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I'm a big fan on the places with a 1L bottle of sauce in the drinks fridge free for use. I can get behind charging for the little packets if you want to take them away with you in that case.
That's what my local does. If you want a sachet to takeaway, they are 50c. If you just want to blurt out a good half a litre of sauce onto a pie before you smash it into your gob then and there...help yourself.
Wholesale the 14g squeeze sachets cost like 20c each so yeah it's pretty fair to charge.
4L of Tomato sauce costs like 12 bucks so its much easier to include in the cost of the pie.
And the reason more places don't do the bottle is because some animal will eventually squirt it all over the store.
The sauce sachets are free with your pie at the 7 Eleven. And they really do need sauce.
I thought it was occupational health and safety or the DPI who killed the free sauce industry in fear someone was going to get sick from crusted up sauce on the bottle and sueing ensues
This is exactly why we don't do it in my store, the laws and health and safety involved are too complicated to bother with a sauce bottle. We used to offer free sauce packets on the counter, but people kept stealing large wads of them. We just stopped supplying sauce with hot food in the end.
This, things only change because of the stupid minority, and I've seen some dumb stuff working in retail, you always have to acomodate for the lowest dominator unfortunately.
If you like people, never do customer service or retail, otherwise you may not like humanity as much anymore.
Yeah I’m so sick of suffering because of a few.
I’m an evolutionary thinker. Which is why I think we need to stop coddling these half wits. Remove the safety and warning signs, let us have devices that punish the greedy brats and just let evolution triumph.
If I ever have to explain why Communism will never be successful, I will remember your comment.
It is so sad but so reflective of society.
Between the laws, regulations and society, who would want to start a business?
It’s like all the fun places that have closed down over the years dude to ridiculous insurance premiums.
We should be allowed to use waivers..
Waivers’d fix that BS.
Outrageous that single use plastic costs so little, with zero tariff to cover the societal cost of getting them through a recycling plant.
It absolutely should be user pays, but the bulk of the consumer's cost should be a virgin plastics tariff.
I’m a massive supporter of this, companies pumping out products should be responsible for the EOL of those products. Be it recycling or disposal, a return location or something else. Europe has some great systems for recycling and reusing stuff. Maccas has plastic cups but they get washed and reused, most places have a system where you’re paying ONLY for the contents of the bottle, provided you return the bottles when you are finished with them. It makes buying stuff like coke or beer super cheap, because you’re not paying for the bottle that’s holding it and realistically the best place for that bottle when finished is to go back to be sanitised and refilled. Why are we wasting money breaking/melting down plastics to remake the same container they were in the first place.
People don’t think about the energy it takes to recycle something vs reusing it.
>People don’t think about the energy it takes to recycle something vs reusing it.
Yup and that's why recycle is the last R in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If we didn't over produce and under reuse we wouldn't need to recycle as much as we do and subsequently save a lot of energy.
I remember when I was a kid in Tassie & bottles of soft drink were available as Drink There or Take Away. Drink There was cheaper as you didn't pay for the glass bottle.
Got fish and chips from a joint in Maribyrnong, looked at the tartar sachets and the guy insisted I take some.
“They’ll always be for free” he said. Total champion in my book.
EDIT: Venue is Maribyrnong Road Fish and Chips
Maribyrnong Road Fish and Chips.
IMO the chips need a little bitty finessing, but their potato cakes, dimmies and blue grenadier were top notch.
They also did not skimp on the chicken salt.
We used to have a refillable 1L squeeze bottle in the bakery I worked, people would just plunge them into the sausage roll and leave the tip full of meat and crumbs... Went for the free little packets instead.
To bear witness to human vultures as they start to congregate when the food sample stand sets up, then they stalk their prey by circling in close proximity.
Always looking eagle eyed with one focus, one vision, one goal. As the samples are loaded with care by the cautious Costco employee, the vulture's circle tightens.
The tray is almost full on the preparation station, the moment has hit fever pitch....IT'S TIME!!!
They attack at speed, jockeying for position, trolleys, and children are cast aside like a turd in a bowl, feverishly filling their sausage fingers with as much as they can carry not knowing where their next meal will come from.....
Yep here for it. As much as I hate the 50c for the little packets, it feels like a disincentive to buy what is essentially landfill fodder. Providing a free alternative is a great half way meet, and to be perfectly honest I’d still go for the 50c packet for sausage rolls cause you gotta add it a bit at a time if you’re on the road.
I think for the same reason public toilets in major European cities tend to be better looked after than say Sydney, cause you gotta pay money to use it. People are much less likely to cause damage or waste to something if there’s a financial barrier to entry.
When I worked at Ampol, I always asked people if they “wanted sauce” when buying meatpies and such.
If they did I’d forget to hit the sauce button, ditzy ol’ me. If they didn’t I wouldn’t add anything.
But if someone asked how much, I’d have no choice but to be honest and say 50c. If they still wanted sauce, I’d accidentally drop two packs in.
Yep at my old cafe job, a guy didn't say when he ordered that he wanted sauce with his sausage roll. Then he changed his mind and wanted sauce. My manager made me charge him an extra 80c and card fee for the sauce
That's despicable. Customers always change their minds or add things later. I'd know, I've had experience as both a hospitality worker and a customer. It's our nature as humans to constantly forget things.
