A foruser calculates: "10 euros for a mollete, juice, and coffee"

Ten euros for a breakfast: the local bar starts to empty

Bar breakfasts are no longer a small expense. A mollete, juice, and coffee can set you back 10 euros, according to a forum user's calculation, and repeating it daily costs 300 a month, always according to their math. This leads to a silent retreat from terraces: fewer breakfasts, fewer aperitifs, and more food brought from home. The price explains much of the movement, though not everything.

How much does it cost to have breakfast in a bar? The math that no longer adds up

The arithmetic is stubborn. A forum user reports that two molletes and two coffees with milk, without juice, cost 10 euros. This ticket multiplied by working days comes to around 300 euros a month, an amount that, according to another user, weighs heavily on a salary range of 1,000 to 2,000 euros net. And it is not the only price that has stretched, according to the cases cited in the thread: a beer for 4 euros in a local bar, two beers with a tapa for nearly 8 euros in an industrial area, a "pitufo mixto" with churros and sparkling water for 6.50 euros when it cost 4.50 a year ago.

The comparison with the supermarket is the most repeated. For those same 4 euros, a user notes, you get four cans of beer and a jar of olives to enjoy on your home terrace. The math is not ideological: it is about the cash register. There is the crux of the matter.

From lunchboxes to machine coffee: how breakfast away from home has changed

The change in habit is noticeable in office kitchens. Where there used to be nothing—a small kitchen turned into a deserted territory—lunchboxes are now prepared daily. The pattern repeats: a sandwich from home and machine coffee for 0.45 euros to get by, with the doubt of retrieving the lunchbox when it is time to stay until five.

One user claims that three dozen eggs for less than 6 euros cover breakfasts for the whole week, with more protein than the industrial pastries on the counter. Savings and health in the same gesture.

However, terraces are not empty at all hours. In the afternoon and evening, there is still people: the "caña" (draft beer) and the terrace hold on as the last bastion of bar leisure. What falls away first is breakfast and the midday aperitif.

The lunch menu at 16.50 euros and the industrial park bar that is losing customers

A forum user frames the underlying problem as an issue of margins: breakfasts and lunch menus are the products that leave the least money, require a lot of labor, and do not allow price increases without scaring away customers. Those who fill the register are the large drinks and informal dinners, not the worker who eats breakfast standing up.

According to another testimony, some industrial parks have lost their lunch menu bars, with menus that now move at 16.50 euros and venues that cannot find replacements. A forum user describes the case of an establishment with a terrace next to a public pool and a factory of 60 workers: the workers go in shifts or bring food from home, and customers do not appear even in high season.

Meanwhile, the replacements that arrive are not always better. A forum user mocks vending machine ham sandwiches for 12 euros each in airports, and another considers the corn flour arepas with cheese at 7 euros to be a scam. Mid-priced inventions are multiplying.

Is it the price or the quality?

There is a complaint that goes beyond the bill. Coffee from a poorly cleaned machine, pastries that have been on the counter for days, a neglected or even hostile atmosphere. For this current, the relationship between what is paid and what is received was poor even at old prices, and the price hike has only made visible what was no longer worth it.

The counterargument is that the market is splitting in two. Where things are done well—careful coffee, non-industrial pastries, a pleasant local—the tables are still full and you have to wait. It is argued that the customer's gastronomic level has risen, that the espresso machine has been installed in domestic kitchens, and that the Bar Paco that does not know how to pull a coffee is doomed. In this reading, closures are also a form of cleaning.

Franchises, concentration, and the forecast no one dates

The most pessimistic reading has three phases: first, the local bar disappears, then a franchise war arrives, and finally, concentration with few owners. Those who raise this do not see it as an isolated phenomenon, but as the consequence of something that, according to him, was written in advance.

The forecast cannot be closed yet. Night terraces are functioning, much of the midday consumption has shifted to the office and the supermarket, and the mass closure of bars has been announced for some time without a date arriving. If prices stabilize, part of the clientele will return out of habit. If they do not, breakfast away from home will remain where it is: in the realm of the exceptional.