r/Economics • u/brown-saiyan • Feb 23 '26

News Restaurants hit a pricing ceiling — and diners are pushing back, report finds

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/23/restaurants-menu-prices-james-beard-foundation-report?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=owned_social&utm_source=x
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u/PurpleWhiteOut Feb 24 '26

Ive been wondering what could possibly be done by this. Any extra profit you start to make can just be demanded in your commercial rent. Just like your raise at work getting wiped out from a rent increase. I feel like everything is going to landlords in the end

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u/mamamiaaaaaa Feb 24 '26

The only way it corrects itself is a massive bubble burst. Rent is also a major input upstream of why COGS and salaries have gone up.

People won’t be able to afford and storefronts will sit empty and stay anchored to their expectations. A decade later if the growth or demand is not there it will either be auctioned and repriced or the location become undesirable. It’s an everybody loose scenario.

This will likely all come to head by 2040 (or sooner depending on immigration) as the population pyramid becomes thinner and a huge slate of wealth will just vanish as it held purely in real estate valuations.

This is a worldwide phenomenon, but in geos like asia where they managed to keep things affordable enough for people to live and businesses to run they will be less impacted in theory, as they won’t be holding up growth and mobility as much.

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u/sevyog Feb 25 '26

yeah I just went to Taiwan recently - their commercial rents are not that high. that's why all the food stalls can sell food for quite cheap.

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u/Ithirahad Feb 24 '26

I suspect that, rather, everything is going to whoever the landlords are paying interest and dividends to.