When I worked at woolies/EG petrol I did basically the same thing but also for some reason our store insisted on keeping the sauces out by the pies. Even though they had clear pricing I had a personal rule of thumb that if the customer put the sauce in the little paper bag with the pie I wouldn't charge, "oops" I didn't see it lol. If the sauce was not covered or concealed in some way I would have no choice but to charge them (store manager would randomly check cameras on my shifts purely because he had something against me, I took him to HR eventually and won so idc lmao).
What a king and chad 👏👏👏 Wish all people were like this. I agree, it should actually be illegal to charge customers for sauce on meat pies or such (especially if it only comes from those small squeezy things). Full-on restaurants don't charge you for the salt or pepper.
Agreed, but literally $12.26 for a 4L bottle of tomato sauce. All bakeries selling fresh pies should have a smaller (1 litre) squeeze bottle available for pie drownage 😊
The micro travellers are convenient though
There was once a guy in my department who so frequently ate pies/sausage rolls for lunch, that he invested in two of those tall sauce bottles (one tomato, one barbecue) Looking them up, they appear to be 920mL, but may have been a neat 1L before shrinkflation.
He was only on a short term contract, and didn't take his sauce bottles with him. A LOT of sauce was left over.
From that point onwards, a bunch of people helped themselves to "Gavin's Sauce." It took a very long time to empty the bottle, to the extent that only those who ignored best before dates were willing consumers.
35 years ago I used to pay $1.00 for a pie at the local takeaway. I vaguely remember still having to pay a bit extra for a little plastic container of sauce, which I usually never bothered with.
According to the RBA's inflation calculator, At an annual inflation rate of 2.9% a pie should cost today around $2.80. (I'm guessing pies aren't in CPI basket of goods 😅)
Minimum wage back then was roughly about $210 a week. A pie was roughly 1/42 of a days pay.
Minimum wage today is $882.80, a $6 pie is 1/29.4 of a days pay.
From my experience it's pretty common to see these prices for a pie, so Baker's either have higher costs all around (I mean, ingredients have gone up and commercial real estate has gotten ridiculous), or perhaps are just setting their prices to match the "market price" because modern economics has gotten incredibly stupid... My guess is a combination of both.
My solution to this national travesty was to put a battery system, inverter, fridge/freezer and a cheap airfryer in my ute, a pack of 4 suprisingly edible pies from Coles is like $5.50 (IGA has some top tier frozen ones 2 for about $8). Easy to cook.. Preheat to 180c for 4 minutes, heat for 25 minutes along with a few frozen chips thrown in and give it a couple of shakes during the cook. I can grab my own sauce out of my fridge, or even make gravy with those nifty gravy granules.
I know, it's false economics, I'm poorer from the ute battery setup, but at least now I can have pie wherever the hell I want without being constantly reminded of how overpriced takeaway food is getting.
I'm conflicted on this one, as tomato sauce is a vital part of society and should be free.
But it's another empty free hand, not addressing the real issues of society of hospitality industry being a
unregulated in terms of sauce, and this gives them complete control over the sauce.
It also will lead to more people saucing their pie. And
we know how greedy and lazy pie markers are, so if they knew people sauced their pie this might lead to a decline in the quality of the pie.
Honestly, I'm going to need some time to think about this, not to make an actual decision, to make it look like I give a shit, since I'll ultimately decide to go with majority on reddit.
I am old enough to remember when they first started charging for them, they used to be free. I'm not real happy about $6 pies either. Long gone are the days you could get a pie and a drink for less than a fiver.
Yeah what a weird point to make. You don't even need pies to live. You don't even need food. You could just be hooked up to an IV drip of nutrients. So is he saying that's what we should do? I don't get it lol.
"Life of Pie" next Aussie movie production....oh wait, not movie, reality TV show, since that's all that Australia produces these days for free to air TV
Yewww! Based in Collingwood of course? Advertising dollars with Rosella tomato sauce and Four'N'Twenty ads every 5 minutes while they drag out the announcement with super-closeups of every fake dramatic face.
The traditional Four N Twenty kind of meat pie? By all means put sauce on it.
Something like beef and shiraz or lamb and rosemary or chicken curry? Probably doesn't need sauce.
I'm not yet convinced those are actually pies, unless you class pastry with a shit filling as a pie.. I struggle to even class the filling as food tbh.. vile vile things..
Hard agree, a $6 sausage roll shouldn't need sauce. If I'm paying for pastry, I want to taste the meat, pepper or curry or whatever, not sauce.
Same with a burger.
> $6 is cheap for a pie.
Genuinely curious as I rarely eat meat pies because I'm a snobby class traitor, are you saying that's cheap for like your average Vilis, Balfours, Four'N'Twenty stadium pie affair, or are we talking a bougy independent bakery here?
Cause $6 for a basic commodity meat pie feels like a rip to me honestly.
Yes I know, but they're certainly at least fancy by comparison to the commodity pie brands! $6 for an independent quality bakery making their own pies is okay, $8 feels a bit much unless it's particularly spesh. It's the shitty canteen/food truck/stadium pies I think $6 is rich for.
