In the late 1980s, when I traveled a lot for work, I thought of airports as similar to the debtors' prisons depicted by Dickens: it was unpleasant, it was sort of your fault you were there, and you could purchase comforts, but at inordinate prices.
It’s just basic supply and demand. Travelers are already exhausted from travel so they are willing to pay high prices for small comforts. Also, some travelers are business travelers and their company foots the bill.
If all travelers collectively stopped buying these foods, the price would drop. But people keep buying them, understandably.
If you read the article (you should) you'll note that the shops with the concession do not have the freedom to arbitrarily set such high prices (which would make it that simple), and that the Port Authority who is supposed to ensure that prices adhere to the set guidelines, is apparently not doing its job and is withholding documents that can proof this despite these documents generally being considered open information for citizens to request.
The issue discussed in the article is that the NY Port Authority has regulations to clamp the prices of these items to comparable items in NYC (based on the average of the 3 lowest cost comparables), and they are not being transparent on which comparable items (if any) they are comparing to.
So no, it is not just a simple issue of supply and demand, it is an issue of lack of governmental transparency.
The article mentions that according to the Port Authority rules, vendors can't charge more than 10% of the street price of the equivalent products. So no, you can't charge whatever you want just based on supply and demand.
The article is trying to understand how they determine the base price.
The handful of international business class lounges in the US that I've visited were comparatively quite stingy/basic with food items (compared to typical counterparts in e.g. Europe or Asia).
Anyone got a recommendation for a JFK lounge that's a good deal when you're paying for access?
The addition of restaurants to Priority Pass has been an especially nice addition here. After deductions (and plus tip) you can often get a nice sit-down meal for the price of plastic-wrapped garbage elsewhere in the airport.
Lounges have jacked up pricing as well. Used to be a $25 add-on to a ticket... well worth it when traveling internationally. Recently I've seen $49 or $59 for entry. If you're willing to drop that coin, you can eat pretty well at airport restaurants.
> Why Does a Plastic-Wrapped Turkey Sandwich Cost $15 at the Airport?
Despite the "port authority" rules on 'street pricing', the real reason is lack of competition.
A single vendor receives the food contract for the airport, and they now have monopoly positioning and a captive audience. When business X is the only seller, and when the customers are held captive and unable to "go elsewhere" [1] then prices will naturally rise to the maximum the captive audience is willing to pay.
[1] How many air travelers are willing to exit the security perimeter, to then need to take a cab to somewhere (most airports are not located near dense shopping/restaurant areas) to purchase food, to then have to go back through security to return to their flight? And what few even have enough time between flight legs to even consider that "go outside the airport for food" trip as even possible? Plus by the time the "cab fee" is factored in, even if they could find the identical sandwich for 5.50 on the outside, the $10 + tip or more cab fee there and back would make the sandwich $15 or more in the end anyway.
> even if they could find the identical sandwich for 5.50 on the outside, the $10 + tip or more cab fee there and back would make the sandwich $15 or more in the end anyway
And there you have it, a perfect description of value. The sandwich costs $15 at the airport, because at the airport it’s worth $15. It may be worth less elsewhere, but that’s its value there.
They’re not selling a sandwich, they’re selling a sandwich you can have between flights.
This doesn't account for all the people who simply don't buy the $15 sandwich, because they planned in advance and ate at home. Nor does it account for the people who decide that a $15 beer is a better value at the airport than a $15 sandwich. The value being measured is the markup, not the full price in isolation.
You can technically bring an empty bottle of water or container and fill it up inside of the airport.
Your options would typically be a water fountain, bathroom sink or asking a bar tender to fill it up. Typically if you go the bar tender route you may end up tipping them so you don't escape some cost there.
I've also heard you can bring a frozen water bottle. The idea there is if it were a dangerous liquid then it wouldn't freeze so you're allowed to bring it. The hard part would be ensuring it stays fully frozen while waiting on line.
Given that staple food likely has fairly low elasticity of demand and food sellers in airports likely have extensive market power, I wouldn’t really make any conclusions about “value.” If sellers increase the price from $10 to $15 and the quantity of sandwiches demanded doesn’t decrease much at all, that’s a pretty good indicator that “value” to the buyer didn’t increase much. If the sellers’ economic profits went up about the same proportion as the price did, that’s another dead giveaway.
