A guest was having a chat with us recently about the price of the weekly food shop, and it was one of those conversations that probably sounds familiar to anyone who has been anywhere near a supermarket in Ireland lately. She was talking about how much more she is spending than she used to, despite buying much the same things every week. Nothing particularly extravagant, nothing that would make you think you had filled the trolley with luxuries, just the usual food and household bits. Yet somehow the total at the end seems to have a life of its own.
It got me thinking about how quickly the cost of ordinary life has changed. You don’t have to be buying anything particularly fancy to feel it. The shopping costs more, the car costs more to run, the electricity bill arrives and makes you wonder what exactly you have been doing with all those lights, and then there is the insurance renewal that has a habit of arriving at exactly the wrong time. Add in heating, the odd repair around the house, school costs, the dog, the children and all the other little expenses that come with having a normal life, and it doesn’t take long before the money has disappeared.
The frustrating part is that none of this feels particularly exciting. Nobody gets up in the morning looking forward to paying the electricity bill. Nobody comes home delighted because they’ve managed to spend more on their weekly shop. These are simply the costs of getting on with life, and they have become noticeably harder to ignore.
Then you have the things we actually want to spend money on. Going out for dinner. Meeting friends for a drink. Taking the family somewhere for the day. Booking a night away. Having a weekend where somebody else cooks the food and you don’t have to think about what needs doing around the house.
Those are the things that can become much harder to justify when money is tighter, even though they are often the things that make life enjoyable in the first place.
And I think that is where people have become much more conscious of value. If you’re paying more for the essentials, you naturally want to be more careful with what you spend on everything else. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to go out. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to have a nice meal or a night away. It simply means that when you do spend the money, you want to feel that you got something worthwhile for it.
We’ve all had the experience of paying for something and thinking afterwards, “Well, that wasn’t worth it.” That feeling is particularly irritating when money is already under pressure. Nobody wants to spend a decent amount on a meal and leave disappointed, or book a hotel and come away wondering what they actually paid for.
On the other hand, when you have a really good experience, you tend not to think about the money in quite the same way. You remember the meal, the laugh you had, the comfortable room, the few drinks, the fact that you didn’t have to cook or clean up and the fact that you got to switch off for a while. That is what makes something feel like good value.
And this is something we think about a lot at the Bailie. Austin, the owner, puts a huge amount of importance on value for money. He understands that people work hard for what they earn, and with the cost of everyday life rising, there is even more reason to make sure customers feel they have received plenty in return for what they spend.
Of course, the Bailie is not immune to the same pressures as everyone else. The cost of running a hotel and restaurant has gone up too. Food costs more, energy costs more, staffing and all the other expenses involved in running a business have changed. We are not living in a completely separate world from the people who come through our doors. But that makes the question of value even more important, not less.
When someone decides to eat out, we want them to enjoy their meal and feel that it was money well spent. When someone books a room, we want them to enjoy their stay, sleep comfortably, have a good meal or a drink and leave feeling that they got excellent value from the experience. Because going out should still be enjoyable.
A night away should still feel like a treat. And spending some of your hard-earned money on yourself, your partner, your family or your friends shouldn’t automatically feel like a reckless decision simply because the price of everything else has gone up. Maybe that is the bit that gets lost when we talk about the cost of living. Yes, the price of everyday essentials matters enormously. Of course it does. But people also need to have a life outside the bills. We need the dinners out, the celebrations, the catch-ups and the occasional night where we don’t have to worry about what is waiting for us at home. Nobody needs reminding that things are expensive. We see it every time we go shopping. We see it when we fill the car. We see it when the bills arrive. The question now is what we choose to do with the money we have left after paying for all those things. For us, the answer is to keep concentrating on value. That is why Austin remains so focused on making sure the Bailie offers genuine value for money. We want people to be able to come in for a meal or stay overnight and feel that they have made a good choice. Not because we are pretending that the wider cost of living isn’t a challenge, and certainly not because we think people should simply accept paying more and more for everything, but because we know how important it is to make every euro count.
So yes, the weekly shop might leave you wondering where the money went. The fuel tank seems to empty far too quickly and the bills never seem to stop arriving. We probably haven’t found the answer to any of those problems, unfortunately.
What we can do is make sure that when you decide to spend some of that money on enjoying yourself, you get something back from it. A good meal, a few drinks, a comfortable room, a bit of time away and the chance to enjoy yourself without having to think about the cooking or the washing up for a change.
And if you leave the Bailie having had a great meal or a really enjoyable stay, feeling that you got excellent value for money, then that’s the sort of result we are looking for. Because life is expensive enough as it is. When you do decide to treat yourself, it should at least be worth it.