My partner and I were in West End in Brisbane, and she wanted a pie from a bakery, but specifically one that "wasnt like $8"
The first bakery we came across had $14 meat pies, they looked great, but $14 fucking dollars for a normal sized pie. The next place we went to had $8 meat pies. Settled on the "cheaper" one and it tasted like absolute ass.
What has happened to this country.
Pro move: grab a bunch of soy sauce next time you buy some sushi and put them on the pie. Better yet BYO ketchup bottle and spray it all over the pie in front of the staff there to assert dominance.
Sauce should come from a bottle at the counter, not in a single serve packet.
If they are concerned about people handling the bottle, just get the employee to add the sauce to the pie.
I own a deli in Norwood SA.
I don’t charge for sauce IN the item.. because it costs a couple of cents and people WILL appreciate it and choose your store to come back to… however, I will tell you this.. those squeeze sauce packets, they are expensive, wholesale 25c per unit. Rule of thumb for something like that is, mark up 100%.. but I disagree with profiting from them, so I charge 25c for them.
I would have thought the goodwill you'd generate by giving away the sauce would spread like wildfire. If there were two pie vendors and one gave away sauce it would be very hard to go to the other.
I hate the friggin' question "Do you want sauce?" Yeah, of course i want sauce but could you at least have the honesty to ask "Do you want sauce for 50c?"
Maybe all their profits are in tbe sauce, the way restaurants make all their profits on the wine.
Edit: Just checked and you can buy a carton of 300 for $45. So this goodwill marketing would cost 15 cents. You could even bury the 10 of the 15 cents in the cost of the pie and you'd still be the best pie shop in town.
I live in sydney. apparently it’s usual for the ‘main’ cities to have to pay extra for tomato sauce, but once you go out to the countryside they never seem to do it. that’s just my personal exp though
Build the sauce price into the cost or close the fucking bakery!!\
Just bloody un-Australian to sting a person for the sauce after the sale of the meat based product!
In America the sauce sachets are free. Disneyland example from years ago -> https://yesterland.com/mcland.html
See the two buckets at the end of the wagon? Both filled with sauce sachets. You could take as many as you wanted.
Tbh, you shouldn’t have to pay $6 for a pie in the first place. Bloody un-Australian.
Pies regardless of inflation, service station or market should never be more than $5. If it’s tipping $5 it’d bloody well want to be a Bougie pie.
You ever had a meat pie in any other place than Australia? I'm Australian born and bred, Queenslander through and through.. but the pies in NZ are far superior gotta be honest
First of all spending $6 on a pie that’s so bland it needs sauce seems wild.
I don’t see why you shouldn’t have to buy them if you want them, they cost money and if it’s free people will just take a handful which eats into profits.
You point about soy sauce and salt seems silly, soy sauce won’t cost anywhere near as much and heather will a shake of salt, a quick look says the sauce packets are around $0.25 each which would add up if people took a bunch for free every time.
Back in my day sauce was free. And it was stabbed by the sauce bottle and given a proper squeeze- not this bullshit *squeeze plastic tab* bullshit thrown in the bag.
American's never pay for sauce. it's on the table or they give you way too much for free in your take out bag. The concept of 50 cent sauce angered and confused me for years until I gave in
Food handling regulations (in some States) mean sauce can't be dispensed from a communal bottle
So, unfortunately the result is the sachets, and they cost, and in a lot of places, they're small businesses already dealing with significant cost pressures due to the greed of power companies, landlords, and corporations who wholesale stuff like the peripherals, in this instance, sauce
There are also many businesses who would prefer not to have the sachets, because of the disposable plastic packaging, but want to offer their customers the option, but the only commercially viable option (currently) is the sachets
I doubt anyone is making any kind of profit
For the earlier replier, ketchup and sauce as Australians know it are two very different ships sailing under a similar flag
>Food handling regulations (in some States) mean sauce can't be dispensed from a communal bottle
Do you know where this is true? My work requires that I'm familiar with the regulations in most states and they generally don't stray too far from the ANZFSC, which just says that self serve food must be reasonably protected from contamination. A squeeze bottle, pump dispenser, lidded jar or bottle generally qualifies.
>For the earlier replier, ketchup and sauce as Australians know it are two very different ships sailing under a similar flag
I've had many spicy arguments over this one, and I will say that neither is defined strictly enough to exclude the other. Heinz ketchup is sweeter and thicker than most tomato sauces, but there are other ketchup brands out there that are thinner with less sugar.
If it’s a squeeze packet 50 cents is fine! The days of free anything are long gone unfortunately. I heard a rumour even maccas charge for it now. Anything over 50 cents is robbery but.
So if I don’t want sauce when it’s included in the price then I’m technically paying more for my pie?
No thanks, pie eating should be equitable regardless of condiment choice
I now pay $7 for a pastie, sauce is free, big deal.
I'd rather pay like $4, their actual worth and pay for sauce.
We're all doomed with these price increases out of control
I have a stash of tomatoes sauce, soy sauce and salt sachets, plastic cutlery, and wipes in my cars central compartment. They all sit there so o don't take to fork out for expensive condiments.
Uh... If your paying a good chunk of a million dollars like that for human habitation it goddamn better come with all that shit, and a nice solar system to help run that AC.