Food delivered to the airport, lol. Where would the delivery person park? Why would any driver subject themselves to the traffic snarls of an airport, even if you were to meet them outside? No matter how you justify it, having individual drivers deliver individual orders to an airport would cost far more than even the monopolistic, jacked-up airport food. Honestly, just the idea "food to be delivered"... like seriously, dude, the world isn't here to deliver shit right into your lap.
The value is no higher at the airport than anywhere else. The difference is who is able to capture the surplus value.
At the airport, the vendor captures most of the surplus value due to their monopoly. Elsewhere, the consumer captures a lot of the surplus value due to robust competition between different vendors.
That’s stretching the definition of value a bit. Value is certainly situational - you wouldn’t say that someone selling the last parachute on a plane that’s falling is « capturing the true value of the parachute » - or someone selling a bottle of water to someone dying of dehydration in the desert is capturing the true value of the water
I believe I'm using value[1] in the standard economic way as "measure of the benefit provided by a good or service to an economic agent" often framed as "what is the maximum amount of money a specific actor is willing and able to pay for the good or service?".
It's not the same as market price or market value. Market price is what you actually pay, value is the maximum you would hypothetically pay. The difference between the two is the "consumer surplus"[2].
It is situational, but I don't think it varies much in this scenario. You aren't any hungrier inside the airport than you are outside. If food was equally scarce in both locations, you would pay the same amount.
The value is the same in both locations, but the price is higher in the airport. That means consumer surplus is higher outside the airport. The cost to the producer is also roughly the same, so the producer surplus is higher in the airport. The producer has used their monopoly position to take a larger portion of the economic surplus inside the airport.
> but I don't think it varies much in this scenario. You aren't any hungrier inside the airport than you are outside.
I think the poster was claiming that in fact the value is not the same. You aren't hungrier, but you are typically more tired, more rushed, and focused on bigger problems than what to eat for lunch, etc. It's a reasonable argument. That doesn't mean it's thing going on.
My god the fact that people here argue for the LTV is sad.
Literally every bit of theoretical marxism, including the Labor Theory of Value, the "absolute general law of capital accumulation", the "tendency for the rate of profit to fall", and the entire set of predictions around "dialectical materialism" are all debunked by more than a hundred years of history. Can we drop it now, or do we have to be enamored by his fashionable nonsense for another hundred years?
More like a hundred years of obvious capitalist propaganda. Marxist theory is taught in normal economics courses in China, a country projected to be the largest economy by the end of this decade, largest economy by GDP PPP, largest number of people who escaped poverty in the last x decades, etc etc. Argue it's because of capitalism sure but LTV or Marxist theory are not "debunked" lol.
What is taught in school and what people learn are often vastly different, in any culture.
In Shenzhen every single person seemed to be running a business, and it felt like one of the most truly capitalist places I have ever been. In New Zealand people are dependent on their government, and few people try to run their own business. You don’t need to risk much in New Zealand, so most people don’t.
Consumer Surplus and Surplus Value have their similarities. Flaming someone for using some words that appear to trigger you is unproductive. Maybe give them the benefit of the doubt, especially since their last sentence seems to argue for capitalism.
That’s a very pro-capitalist way of saying you don’t really care about free markets. If the airport authority allowed competition and/or if they only granted exclusivity tied to reasonable pricing, then this issue wouldn’t exist.
I’ve never seen a sandwich store sell sandwiches (talking normal sized sandwich not whatever small bite size they sell as “regular size” with shrinkflation) for less than 12-15 bucks in big cities.
One thing I love about France is that they have a pretty good supermarket-store ready-to-eat sandwich culture as the inexpensive on-the-go meal option. At a US 7-11, you never know if the sandwich might be a week old or not.
I also checked Jersey Mike’s, another familiar chain, and a regular size “original Italian” is $9.95 here.
I will say that generally Texas tends to have lower prices on food than coastal metros like NYC/SF/LA, but the airport prices mentioned in the article for NYC still seem absurd.
Is Austin still worth moving to from CA or has it gotten a lot more expensive? I’ve only spent a couple days in Austin many years ago, so I don’t know much.
Depends from where in CA. Austin cost of living is not very low anymore. It's not San Francisco stupid levels, but I didn't feel a lot of difference between San Diego and Austin in the last couple of years.
Texas makes up for not having income tax by having big property taxes. So, you may make out on that exchange depending upon what your family situation is. If you're earning are closer to median, California is probably better than Texas. If you're a high earner, Texas is probably better because California is biting you via income tax.
