Fourteen pounds for two eggs, toast, and a coffee is either a sign of civilisational collapse or a reasonable price for quality ingredients in a neighbourhood of high rents
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat — Harper-Thames on Shoreditch food culture.
I had breakfast in Shoreditch last week that cost fourteen pounds and I am going to try to defend this, or at least explain it, which are not exactly the same thing. Two eggs, however they are cooked, some toast, a filter coffee, and a side of something green that I ordered because it was there and I am in the part of my life where I order the side of something green. Fourteen pounds. I paid it without wincing, which tells you either that I have adapted to Shoreditch economics or that I have stopped noticing them, and I am not sure which of those is worse.
The Fourteen-Pound Egg Question
The defence of the fourteen-pound breakfast goes as follows: the eggs are from a specific farm, the bread is sourdough made on the premises, the coffee is single-origin and brewed with attention, the space is well-designed and comfortable, and the rents in Shoreditch are what they are. The attack on the fourteen-pound breakfast goes as follows: they are still two eggs. Both of these positions are entirely accurate. The tension between them is the tension that defines Shoreditch at this moment in its economic history, and it appears, among other places, in the form of a breakfast menu.
The Room
The room was good, which matters more than the menu in a cafe that charges these prices, because what you are paying for is not only the food but the time and the space to eat it in. The tables were well-spaced. The light was excellent. The music was at a volume that allowed conversation, which is rarer than it should be. My companion and I talked for two hours, which means that the fourteen pounds was also paying for approximately one hour of table occupancy in a prime Shoreditch location on a Saturday morning, at which point the arithmetic starts to look different.
The Economics of the Neighbourhood Cafe
The independent cafe in Shoreditch is operating in conditions of genuine difficulty: high rent, high ingredient costs if they are sourcing responsibly, high staff costs in a tight labour market. The margin on a fourteen-pound breakfast is not what it looks like from the customer side of the equation. The cafe that is trying to pay its staff fairly, source its ingredients from people who are also trying to pay their producers fairly, and maintain the kind of space that justifies the price is working very hard for that fourteen pounds, and many of them do not survive. The ones that do tend to be the ones worth going to.
What I Actually Think
I think fourteen pounds for breakfast is too much. I also think that the breakfast I ate was worth it, which is a contradiction I hold comfortably because the Shoreditch I live in requires me to hold many such contradictions comfortably or else go mad. The neighbourhood is expensive and also good. The food is overpriced and also excellent. The cafe I was in will probably close within three years, and I will miss it, and another one will open, and it will also cost fourteen pounds for breakfast, and I will go, and I will think it is too much, and I will pay it. This is the cycle. I am in the cycle. I have made my peace with the cycle.
For more from Harper-Thames on Shoreditch life, visit Harper-Thames. East London food at Time Out London.
The economics of the Shoreditch breakfast are, I have come to think, a reasonable proxy for the economics of the neighbourhood as a whole: high inputs, high outputs, high margins that look different depending on where you are standing in the transaction. The visitor who pays fourteen pounds sees the price. The vendor who receives fourteen pounds sees the rent, the wages, the supplier invoices, and whatever is left, which is the margin, and the margin in a small East London cafe is not what the menu price suggests. I am not arguing that the breakfast should cost fourteen pounds. I am arguing that the fourteen-pound breakfast is a fact about the neighbourhood that contains information about the neighbourhood, and that the information is worth having before you decide what you think about the price.
I want to be clear that I am not advocating for expensive breakfasts as a lifestyle. I eat most of my breakfasts at home, and they cost approximately forty pence, and they are adequate. The occasional fourteen-pound breakfast is a treat, not a habit, and it functions as a treat precisely because it is occasional. The thing that makes the expensive morning feel worth it is partly the food, partly the room, and significantly the contrast with the forty-pence alternative. Without the ordinary breakfasts, the extraordinary one would have no context. Context is what makes value legible.
A note on tipping in East London cafes: most now include a service prompt on the card reader and most of the staff are paid better than the national minimum, but the prompt is still there and the staff still notice when you tap yes. The fourteen-pound breakfast affords the tip. Leave it.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