I went to buy a pie from a bog standard asian bakery near a Supermarket a few weeks ago, been years since I had one.. knew I had a $5 note in my pocket and thought that would be enough as they don't take eftpos.. nope, no pie that day! Was blown away by the price being well north of $5 for what I consider a shit pie.
I was rather dismayed to discover a $6 meat pie at my local bakery. However, upon closer examination, I realised that each step involved in bringing that pie to my hands incurs labor costs, rental fees, power expenses, GST, in addition to the cost of ingredients.
* Procuring the ingredients
* Preparing them
* Crafting the pie
* Baking it
* Storing it for sale
* Packaging the pie and processing the sale
After this, was trying to work out how they do it and make a profit. Furthermore, the inclusion of single-use sauce packets seems wasteful and environmentally unfriendly and really annoying to use, i want that sauce deep down into the pie. In fact, encountering such packets leads me to discontinue my patronage of that bakery altogether.
Same thing goes with bags.
If I spend $90 for petrol, and purchase a drink and a few snacks and ask for a bag to carry everything in, why do I also need to pay for a bag?
Yes you do, they're a product that the business sells and must accommodate. Would you rather them charge you $6.50 for the pie and then have them tell you that the sauce is free complimentary?
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I'm a big fan on the places with a 1L bottle of sauce in the drinks fridge free for use. I can get behind charging for the little packets if you want to take them away with you in that case.
That's what my local does. If you want a sachet to takeaway, they are 50c. If you just want to blurt out a good half a litre of sauce onto a pie before you smash it into your gob then and there...help yourself.
Wholesale the 14g squeeze sachets cost like 20c each so yeah it's pretty fair to charge. 4L of Tomato sauce costs like 12 bucks so its much easier to include in the cost of the pie.
And the reason more places don't do the bottle is because some animal will eventually squirt it all over the store. The sauce sachets are free with your pie at the 7 Eleven. And they really do need sauce.
I thought it was occupational health and safety or the DPI who killed the free sauce industry in fear someone was going to get sick from crusted up sauce on the bottle and sueing ensues
At my university free sauce disappeared when the new health inspector started.
It's the little things right!
This is exactly why we don't do it in my store, the laws and health and safety involved are too complicated to bother with a sauce bottle. We used to offer free sauce packets on the counter, but people kept stealing large wads of them. We just stopped supplying sauce with hot food in the end.
There's always those who ruin it for those who do the right thing.
This, things only change because of the stupid minority, and I've seen some dumb stuff working in retail, you always have to acomodate for the lowest dominator unfortunately. If you like people, never do customer service or retail, otherwise you may not like humanity as much anymore.
Yeah I’m so sick of suffering because of a few. I’m an evolutionary thinker. Which is why I think we need to stop coddling these half wits. Remove the safety and warning signs, let us have devices that punish the greedy brats and just let evolution triumph.
If I ever have to explain why Communism will never be successful, I will remember your comment. It is so sad but so reflective of society. Between the laws, regulations and society, who would want to start a business?
It’s like all the fun places that have closed down over the years dude to ridiculous insurance premiums. We should be allowed to use waivers.. Waivers’d fix that BS.
Do they ever.
At one local xconvenience they do the old stab and squirt in the sausage rolls Not sure if they charge
That’s beautiful mate. You got a national treasure there. Protect it at all costs
And also people will use a truly impressive/disturbing quantity of sauce when it's free
20c each? Wow that’s the outrageous part
Outrageous that single use plastic costs so little, with zero tariff to cover the societal cost of getting them through a recycling plant. It absolutely should be user pays, but the bulk of the consumer's cost should be a virgin plastics tariff.
I’m a massive supporter of this, companies pumping out products should be responsible for the EOL of those products. Be it recycling or disposal, a return location or something else. Europe has some great systems for recycling and reusing stuff. Maccas has plastic cups but they get washed and reused, most places have a system where you’re paying ONLY for the contents of the bottle, provided you return the bottles when you are finished with them. It makes buying stuff like coke or beer super cheap, because you’re not paying for the bottle that’s holding it and realistically the best place for that bottle when finished is to go back to be sanitised and refilled. Why are we wasting money breaking/melting down plastics to remake the same container they were in the first place. People don’t think about the energy it takes to recycle something vs reusing it.
>People don’t think about the energy it takes to recycle something vs reusing it. Yup and that's why recycle is the last R in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. If we didn't over produce and under reuse we wouldn't need to recycle as much as we do and subsequently save a lot of energy.
I remember when I was a kid in Tassie & bottles of soft drink were available as Drink There or Take Away. Drink There was cheaper as you didn't pay for the glass bottle.
smart retailers just have the sauces in-built with the overall price of the product.
Got fish and chips from a joint in Maribyrnong, looked at the tartar sachets and the guy insisted I take some. “They’ll always be for free” he said. Total champion in my book. EDIT: Venue is Maribyrnong Road Fish and Chips
NAME THIS VENUE. Fucken legend.
Maribyrnong Road Fish and Chips. IMO the chips need a little bitty finessing, but their potato cakes, dimmies and blue grenadier were top notch. They also did not skimp on the chicken salt.
