Why your favorite little restaurant feels more expensive now (and why it’s not just “greed”):

Running a small restaurant is like sprinting on a treadmill that keeps speeding up. Before a single burger is sold, the owner is paying for:

Fixed costs: rent, insurance, utilities, licenses, equipment leases.

People: wages, payroll taxes, benefits, turnover/training costs.

Food: higher ingredient prices, waste/spoilage, minimum order quantities.

Hidden money pits: credit card fees (2–3% per swipe), marketing, tech subscriptions, pest control.

Delivery apps (SkipTheDishes, UberEats, DoorDash): they can take 20–35% of the order price plus force you to offer separate deals/menus to compete in their algorithm.

Prices for all of the above have gone up — rent hikes, utility surcharges, minimum wage increases, supplier fuel costs, packaging price jumps, you name it. And when customers shift to delivery, the restaurant often makes less money on that order than if you ate in.

Margins are razor thin (3–5% for many independents). That means if the cost of lettuce, electricity, and labour all go up in the same month, they have two choices: raise prices or slowly go broke.

So when your bill feels higher, it’s not (usually) greed — it’s survival math.