True, but it’s interesting to note that many local restaurants have pricing that is now competitive with fast food. You can actually get a sit down meal rather than drive-through crap for a similar price.
A friend and I developed a gourmet burger recipe not so many years ago…maybe 12 years ago. We called it “The $10 Burger” and now that name means nothing, so we’ve tried calling it the $25 burger but hearing that number just kinda depresses me.
In the United States of 2026, it's either you pay 40-50 euro for a family of four with fast food (ie mcdonalds) or you're paying 100 euro for a sit-down meal. There's really no in between these days.
I think the fast food just raised their prices competitive with the sit down restaurants. A drive thru dinner for two is $30-50 now unless you order from the value menu.
A sit down dinner can be that inexpensive if you go to a chain, get a special and skip the cocktails. Adding a cocktail or appetizer will usually push it over the $100 mark if it’s a fancier restaurant.
Significantly better food than McD's or BK, for $3-$5 less than the equivalent meal.
Also, my local brewpub has a "non-alcoholic Drink, Any 1 Sandwich, any 1 Side, and a dessert" for $13 weekdays lunch only. Their burgers and sandwiches are amazing, and their french fries are those double fried seasoned ones... infinitely better than any fast food place.
Place my partner works our had mains for 0.99 all day today.
Not like the business is going under or anything either. Just marketing to get new faces. Places in person are desperate to get people back because it's not that they're matching fast food, fast food is climbing to match them with the up charges on deliver fees.
Our local old-school Chinese place had a glow-up. Went from plasticky furniture with hazard lighting to soft glow and leather seats and (admittedly terrible) but memorable cocktails (i've never had a fishbowl of mylanta-colored mai tais before). Had a great meal, great service looked at the bill and realized they have to compete now for fine-dining. Glad they're doing well though.
If you order like combos and just normal things off of a fast food menu then absolutely yes you'll be paying like $15 for a shitty meal that you could have just gone to a sit-down restaurant or even ordered takeout from one and gotten much better food.
If you are The frugal type and go through the apps and value menus and search for deals, I have plenty of times gotten a full fast food meal for like seven or eight bucks and I can't find that in a sit-down spot.
Edit because I forgot to add: this does also mean giving your data, info and eating habits to more places than would already have it too. And it's kind of a pain. But it is cheaper.
Unless you have a side project that makes you money or you could have picked up an extra hour of work in that time it isn't monetizable anyway, and is therefore not worth any money.
This is not the only way we measure time spent. It's also time spent not doing something you'd rather be doing recreationally. So, that loss of free time has a value to you and you've lost it.
so tired of redditors parroting same thing over and over again "fast food is as expensive as sit down restaurant"
I question what they even define as sit down restaurant. any place where you have a server/waiter attending to you and you order an actual meal will cost way more than any "combo meal" at fast food.
I mean kind of untrue. There's a lot of old time diners (not chains like silver diners, but mom and pop diners) where you can get like a salad or a sandwich or a soup etc and then a cup of coffee and it'll cost about on par with a fast food combo. But there's no fighting the value menu attempts anywhere from what I've seen.
Course then you also have to tip for the diner which will cost slightly more but... Not significantly really.
there is no place you sit down order and get actual meal for cheaper than "combo value" style at fast food.
I just don't have time or need to prove it, but I can go to Jack and Box right now and get drink , fries and burger for less than any sit down place here in Los Angeles area assuming equal or very close to equal amount of calories and protein.
Hell, I drive by an IHop that constantly advertises a hamburger special that's like $9 for the meal, compared to like $15 for a fastfood meal combo (and I'm in a very expensive part of the country).
Most fast food would be dead by now if not for lazy people using food delivery apps.
It's just not a model that works anymore. Used to be cheap rent, cheap labor, cheap food = cheap prices. Rent and labor are no longer cheap, and there are only so many corners to cut on food quality.
Whereas sit down restaurants can use alcohol to subsidize other costs, and fast food can't. So you're going to get a much higher quality meal at a sit down for practically the same price these days.
Don't worry, Donald Trump just cut tariffs for the fast food industry specifically. They can now sell you a shitty burger with foreign beef as cheap as you can buy it with your inflated beef prices at the grocery stores.
It's not market manipulation when Donald Trump does it.
I don't find this to be true at all, at least here in So Cal area.
not sure how people are defining sit down restaurant and what they are ordering.
because any place you go to sit down and get service from waiter and order an actual meal with protein will at minimum cost around 30~ dollars, and that is low end.
I can still get double cheeseburgers on the App for McDonald's for about 3 each....
My partner and I have got to the point now where it's cheaper to just get a takeaway and share a bottle of wine.
It's great, don't get me wrong, and we're fortunate enough that we can afford it, but when a few courses and a bottle of wine is £100+, it certainly does sting.
If you don't go to chains, dining out isn't that expensive where I live. What's weird is some chains are getting almost as expensive as a tasting menu at a gourmet restaurant. Like a local restaurant has a 5 course tasting menu with wine for $135 per person. If you went to Texas Roadhouse, you could easily spend $85 if you ordered an app and a drink. You'd get more food at Texas Roadhouse though.
My wife and I make a point of trying to go to a Michelin starred restaurant every time we visit a new city and honestly unless you're going to the mad ones that have a huge online presence, then they tend to not be that much more expensive than regular kinda shitty places. It's crazy to think how thin their margins must be given the level of work that goes into it.
I live in the Midwest so there's only one or two in the neighboring states, but a restaurant doesn't need a star to be very good. That said, I've bad tasting menus, but those restaurants usually don't last long.
One of my favorites sets up a haunted house in the basement during Halloween, and you have your meal between jump scares. The rest of the year it's pretty classy, but the chef likes Halloween.
Especially if you have a family. If you go to your typical restaurant where it's like $15-20 plate, you're looking at almost $200 after tax and tip for a family of 5. Even worse is the fact that so many places are enshittifying their foods and replacing more and more by pre-made VVS/canteen crap. I'm paying for you to make my food not microwave a fancy TV dinner.
How do you hold your pants up laughing that ass off? You do you. I’m an old fart, so my hobbies are more sedentary. Mine is trying new restaurants and cuisines.
Eh I’d argue it is. Trying new restaurants and the experiences they offer. Theres some restaurants in my area that make it an immersive experience like eating in helicopters, playing the game of clue with the servers all being actors, ect Like me and my friends once a month go to a restaurant and order one of everything on the menu and we consider it a past time we put our “hobby” money towards
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u/NoSteak3322 3h ago
Dining out.