Price gouging by the pub, restaurant & hotel industry

If on a Sunday spin try the newGrange hotel navan. There last Sunday e14.50, top class. Some places I was in recently would have got 2 portions out of the beef I got. The thatch in Drogheda would have got 3!

It was understood by the industry that the vat cut was a device by the government to help them back on their feet after the covid shutdown. So they probably felt no guilt about not passing on the vat saving. This ignores the cash supports they government paid them of course.

So what do you do when prices rise tomorrow? Not much you can do, it will hardly be noticed as everything has gone up since covid anyway. One small thing i do is bring coffee with me from home every morning after the regular place i went to put the price of a large americano over €3.50.

13.5% back tonight

I think smaller restaurants will find it hard

9.45 now for a large big mac meal.....

The chips as photographed were before any were taken.... not being greedy but if you are charging that sort of cash maybe you'd be inclined to want to fill the box ? As depicted in your advertising ? So perhaps people get a slightly better appreciation that they are getting value for money and your staff give a **** ?

Its a good point but from the govts point of view they have rolled over the reduced VAT for a while now.

Its true that other than June, a lot of the summer was a washout, especially in the west, so i think you are right that in that a lot of rural businesses especially will close up shop in the next 6 months, sadly.

You should have gone back up and complained

Prices are not the biggest concern I have. It’s declining service levels and quality and logic!

Really poorly trained staff, slow orders, reheated food etc.

You can stomach the 20 euro carvery when you leaving thinking that was a decent portion at least and the meat was really tender.

Sadly it’s usually “I can’t believe they charged me an extra 2 euros as I askd for an extra scoop of mash and the meat was very grizzly, and the carrots looks like they hadn’t been cleaned properly before cooking, and why did it take 15 minutes to get us a desert menu”.

Local coffee horse box, yesterday a coke zero bottle 500ml was two euro. Today its 2.70. Wow, that vat increase must have been bigger than i thought.

Anyone else out and about and report on rises. I assume takeaway coffees etc gone up

Just be aware, the following would be the increase of a coffee for example.

€3.00 with VAT @ 9% = VAT of €0.25 or net of VAT €2.75

With the VAT at 13.5% = VAT of €0.37 cent.

That means your cup of coffee should go from €3.00 to €3.12. We can be sure that the VAT reduction was not passed on to consumers in 99% of cases. Anything more than say €3.15 for that cup is price gouging and nothing to do with VAT. The reduced rate does not apply to alcohol, bottled drinks, cold food items (like salads), so there should be no increases there.

I was over at a friends last night and we were talking about eating out. We used to go out (in our own lives) like once a month for no particular occasion. Now we don't bother with that, save for a particular special occasion. If you are going out now, cut out the food, and the number of drinks.