RSS
Home
Great time to dine out, no lines
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Love the food here
When was the last time you went out to eat? Did you notice how fast you were seated or how fast the place emptied out? Last night my wife and I decided to have drinks and dinner at Claim Jumpers at Alderwood Mall. We have been there a number of times and we always had to wait for at least thirty minutes. Not so anymore, at eight thirty on a Saturday night the place was empty, unheard of until now.
Halloween landed on a Saturday this year, five years ago it was perfect day for making money in a bar. This year we drove to five places and could not find one bar that had more than six people in it. The party is over for a while, how do we survive?
Our economy is driving more and more small restaurant owners out of business and they end up on my step looking for work. While I am in a sector of food service that is somewhat immune to the problems of our economy, we are still feeling the pinch. Rising food costs, increased benefit premiums and shippers adding on delivery charges to compensate for the extra cost in fuel prices. All this and more are contributing to our shrinking profit margins.
Each of us has a breaking point, for some that point was a year ago and for many more it is just around the corner. I understand that times are tough and my family is feeling the pinch as hard as anyone else. However we still feel the need to help our favorite places survive the recession.
I have four kids ages five to eighteen years old, we have reduced our dining budget from last years $200.00 a month to $0.00 a month this year. Since January we have averaged $23.00 a month and we no longer take our entire family out together. We have developed a way to help with meals around the house by purchasing the main entrée item and making all the side dishes ourselves.
By making these decisions we have reduced our costs for the year while still choosing to help our local businesses weather the tough times. I am asking you to look for ways to reduce your costs and still have a little aside to do something special every now and then. If you have some great ideas I hope you will share them here in my comments section.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