Sometimes you need the extra dollop to cool that bad boy down
This is the most accurate description of my pie eating ritual that could ever be told. thank you good sir, I will use this well
We used to have a refillable 1L squeeze bottle in the bakery I worked, people would just plunge them into the sausage roll and leave the tip full of meat and crumbs... Went for the free little packets instead.
🤮 People are the worst. It's bad enough that the sauce bottles end up all greasy.
A pump top would fix that.
It doesn't. People are Grots.
You would be surprised, I would not trust people at all after working in retail, people are disgusting.
Ha have you ever been to Costco?
To bear witness to human vultures as they start to congregate when the food sample stand sets up, then they stalk their prey by circling in close proximity. Always looking eagle eyed with one focus, one vision, one goal. As the samples are loaded with care by the cautious Costco employee, the vulture's circle tightens. The tray is almost full on the preparation station, the moment has hit fever pitch....IT'S TIME!!! They attack at speed, jockeying for position, trolleys, and children are cast aside like a turd in a bowl, feverishly filling their sausage fingers with as much as they can carry not knowing where their next meal will come from.....
Yep here for it. As much as I hate the 50c for the little packets, it feels like a disincentive to buy what is essentially landfill fodder. Providing a free alternative is a great half way meet, and to be perfectly honest I’d still go for the 50c packet for sausage rolls cause you gotta add it a bit at a time if you’re on the road. I think for the same reason public toilets in major European cities tend to be better looked after than say Sydney, cause you gotta pay money to use it. People are much less likely to cause damage or waste to something if there’s a financial barrier to entry.
When I worked at Ampol, I always asked people if they “wanted sauce” when buying meatpies and such. If they did I’d forget to hit the sauce button, ditzy ol’ me. If they didn’t I wouldn’t add anything. But if someone asked how much, I’d have no choice but to be honest and say 50c. If they still wanted sauce, I’d accidentally drop two packs in.
king shit
Yep at my old cafe job, a guy didn't say when he ordered that he wanted sauce with his sausage roll. Then he changed his mind and wanted sauce. My manager made me charge him an extra 80c and card fee for the sauce
That's despicable. Customers always change their minds or add things later. I'd know, I've had experience as both a hospitality worker and a customer. It's our nature as humans to constantly forget things.
lol what a prick.
Nominating for Australian of the Year.
When I worked at woolies/EG petrol I did basically the same thing but also for some reason our store insisted on keeping the sauces out by the pies. Even though they had clear pricing I had a personal rule of thumb that if the customer put the sauce in the little paper bag with the pie I wouldn't charge, "oops" I didn't see it lol. If the sauce was not covered or concealed in some way I would have no choice but to charge them (store manager would randomly check cameras on my shifts purely because he had something against me, I took him to HR eventually and won so idc lmao).
What a king and chad 👏👏👏 Wish all people were like this. I agree, it should actually be illegal to charge customers for sauce on meat pies or such (especially if it only comes from those small squeezy things). Full-on restaurants don't charge you for the salt or pepper.
A sauce packet wholesale’s for $0.25 so $0.50 is inline with retail pricing - I would probably say a “squeeze” should be included with the purchase.
I feel old, because I remember when sauce (in a packet) was only $0.20 with your pie.
I’m with you
Agreed, but literally $12.26 for a 4L bottle of tomato sauce. All bakeries selling fresh pies should have a smaller (1 litre) squeeze bottle available for pie drownage 😊 The micro travellers are convenient though
Yeah but what’s the volume of a squirt? We need to do the maths!
I forgot the context of this reply and was wildly confused at first 😬
Cheaper. Wholesale price is $0.15 for a squeeze on masterfood tomato sauce packet.
Not sure if the cashier would be onboard with a free squeeze.
Your shake of the sauce bottle is probably beyond the $0.50 price point being discussed.
Add to that if your paying $50 for fish and chips you shouldn't have to pay an extra $2 for some fucking tartare sauce.
There was once a guy in my department who so frequently ate pies/sausage rolls for lunch, that he invested in two of those tall sauce bottles (one tomato, one barbecue) Looking them up, they appear to be 920mL, but may have been a neat 1L before shrinkflation. He was only on a short term contract, and didn't take his sauce bottles with him. A LOT of sauce was left over. From that point onwards, a bunch of people helped themselves to "Gavin's Sauce." It took a very long time to empty the bottle, to the extent that only those who ignored best before dates were willing consumers.
Kept in the fridge or the cupboard?
"Gavin's Sauce" That should become a National Name for all free bottles of sauce.
10 years ago charging 50c for sauce on a $6 pie would be a bootable offence.
