I don’t know why but I’ve had these adverts from a pub in Sussex appear on my Facebook feed, even though I live in London.
How on earth can they be making any money on food at this price?
How is this pub making money at these prices?
r/AskUK
I don’t know why but I’ve had these adverts from a pub in Sussex appear on my Facebook feed, even though I live in London.
How on earth can they be making any money on food at this price?
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By selling drinks.
Cheap ingredients?
fuck me, they’ve really ramped up the word count!
They will be buying in the cheapest ingredients they have and running a limited menu so there is minimal food waste.
They will also be anticipating people spending money on drinks, using this to get people through the door.
Anytime I see a non-chain pub with suspiciously cheap food or drinks my best guess is that they own the building outright.
Most pubs will be paying rent on their premises. That’s a huge expense, and if you don’t have it you can afford to drop your prices lower than everyone else
Admittedly I very rarely go in pubs, but £10 for fish and chips is daylight robbery. I’m confused why you think this is cheap.
That’s still pretty expensive by my standards for pub food. If it was anything more than this id be skipping food and just not eating, cheaper to get drunk that way too.
Eating out anywhere in general, even takeaways these days is going on extortion
I don’t imagine they would if this was always on offer but it’s only on certain days, maybe it’s worth is for the increase in custom?
They make money off the drinks sold.
That menu is a visual abomination
I’m prepared to bet that you aren’t getting fillet steak but rather a fillet of steak.
They are probably not making much money on the food. But they will be getting some money towards the overheads like rent and rates, and hopefully making some money on the drinks as well.
Alternatively, they’re terrible business people and are actually losing money on this. It’s not unheard of.
It’s a pub, when people eat in they buy more alcohol and soft drinks on which they make a lot more profit.
They own the building, so don’t have rent to pay.
It’s a loss leader. They lose money with every one, but it gets people liking their pub to come back some other time to pay full price / drink.
The ingredients are cheap shit.
This is Reddit, so of course it must be money laundering.
It’s likely 1 and 2 together.
I was wondering the same question when a pub nearby advertised a very lucrative lunch deal to try and lure us away from our office canteen.
Turns out the trick was to serve small portions of really, truly terrible quality food.
My Dad lives out in rural Essex and there’s pub near him, he calls the Ol’ Geezers (and Gals!) pub. It serves decent if unspectacular food at £7-8 a plate, good sized portions and a selection of Roasts on a Sunday and great service.
It’s Rammed out with retirees and their guests for the most part. You have to book all weekend and often on a Thursday/Friday. Drinks are reasonably priced too.
I’m guessing they’re making money hand over fist.
Everything is just frozen and re-heated.
They buy food in bulk and cheaply. Go the asda and you can buy a steak for £3. I’ve seen my local pub staff in there buying for the pub at times
My local chippy has better prices than those, but they also charge £2 for drink, they always make the money somewhere.
It’s essentially a loss leader and means to drive customers into the pub earlier on a particular day.
Even if they breakeven on the meals but that helps them sell 50% more booze than they would have otherwise sold, it’s a win.
The above comments could be right, but most likely they don’t own it, and prices like that are due to sheer desperation to get people in the door.
If the pub has a weather spoons nearby it’s likely trying to complete with it.
Sources: My mum does this in her pub.
You’re gonna be waiting an hour, be design, so you buy at least two drinks per person. I don’t think this is a bad business practice, it’s still a good deal. Good on ‘em. Get yourself round, OP.
Lots of salt
> I’ve had these adverts from a pub in Sussex appear on my Facebook feed, even though I live in London.
When I lived in Italy I was getting targeted adverts for a restaurant in the Netherlands.
£7 pints
I skimread both, but I don’t see any mention of drinks being included. Strong possibility they rinse you on drinks. You come in the door for the cheap food, but most people aren’t content with tap water with their meal, so you pay for the drinks too. Drinks, especially soft drinks, are very high margin as it is, even more so if you’re using them to top up a “loss leader” offer like this one.
They may also have lower overheads (building owned outright maybe?), the ingredients themselves might be cheap as hell, but my guess is drinks are expensive.
Nah you can buy cheap ready meals and get the bar staff to nuke them to order and the dishwasher. No chef to pay, no waste, no prep, no KP. Perfect for a quiet, down at heel boozer.
It’s called a loss leader.
They’re hoping you buy drinks, maybe a dessert, maybe come with something who doesn’t like fish so has to order a la carte, maybe you’ll enjoy the service and food and come back on another day when there isn’t a promo running…..
Also a lot of the food is “boil-in-the-bag” which is the term for places that primarily heats pre-prepared food like in the fryer, microwave, in a pan rather than cooking from scratch.
Heating up sauces, throwing things from a freezer bag into the fryer etc. Bought at a cash n carry,
It will be the cheapest food you can get and likely heavily salted, seasoned and dry to encourage you to drink more.
Good chance the portion sizes are small too.
Frozen cheap food and they are making money from the alcohol.
Break even on the food and make money on the drinks.
This place is local to me. The same company used to own another place that operated the same way, they closed it during the pandemic and then never re-opened.
The food is actually pretty good.
Their business model relies on a high turnover of customers, getting you in, fed, and out again as quickly as possible so the next customer can come in. Food is prepared ahead of sittings and reheated for service to speed things up.
Drinks?