For the average price of lunch in the capital, people pay 203 crowns, which is the highest amount in history. Two years ago it was almost 145 crowns. The company Sodexo Benefits assumed that the price of the lunch menu would not exceed the threshold of two crowns until December.

“As we predicted at the beginning of October, it happened, we expected that lunches in Prague would not exceed two crowns until December,” commented Jan Michelfeit from Sodexo Benefits.

The cheapest Vysočina

In November, residents of the Central Bohemian Region paid the second highest price for lunch, namely CZK 193.20.

Just like Prague, this region could soon break the two-hundred-crown threshold for an average lunch menu.

“I can assume that the price increase will not end. High nbecause the basics of energy and food are reflected in restaurant prices with a delay, and there are still quite a few businesses that have electricity and gas prices fixed until the end of this year,” said Michelfeit.

So far, boarders pay the least for lunches in Vysočín (CZK 160.10), Ústecký (CZK 160.30) and Olomouc Region (CZK 160.80). Even here, however, food prices will certainly increase. It is true that lunches do not become more expensive in all regions at the same rate.

“While in the aforementioned Vysočina and Ústěk, the price of the lunch menu increased by approximately fifteen crowns from January to November, it was almost twenty-six crowns in the Central Bohemian region. We recorded the nominally highest growth in the south of Bohemia, by twenty-eight crowns, which is even one crown more than in Prague, where prices rose by 26.90 from January to November,” stated Michelfeit.

Czechs save on food

According to a current survey by the company Edenred, which is also available to the editors of FAEI.cz, this September, for the first time ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the average route of Czechs for lunch fell in a month-on-month comparison. Specifically, compared to August, it was 40 pennies to 167.40 crowns. At the same time, the decline came at a time when inflation exceeded 18 percent and the prices of meals in restaurants are constantly rising.

“The cheaper foods we choose now do not have to reach the quality of what we were used to, the balance and variety of the diet suffers as a result. Hand in hand with this, restaurants are also forced to reduce their costs due to the reduced purchasing power of people,” said Edenred management member Aneta Martišková.

If this trend continues, then, in combination with lower footfall, many restaurants may, in her opinion, consider how to handle their business in the future. Restaurants experienced a decline in the third quarter, and their declines were about twenty percent below the 2019 average.

Almost eight percent of businesses could end. “After two years of covid, hotels and restaurants saw a chance to return to normal. However, it did not last long, because the last three months were rather disappointing for restaurants and hotels, if we take seasonality into account,” FAEI.cz Chief Economist Petr Dufek told the editors of Banka Creditas.