to the local Thai place. We wanted to be spoiled and have a beer after a long day. I do agree with Mike, around my neighbourhood there are a lot of inexpensive places to get takeout or even sit in, although quality varies.
9 Canadian Capitalist // May 15, 2008 at 10:42 am
Mike: It’s not hard to find 3 or 4 really good and relatively inexpensive eating places. My wife and I lunch out every other week or so at a Thai place nearby work. $25 for the two of us and yummy food.
Phil: At my work, cafeteria food is cheap (it’s partly subsidized by the employer and partly run as a loss leader for the coffee contract) and definitely far healthier than frozen food.
Jim: Mid-week grocery shopping is a killer and one idea that really helped us in cutting it down a lot is keeping a magnetic board on the kitchen fridge and noting down staples that we are running out of. Also, we have a collection of quick recipes that takes less than 1/2 hour to whip up.
Brad, Lisa, guinness416: I hear you on the time saving aspect of eating out as we are a two-income, two-kids family. Also, being vegetarian, food preparation takes longer. Fortunately, our work schedule is predictable enough to plan ahead. I can see how it’s much easier to grab something to eat if you are working late and just plain tired.
10 Ryan // May 15, 2008 at 2:25 pm
We are a two-income, two-kids family and we never seemed to have enough time to prepare good healthy meals. As a result we were finding more and more that the quality of our meals were degrading. We did not want to keep ordering food in or preparing lousy meals. So we made a sacrifice and a reward for ourselves at the same time.
The sacrifice was to stop eating out. We went from ordering takeout 4-5 times a month to just special occassions like birthdays. So far this year we have only ordered take out once and eaten at a restaurant once. The reward was to hire a personal chef. Luckily we have a friend who is a superb cook and lives for cooking. She was willing to work with our strict diet as we only eat organic and are vegetarians. Now we pay her $320 a month which feeds us supper nearly every single work week day of the month. The meals are super tasty and healthy at the same time.
I have been tracking our spending for the past year and our monthly expenses for groceries and dining out before we hired the chef compared to our groceries and our bill from the personal chef after we hired her has kept our expenses virtually unchanged.
Just thought I would throw this out there as another option. If you know of a stay at home parent who loves cooking…maybe approach them with the idea. You never know, it worked for us
11 Canadian Capitalist // May 15, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Ryan: Wow, $320 per month for supper every weekday is a wonderful arrangement. Wish we could find someone like that!
12 Jim Somerville // May 15, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Ryan, $320/20/4 = $4 per person per meal. That’s pretty good. But are the meals always frozen or do you at least get some fresh meals?
13 Canadian Personal Finance Blog » Blog Archive » Long Weekend Random Thoughts // May 16, 2008 at 7:19 am
[...] Canadian Capitalist wrote about The High Price of Eating Out, but more importantly how more people are eating out. I remember when my parents took us out to [...]
14 Experts on Credit // May 16, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I’ve been eating out less. But I have to say, and maybe it’s because there are only two of us in the household, it seems like buying ingredients at the grocery store can cost about the same, and I still have to do a bunch of work.
15 Ryan // May 16, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Jim, I may have stretched it a bit because sometimes the kids do not care for the measl (either too spicy or too many veggies or whatever), so we end up making them something seperate. However, when this happens I usually take the extra’s for lunch or we freeze it for later. Also, sometimes we will make a salad to go along with the meal depending on what it is so there are some minor additional expenses. Plus keep in mind this is all cash payment too.
This is the best part, our friend the chef delivers the meals to our door. She will let us know which meal we should eat first as it is best fresh and which one we could freeze or leave in the fridge for a few days.
Yes we love our arrangement and our friend is very happy too. Its a win/win, but we make sure we give her little bonuses here and there as we do not want to EVER lose her.
16 Mrfroogle // May 18, 2008 at 8:14 pm
See my advice on eating out:
http://mrfroogle.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/money-advice-2-eating-out/
17 Riscario Insider // May 19, 2008 at 12:21 am
I’m often lunching with clients, which means cost isn’t an issue but the calorie intake is. But you can’t tell how many calories you’re consuming even when making seemingly healthy choices.
In the grocery store, you can read the food ingredients. For example, how much sodium are you getting? As a vegetarian, I hope my food is being prepared separately from nonveg choices but you never know …
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