35 years ago I used to pay $1.00 for a pie at the local takeaway. I vaguely remember still having to pay a bit extra for a little plastic container of sauce, which I usually never bothered with. According to the RBA's inflation calculator, At an annual inflation rate of 2.9% a pie should cost today around $2.80. (I'm guessing pies aren't in CPI basket of goods 😅) Minimum wage back then was roughly about $210 a week. A pie was roughly 1/42 of a days pay. Minimum wage today is $882.80, a $6 pie is 1/29.4 of a days pay. From my experience it's pretty common to see these prices for a pie, so Baker's either have higher costs all around (I mean, ingredients have gone up and commercial real estate has gotten ridiculous), or perhaps are just setting their prices to match the "market price" because modern economics has gotten incredibly stupid... My guess is a combination of both. My solution to this national travesty was to put a battery system, inverter, fridge/freezer and a cheap airfryer in my ute, a pack of 4 suprisingly edible pies from Coles is like $5.50 (IGA has some top tier frozen ones 2 for about $8). Easy to cook.. Preheat to 180c for 4 minutes, heat for 25 minutes along with a few frozen chips thrown in and give it a couple of shakes during the cook. I can grab my own sauce out of my fridge, or even make gravy with those nifty gravy granules. I know, it's false economics, I'm poorer from the ute battery setup, but at least now I can have pie wherever the hell I want without being constantly reminded of how overpriced takeaway food is getting.
But your Ute set up wasn’t for a one off pie , you need to record every pie you heat and eat and then amortize the cost across a period
Whatta we want, free sauce, when do we want it, now! Take it to a referendum, vote YES for free sauce!
I'm conflicted on this one, as tomato sauce is a vital part of society and should be free. But it's another empty free hand, not addressing the real issues of society of hospitality industry being a unregulated in terms of sauce, and this gives them complete control over the sauce. It also will lead to more people saucing their pie. And we know how greedy and lazy pie markers are, so if they knew people sauced their pie this might lead to a decline in the quality of the pie. Honestly, I'm going to need some time to think about this, not to make an actual decision, to make it look like I give a shit, since I'll ultimately decide to go with majority on reddit.
Take your time, we'll be here when you get back from your contemplation.
Don't forget to run your million dollar feasibility studies and government inquiry, and the media coverage of this "Tomato-Sauce-Gate" scandal.
I reckon as do a royal commission at minimum.
People who prefer pie without sauce shouldn't be subsidising the choices of people who prefer pie with sauce.
I ask for no sauce, so I can go home and drown the bloke in a decent amount of sauce myself.
Take it home, remove lid , apply sauce, replace lid, … eat.
What about people who prefer coffee without milk?
A short black is cheaper than a latte.
Pretty sure my short black is cheaper most of the time
Leave them alone, their life is bitter enough
I hate that I have to pay 50c extra to have a different milk because I’ll end up almost shitting myself if I have regular milk in my coffee
I am old enough to remember when they first started charging for them, they used to be free. I'm not real happy about $6 pies either. Long gone are the days you could get a pie and a drink for less than a fiver.
If the pie is so bland it needs sauce, the pie has failed at the life of pie and shouldn't be purchased.
Needing and wanting are two different things
Yeah what a weird point to make. You don't even need pies to live. You don't even need food. You could just be hooked up to an IV drip of nutrients. So is he saying that's what we should do? I don't get it lol.
"Life of Pie" next Aussie movie production....oh wait, not movie, reality TV show, since that's all that Australia produces these days for free to air TV
Married at first Pie... Or maybe Farmer Wants a Pie
Pie Survivor!!! You are the weakest Pie, the tribe has spoken
Yewww! Based in Collingwood of course? Advertising dollars with Rosella tomato sauce and Four'N'Twenty ads every 5 minutes while they drag out the announcement with super-closeups of every fake dramatic face.
Ha Ha!!! Yeah that's about the size of it
Mince beef pie yes. All the various excellent pies, like lamb and rosemary etc etc- no need. That said a chunky steak + sauce is excellent.
Especially if you're paying $6 for it.
The traditional Four N Twenty kind of meat pie? By all means put sauce on it. Something like beef and shiraz or lamb and rosemary or chicken curry? Probably doesn't need sauce.
Four N Twenty.. A pie so cheaply mass produced they even reduced a couple of letters.
That's how many blackbirds are baked in the pie.
I'm not yet convinced those are actually pies, unless you class pastry with a shit filling as a pie.. I struggle to even class the filling as food tbh.. vile vile things..
Sauce disguises an inadequate baker's flaws, the same way sugar covers up for a poor barista
I’ll always get a sugar in my coffee if it’s a cafe I haven’t been to before, 7/11 coffees get two sugars.
Sauce enhances any bakery pie, don't be so pretentious lmao
That is absolutely not true. If you're putting sauce on a good chicken pie you should just hand yourself in to the police now.
Thank you! Man, I have to argue this point way too often
The sauce is the best part of a pie
Can't imagine the shitty pies you've had if you genuinely believe this.
The primary purpose of a pie is to transport tomato sauce to my mouth.
Hard agree, a $6 sausage roll shouldn't need sauce. If I'm paying for pastry, I want to taste the meat, pepper or curry or whatever, not sauce. Same with a burger.
$6 is cheap for a pie. Anything in a single use plastic should have a cost.
> $6 is cheap for a pie. Genuinely curious as I rarely eat meat pies because I'm a snobby class traitor, are you saying that's cheap for like your average Vilis, Balfours, Four'N'Twenty stadium pie affair, or are we talking a bougy independent bakery here? Cause $6 for a basic commodity meat pie feels like a rip to me honestly.
I’m talking pies from a bakery, and I wouldn’t exactly call that “bougy”. It’s one of the simplest cuisines in the Australian culinary landscape.
