When you are considering buying clothes, electronic products such as mobile phones or computers, or other consumer goods to replace those that you already have, you can hold off if the price is too high. But the story is different when it comes to food, which is a necessity. You can’t just stop buying it because it costs too much.
This fact has the greatest impact on households with a limited income, those that form the largest part of Bangkok’s population. With other unavoidable expenses making claims on their budgets, these families are pressed harder by rising food prices than more affluent homes are.
Considering this situation, it is unfair when restaurants and other kinds of food businesses seize on opportunistic excuses to raise their prices. For example, during the annual Chinese vegetarian festival, food courts in shopping malls and other shops that serve prepared foods, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian recipes, undergo a sudden change on the first day of the festival and start charging higher-than-usual prices for the meatless dishes. The reason they give is that the prices of vegetables are up, but that excuse gets a little ragged when the prices they charge drop instantly to normal on the first day after the festival.
This claim of soaring vegetable prices is especially laughable when it is easy to see that the amount charged for strong-smelling vegetables such as garlic or onion (that are forbidden in vegetarian festival recipes) remains unchanged, even though farmers grow them together with all other vegetables in the same plots. The plants grow and mature over the same period of time, the water supplied to them is the same, and they are all harvested together.
The vegetarian festival only lasts for 10 days. When prices lunge up and down instantaneously to coincide with its dates, it is plain that the hike has more to do with decisions made by vendors than with scarcity-driven pricing necessities.
These days food is getting more and more expensive. One very obvious reason for this is the populist policy that saw government raise the minimum wage to 300 baht a day in 2013. The chairman of the food business department at the Federation of Thai Industries warned that food costs would inevitably go up if the cost of labour increased. At the time he made the statement, a bowl of noodles averaged 20-25 baht. Afterwards, it was able to climb to 70 baht at some restaurants.
Other industries followed suit. Cooking gas and petrol rose in price, although the price of the diesel fuel needed for food transport remained stable. But with duplicity being the rule, quite a few food shops and restaurants took advantage of the situation nevertheless and raised their prices needlessly. This practice was especially blameworthy because many of them were already doing booming business with plenty of customers.
There are many examples of shops that keep upping their prices in this way. One place that sells kui tio luuk chin nuea nam sai (rice noodles with beef meatballs in clear broth), located near Nakhon Chaisri and Samsen roads, does very good business, but it still keep raising its prices. A bowlful that once cost 25 baht went up to 30-35 baht after the minimum wage hike. It didn’t stop there. The latest price is 47 baht.
Cheap and cheerful: At Sunthon Phanich in Ratchaburi, offerings cost just 10-20 baht each.
Pork noodles sold on the grounds of a riverside temple in Pathum Thani are also doing a roaring trade to customers who pack in to be fed every day. They attract so many people that the adjoining area is now full of vendors selling other kinds of foods. Even so, the price of a bowl of noodles has jumped from 20 to 25 baht, and the servings are tiny. It takes three bowlfuls to make a satisfying meal.
Another noodle shop that sells kui tio muu (pork noodles) presented as kui tio ruea, or “boat noodles”, is located near the intersection of Srisaman and Tiwanon roads. As with the riverside place, the price of a bowlful has risen from 20 to 25 baht, and once again it takes three of them to make a meal. They explain that it was necessary to jack the price up because petrol costs more than it used to. This may well be the case for them, since they have recently replaced their Mercedes-Benz with a newer and bigger model.
The beef noodles sold in the Mueang Thong residential estate in Nonthaburi are very famous, and now they come at a fancy new price, up to 80 baht from the previous 60 baht.
The reason I’ve been giving noodle shops as examples of this trend is that they are a food that people from low and middle income families eat, a widely popular lunchtime favourite.
Staying afloat: A pork 'boat noodle' shop on Tiwanon Road near the Somdej intersection, where each bowl costs 15 baht.
Petrol prices have recently come down, but the price of food, especially that consumed by families with limited means, has not fallen, nor does it show any signs of dropping in the future. However, there are shops that sell noodles and other foods — often very good — that do charge reasonable prices. This is despite the fact that their operating costs and the prices of the ingredients they use are in the same range as other shops.
One nameless noodle place on Tiwanon Road near the Suan Somdej intersection, roughly opposite the Bang Chak petrol station, does business in front of an animal feed store. The pork boat noodles served there cost 15 baht a bowl, a price that has remained the same for a long time. The woman who sells them says that she keeps the price constant because she has a good number of customers, most of whom are employees or labourers. She only makes a small profit on each bowlful, but it is enough. She isn’t wealthy, she explained, but she doesn’t have serious money problems either.
Another restaurant sells khao tom (rice soup) in the evening until late. It is in Ratchaburi near Old Phetchkasem Road and is called Sunthon Phanich (although locals know it as “the rice soup place in front of Kamnan Lak’s house”). It offers more than 20 prepared dishes to eat with rice, as well as a variety of boiled and stewed foods. Offerings like tom jap chaai (a stewed mixed vegetable dish) or makhuea phat see iew (eggplant fried with soy sauce), made with eggs or vegetables cost 10 baht per plate, while those like muu kap khing (pork with ginger) or kai phat khing (chicken stir-fried with ginger) and muu waan (pork in a sweet sauce), are 20 baht a serving. Plain rice soup is priced at two baht per bowl and cooked rice at three baht.
The cooking there is very good, and it is a bonus for customers that the prices are so low. It allows them to order many different dishes without running up a big bill. The system there is for customers to select what they want, put it on a tray, and carry everything to a table to eat. Here, too, the owner said that the profit per serving is small, but with so many customers it is enough. The self-service system permits savings, too, because fewer staff need to be hired.
These are just a couple of comparisons of two types of successful restaurants. There are those that charge increased prices — allegedly for economic reasons, but actually to boost their own profits. There are others that do good business and manage to get by comfortably without putting the bite on their customers. The operating costs and prices paid for ingredients are roughly the same at both kinds of places, but those of the latter type are getting harder to find. Their reward is not the ability to watch their bank accounts get fatter and fatter, but a certain satisfaction of helping people who don’t have extra cash for overpriced food to eat well. n
