ThoughtsFromRVa

With food prices up 41 percent since October 2007, are US restaurants going to revise their pricing to be able to continue providing complimentary foodstuffs to munch on while you order? Or are they going to begin placing limits on the amount of ‘free’ food you get while dining in at their establishments?

Most people in the U.S. know and love the complimentary finger foods which many restaurants provide for you to munch on while you browse the menu and decide on what to order. Yummy items such as Olive Garden’s breadsticks, O’Charley’s rolls, almost any Mexican restaurant’s baskets of chips with sides of salsa, and many more could have the possibility of being at risk! Or at least at risk of losing their [unlimited] complimentary status.

With full service restaurants generally operating at a minimum controllable profit of 15 to 20 percent, what will this recent 41 percent spike in food costs yield? Will the restaurants pass all of this spike onto their customers? Will they absorb a small amount to avoid a quick rise in prices and thus alleviate the full impact to the customers? Or will they start to cut back little by little? Laying off one or two cooks here, or if things get desperate, cutting back on the already low paid wait staff? What happens when they begin looking into lowering their food costs as a way of avoiding menu price hikes? Will food quality suffer, or will our beloved free food which we stuff our faces full of be compromised?

Working in the bar/food industry full time for nearly three years, and part time for almost 6 years running, I have noticed how much people love their free food at restaurants. At my current weekend job I have began taking note of the mass amount of free bread (or rolls) we provide for people, and the enormous amount they chose to consume. The average rolls consumed per person was right around 4 rolls per person. Those needing to hoard food like hamsters topped out at around 10 per person at one four-top which I took forty rolls to over the course of their dinner. Once in a blue moon a table would refuse rolls, these were generally middle-aged women on the newest ‘low/no carb diet’ craze. Many of those few were happy to announce that they must decline the rolls because of their diet. The rolls are generally the size of your hand, providing they were proofed correctly.

I have seen how upset people get when they either have to wait the eleven minutes it takes to bake new rolls (because they and the other customers ate them all), or god forbid, we are out of them for a determined amount of time. People are ready to riot without their second, third, and fourth rounds of free bread.

I cannot help but wonder what will happen with this spike in food costs. Will American dietary excess be able to adapt to not stuffing your face constantly before your meal with free food, or at very least be limited in that excess? How will they react to having to pay for it all either in higher menu prices or paying individually for the once complimentary foodstuffs?

For the sake of those in the service / restaurant industry we can only pray that the American public will take it lightly. And that more of the trips to the table will be those of substance and productivity, not constantly bringing free bread to people throughout their entire meal.