Inflation & price adjustments to encourage behavioural change
Like every business we have been seeing considerable upward pressure on our costs over the last few months. It seems every week another supplier is letting us know that they’ve had to raise their prices. Hopefully this will be short lived and settle over the next few months but given everything going on in the world post pandemic, who knows.
We pride ourselves on giving a great product at a good price, overwhelming customer satisfaction is what we strive for, it should be a case of “wow, that was unbelievable, and everyone here is so nice, and such a reasonable price!” and so raising our prices is not something we do unless absolutely necessary for the financial sustainability of our business. This is only our second time in 6 years, once when the VAT rate went up to 13.5% and now.
We thought hard about it and have decided to focus all our price changes towards encouraging our customers to make better choices. We don’t want to virtue signal and recognise that it’s a fine line between that and what we are implementing but hopefully we have got the balance right.
I’ll run through the changes.
Single use packaging levy.
The idea of this of course being to reward behavioural change and move away from single use packaging. There is something in the pipeline from government on this but not sure exactly when that’s coming so we are going to push ahead with it in the meantime
You’ll see from the attached menu the way we have gone about displaying this on our coffee menu.
We are taking a 2-pronged approach of both good discounts for bringing a reusable cup and an additional charge for a disposable cup.
Pre pandemic we were up to 32% of our coffee sold in reusable cups and a further 35% in our ceramic cups to sit in - we hope to get back there by the end of 2022 if not earlier and see where we can go from there. This adjustment to the pricing is the first step back in that direction.
Working off the same principles we’ve also brought in a charge for a takeaway salad box of 20c.
We will always offer you the option of eating in with a ceramic bowl or bringing your own container to avoid this charge and hopefully many people take us up on this.
Returnr at Tang, finally we do have a deposit and return scheme going with Returnr. The pandemic has really stifled the success of this program but we hope for it to take off over the coming months.
€6 deposit, fully refundable when you bring back the cup, bowl or container.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. – Michael Pollan.
As a meat eater who eats veggie most of the time, or at least tries to, this quote has always resonated with me. I think it’s a great way to go about things.
And for anyone keen to reduce their meat intake or have the occasional meat free day we’ve updated our prices to help you do that.
And as an added bonus we’ve also included the option of upgrading your flatbread or salad to half meat, half veggie for no additional charge above the cost of the meat.
This is the best of both worlds for me, you get your meat and you get the added crunch and flavour of the Lebanese Beans, and you get no additional charge. It’s win win.
Look forward to see you all over the coming weeks.