In the short amount of time that we’ve been running this blog, we’ve seen some really good offers from restaurants. It seems that many of them have faced up to the reality of the changing times and are trying new things to hold on to their customers (which is more than can be said for most of the supermarkets).
However there are still plenty of holdouts, and I heard one today that really made me laugh. Some friends of mine went for a walk in Glendalough last weekend, and stopped to get tea from a van in the visitors centre carpark. One of them was charged €3 for a very small cup of hot water with one rooibos teabag. She recognised the teabag, as she’s often bought them for 99c a box in her local Lidl.
The teabags come in boxes of 20; so at 5c per teabag, so they’re charging a 6000% markup on the teabag. There’s something almost quaint about this – like the Japanese soldier in Guam who refused to believe that World War II was over, these people are clinging desperately to their boom prices.
What do you do when you see pricing like this? Do you laugh out loud, protest, or mutter quietly? I tend to do feck all, although I did once involuntarily swear at a barman who charged me €3 for a pint of blackcurrant cordial when I was pregnant.