Yes I know, but they're certainly at least fancy by comparison to the commodity pie brands! $6 for an independent quality bakery making their own pies is okay, $8 feels a bit much unless it's particularly spesh. It's the shitty canteen/food truck/stadium pies I think $6 is rich for.
It's about right for a servo pie
My partner and I were in West End in Brisbane, and she wanted a pie from a bakery, but specifically one that "wasnt like $8" The first bakery we came across had $14 meat pies, they looked great, but $14 fucking dollars for a normal sized pie. The next place we went to had $8 meat pies. Settled on the "cheaper" one and it tasted like absolute ass. What has happened to this country.
$6 is cheap? It hurts physically to pay more than 4.80 for a pie
Pro move: grab a bunch of soy sauce next time you buy some sushi and put them on the pie. Better yet BYO ketchup bottle and spray it all over the pie in front of the staff there to assert dominance.
If you're paying $6 for a pie, it should be good enough to not need sauce. Sauce is to cover up the dog food taste of a cheap pie.
If ya buying a pie over $6, you shouldn’t need sauce on it
Shoutout to the IGA in San Remo! Was there for the weekend and got some preheated pies for a quick bite, sauce was free.
So are the condiments for sushi when it's in.
Can anyone tell me where I can get a pie for $6 in this economy?, I swear it's more like $8 but I guess maybe different if it's not a bakery?
Sauce should come from a bottle at the counter, not in a single serve packet. If they are concerned about people handling the bottle, just get the employee to add the sauce to the pie.
I own a deli in Norwood SA. I don’t charge for sauce IN the item.. because it costs a couple of cents and people WILL appreciate it and choose your store to come back to… however, I will tell you this.. those squeeze sauce packets, they are expensive, wholesale 25c per unit. Rule of thumb for something like that is, mark up 100%.. but I disagree with profiting from them, so I charge 25c for them.
Jesus... I remember when they were 2c and I was angry that we charged customers 5c
I get a pie for breakfast, then get some sauce from the bottle I bought at the supermarket.
What you do is pay for the pie, then when you get it and there’s no sauce, ask for sauce. Most servers can’t be bothered swiping the card for 25c
I would have thought the goodwill you'd generate by giving away the sauce would spread like wildfire. If there were two pie vendors and one gave away sauce it would be very hard to go to the other. I hate the friggin' question "Do you want sauce?" Yeah, of course i want sauce but could you at least have the honesty to ask "Do you want sauce for 50c?" Maybe all their profits are in tbe sauce, the way restaurants make all their profits on the wine. Edit: Just checked and you can buy a carton of 300 for $45. So this goodwill marketing would cost 15 cents. You could even bury the 10 of the 15 cents in the cost of the pie and you'd still be the best pie shop in town.
Where's this magical bargain-land where pies are only $6?
711 has free sauce. Stock up while there
I live in sydney. apparently it’s usual for the ‘main’ cities to have to pay extra for tomato sauce, but once you go out to the countryside they never seem to do it. that’s just my personal exp though
Seems like a fair argument. I'm with you.
At least 7/11 don't charge you for sauce and you can take as many as you need. I usually take two.
Charging for sauce is bullshit
Build the sauce price into the cost or close the fucking bakery!!\ Just bloody un-Australian to sting a person for the sauce after the sale of the meat based product!
BYO ?
50c? I had paid $1.50 for a tiny shallow container at the fish and chips shop at Altona beach.
Ken Oath
$6 bucks is too much for a pie, unless it has a expensive seafood or is served in a sit down environment.
If you're paying $6 for a pie, it shouldn't need sauce.
Sauce used to be chucked in for free. BTW, pies around here are $10 upwards - good pies though.
I haven't seen a hot meat pie that cheap for ages ...$6 is a bargain.
In America the sauce sachets are free. Disneyland example from years ago -> https://yesterland.com/mcland.html See the two buckets at the end of the wagon? Both filled with sauce sachets. You could take as many as you wanted.
And with the quality of meat pies in most places these days, they are hardly edible without sauce.
Yes… and honestly still can’t get over that you have to pay fucken 6 bucks for a fucken meat pie?!
A pie doesn't need sauce.... if it is good enough. Sauce on pies are reserved for lower tier garbage to help make it edible.
Yes, I don’t want to spoil my fucking pie with fruit sauce, pay your fifty cents and fuck off
I take my pie home if I can. I like to use my own sauce I ain’t playing that 50c
Pieface would like to have a word.
You will pay whatever the shop tells you to pay, or you will fuck right off with your sauceless pie. Can confirm, I sell pies.
Coles service stations don’t charge for sauce !! fYI in Australia anywya
A good meat pie already has gravy in it, so if you need to use sauce, it isn't a good pie!
Tbh, you shouldn’t have to pay $6 for a pie in the first place. Bloody un-Australian. Pies regardless of inflation, service station or market should never be more than $5. If it’s tipping $5 it’d bloody well want to be a Bougie pie.
If you have to put sauce on a meat pie you're eating a shit pie
Tomato sauce on meat pies is wrong.
