Irish people don’t value food enough to pay a high price for it, according to a top chef and restaurateur.
The Government is due to meet with supermarket chain representatives to discuss the rising price of groceries and the possibility of lowering costs.
Minister of State for Employment Affairs and Retail Business Neale Richmond TD previously told Newstalk Breakfast he hopes a forum will persuade chains to lower their prices for consumers.
However, Galway chef and restaurateur JP McMahon told Newstalk Breakfast he doesn’t understand why Irish people are “obsessed” with food prices specifically.
“We all imagine we know the price of food,” he said.
“[But] we all have smartphones, we spend crazy amounts on designer stuff like sunglasses which are marked up about 1,000%.”
“The profit on that is astronomical and the profit on food is so little, but sometimes I wonder why we are obsessed.”
He suggested Irish people have "a difficult relationship with food" and don't value it enough.
Energy and wages
Mr McMahon said people should stop thinking about paying “X amount for a coffee, X for a chicken sandwich” and consider why food costs a certain amount.
“There are loads of other factors, whether that's energy or wages,” he said.
He said energy and wage prices have increased since COVID, and “the only way to get money is to raise the price of food”.
Profit-shaming
“We profit-shame food establishments, but we don’t profit-shame companies that make smartphones,” he said. “We should ask why it’s ‘not good’ to make a profit on food and why we have that attitude.”
“It's not as simple as ‘food should be cheap’, because if we go down that road, and we end up with mass produced foods that I don't think it's very good for us.”
He said too many people think the price of food in restaurants should match the price of ingredients in supermarkets.
“I always think it's less about the price of food and more about the experience,” he argued.
Mr McMahon said Irish people should consider the prices in restaurants abroad, such as Copenhagen, where restaurants are “double the price”.
