Jokke and Prag enjoy a super cheap Michigan breakfast at Red Apple
There’s little doubt that Icrontians love to eat. Every year at Expo Icrontic, one of the most popular events is the food tour. Just as important to many of us is the ritual of picking up breakfast together. Places like Original Pancake House, Ron’s Cafe, and My Mother’s Place have been feeding Icrontians a great breakfast and offered socializing with a small group for years. Little did I know how spoiled I had become.
Earlier this year I moved to Southern California from Ohio. California’s cost of living is the stuff of legends, and folks back home are constantly asking me about it. Housing, yes, definitely more expensive. Food and gas, generally only a bit more expensive than I was used to. One thing that surprised me, however, was the cost of a restaurant breakfast in Southern California.
During any given day of the week, one can take a quick walk from Icrontic HQ to Ron’s Cafe and get a full breakfast, including a combo meal with eggs, hash browns, meat, and coffee or glass of juice, for less than $5. The most Ron’s-like of our local restaurants would charge over ten dollars for the same amount of food, plus the cost of coffee. A stack of pancakes alone will set you back eight dollars.
I’ve tried to analyze this problem from a business perspective. Is it the higher cost of real estate that causes the restaurant prices to be so much higher? Well sure, that makes sense. Rent on a decent one-bedroom apartment out here is over $1000 per month–commercial rents must be similarly scaled up. Why, then, do lunch and dinner prices not suffer the same fate as breakfast prices? A lunch combo at an average restaurant here costs about the same as it does in the Midwest. In fact, many lunch prices are significantly lower than the prices of breakfast!
While delicious, this breakfast set me back $12 without coffee.
Chains aren’t immune to the price inflation on breakfasts, either. While a Chipotle Burrito costs the same $6 or so in SoCal as I paid in Ohio, breakfast parity is rare. I stopped at IHOP, expecting a reasonable $6 to $7, since it’s a national chain. Alas, it was not to be. An omelet, three simple eggs with some veggies cooked inside, costs an astounding $13 at IHOP in Southern California. Add coffee and tip, and a breakfast that would cost under ten dollars back in the Midwest is almost double here.
Another solution that occurred to me is that staple breakfast foods simply cost more relative to lunch or dinner staples. I checked the grocer. Bread is still about $2.50 for a loaf of 100% whole wheat, exactly what I paid in Ohio. Milk can be had for about $2 per gallon. Eggs are about $1.50 per dozen on sale (and they’re always on sale somewhere). With prices that close to the Midwest, I can’t imagine a huge markup being necessary.
In the end, the best explanation I could find came from asking the locals. “Breakfast just isn’t a priority here, so you pay more if you want to go out to eat it,” one local said. While that may be the case, it’s a sad shame that the price of a good restaurant breakfast is doubled because of it.
What does a hearty breakfast cost in your neck of the woods? What should a good breakfast cost? Any ideas why it might be so inflated here in Southern California? Sound off in the comments!
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