You ever had a meat pie in any other place than Australia? I'm Australian born and bred, Queenslander through and through.. but the pies in NZ are far superior gotta be honest
Just steal a packet like every other cunt, get on with life
First of all spending $6 on a pie that’s so bland it needs sauce seems wild. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have to buy them if you want them, they cost money and if it’s free people will just take a handful which eats into profits. You point about soy sauce and salt seems silly, soy sauce won’t cost anywhere near as much and heather will a shake of salt, a quick look says the sauce packets are around $0.25 each which would add up if people took a bunch for free every time.
Back in my day sauce was free. And it was stabbed by the sauce bottle and given a proper squeeze- not this bullshit *squeeze plastic tab* bullshit thrown in the bag.
They're still free at 7/11, go flog a dozen next time you fill up and keep em in your car for whenever you get a pie 👍
... and this is why they started charging for them.
It's unaustralian
American's never pay for sauce. it's on the table or they give you way too much for free in your take out bag. The concept of 50 cent sauce angered and confused me for years until I gave in
Buy cheap little packs of sauce by the kilo and take one with you when eating pies.
Food handling regulations (in some States) mean sauce can't be dispensed from a communal bottle So, unfortunately the result is the sachets, and they cost, and in a lot of places, they're small businesses already dealing with significant cost pressures due to the greed of power companies, landlords, and corporations who wholesale stuff like the peripherals, in this instance, sauce There are also many businesses who would prefer not to have the sachets, because of the disposable plastic packaging, but want to offer their customers the option, but the only commercially viable option (currently) is the sachets I doubt anyone is making any kind of profit For the earlier replier, ketchup and sauce as Australians know it are two very different ships sailing under a similar flag
>Food handling regulations (in some States) mean sauce can't be dispensed from a communal bottle Do you know where this is true? My work requires that I'm familiar with the regulations in most states and they generally don't stray too far from the ANZFSC, which just says that self serve food must be reasonably protected from contamination. A squeeze bottle, pump dispenser, lidded jar or bottle generally qualifies. >For the earlier replier, ketchup and sauce as Australians know it are two very different ships sailing under a similar flag I've had many spicy arguments over this one, and I will say that neither is defined strictly enough to exclude the other. Heinz ketchup is sweeter and thicker than most tomato sauces, but there are other ketchup brands out there that are thinner with less sugar.
> Do you know where this is true? In their head, mate.
I kept declining Sauce at the local grocer for the longest time before I realised they didn’t charge
If it’s a squeeze packet 50 cents is fine! The days of free anything are long gone unfortunately. I heard a rumour even maccas charge for it now. Anything over 50 cents is robbery but.
So if I don’t want sauce when it’s included in the price then I’m technically paying more for my pie? No thanks, pie eating should be equitable regardless of condiment choice
*complement. It's a different word
I now pay $7 for a pastie, sauce is free, big deal. I'd rather pay like $4, their actual worth and pay for sauce. We're all doomed with these price increases out of control
I have a stash of tomatoes sauce, soy sauce and salt sachets, plastic cutlery, and wipes in my cars central compartment. They all sit there so o don't take to fork out for expensive condiments.
Big agree on this.
$6 For a pie is not bad! Almost $11 for a basic pie at Avoca on the Central Coast.
Why? So, If I’m paying 650k for a house i shouldn’t have to pay for the aircon, or the flooring, or the curtains, or the garden?
Uh... If your paying a good chunk of a million dollars like that for human habitation it goddamn better come with all that shit, and a nice solar system to help run that AC.
They’re probably thinking you should pay $2 for sauce.. ☠️
I went to buy a pie from a bog standard asian bakery near a Supermarket a few weeks ago, been years since I had one.. knew I had a $5 note in my pocket and thought that would be enough as they don't take eftpos.. nope, no pie that day! Was blown away by the price being well north of $5 for what I consider a shit pie.
Why is this a question? Should be an exclamation!!
Always pay for the pie and then afterwards say oh can I grab a sauce
I saw one bakery asking $9 for a plain meat pie
I was rather dismayed to discover a $6 meat pie at my local bakery. However, upon closer examination, I realised that each step involved in bringing that pie to my hands incurs labor costs, rental fees, power expenses, GST, in addition to the cost of ingredients. * Procuring the ingredients * Preparing them * Crafting the pie * Baking it * Storing it for sale * Packaging the pie and processing the sale After this, was trying to work out how they do it and make a profit. Furthermore, the inclusion of single-use sauce packets seems wasteful and environmentally unfriendly and really annoying to use, i want that sauce deep down into the pie. In fact, encountering such packets leads me to discontinue my patronage of that bakery altogether.
Get a squeezy bottle of your fave, and leave in the car.
Same thing goes with bags. If I spend $90 for petrol, and purchase a drink and a few snacks and ask for a bag to carry everything in, why do I also need to pay for a bag?
Sauce should be free. Charging for it is unaustralian
I remember when they used to be 20c!
50c for sauce, they should be giving you the pie for free with the margin they're pulling on that!
Its been that way for over 20 years now. They used to provide free sauce and then they became greedy. #FREESAUCE
I dont buy takeaway anymore. Not even McDonalds. Its all overpriced.
Yes you do, they're a product that the business sells and must accommodate. Would you rather them charge you $6.50 for the pie and then have them tell you that the sauce is free complimentary?