However, if you're coming to Texas, make damn sure your healthcare situation is sorted out. California is good about healthcare--the exchanges are decent and you can by healthcare retail for the price advertised on the exchange. This shocked me at one point as it meant that a friend could completely bypass the exchanges for healthcare and just buy it. Yeah, you wouldn't get reimbursement like the exchanges, but you could just whip out a credit card and purchase it retail.
Texas, on the other hand, is terrible at healthcare. The Republicans have sabotaged most things from the Federal government. Most of the hospital chains are mediocre and below, and many publicly available health plans are ferociously bad.
Housing in Austin metro has gone up in recent years but it is still 1/3 the price of a home in the Bay Area or San Diego.
Property taxes are proportionately higher than in California but lower on an absolute basis for a similar property due to the large difference in purchase prices.
No state income taxes means most people with decent incomes will come out ahead in Texas.
What the sister comment says about healthcare in Texas is true, unfortunately. Most healthcare providers are private equity backed and treat healthcare as an assembly line. It is difficult to find providers who prioritize quality care over checking boxes.
As for publicly available plans I don’t have personal experience, but I don’t doubt the sister comment’s claims. Best have a good job with a quality healthcare plan.
Can we all just take a minute to realize how we now normalize a 10 dollar sandwich made with less than a dollar's worth of ingredients?
7-11 is the worst offender I've seen. Cheap sandwiches or salads for $8+. $3+ for a 20oz soda. No prices listed on anything. Or if they are it's only when you buy two or more.
Wait, what? The product (or its shelf, whatever) isn't labeled with the price? Is that common in the US or is it a 7/11 thing? I guess it's communism to make displaying the price a legal requirement. Competition will sort it out...
7-11 shelves have price labels, except for when the employees at that shop are too lazy to put those labels up, which is fairly often in my experience. The franchised 7-11s seem to be better at it, the 7-11s owned by corporate are a shitshow because many of the employees don't care and there's no owner around to make them care.
I don't know about not listing prices (that seems shady), but surely you realize that the cost of the ingredients have very little bearing on the final price of the product? Unless you assume that running a 7-11 or any other store or restaurant that might sell food has zero overhead, with no rent, utilities, taxes, or employees to pay.
In a further note, profit has got to be one of the most misunderstood things in economics. Every endeavor of human commerce has to involve profit for at least one party, otherwise the transaction would not occur at all. If you can put together a sandwich for $1 in ingredients and, say, $4 in your time and labor, why would you sell it for less than $5 plus some profit? At exactly $5 you may as well not engage in this business at all, since you've effectively gained nothing.
It's because the sandwiches are made in a central location and distributed. You're paying for the convenience of not having a sandwich made at point of sale.
This is just false. Even forgetting about all of the overhead of making sandwiches, it's more than just a dollar's worth of ingredients. The skimpiest sandwich will probably have more than 2 ounces of meat, more like 3 or 4 ounces. The cheapest turkey from the supermarket is about $0.50 per ounce. So that's more than a dollar right there.
> I’ve never seen a sandwich store sell sandwiches (talking normal sized sandwich not whatever small bite size they sell as “regular size” with shrinkflation) for less than 12-15 bucks in big cities.
I guess it depends on how posh you want your sandwich.
You really have to try to get a Subway (the chain) sandwich that expensive. Same with a burrito from Chipotle, although that may be heretical[1].
Jesus christ, what cities are you in? Like come the fuck on. Here in San Diego overpriced sandwiches are $6-$10 at the local 7-11, and that is still way too much.
The only reason I could think of not to reveal would be the fear of collusion. If they know the comparison stores are Alice’s Deli and Bob's Bodega, they could either collude with those owners to raise prices on select items or simply go and look at prices and only offer copies of the most marked up items in those stores (which could be as simple as loading the sandwich with cheap toppings that would be extra at the comparison shops).
Any sane policy would rotate data points. How many sandwich shops are there in NYC, hundreds? Thousands even? How often do they shut down, open, change owners...? Burning a couple every year is not an issue.
Why award the contract for the entire airport to a single company though. My local Spanish airport has a bunch of different options. It's way cheaper, while definitely more expensive than outside the airport. The only price control enforced is on bottled water which can't cost more than 1 EUR.
What's really fun is when you have a ton of apparently completely different stores at an airport and then you realize they're all just fronts for the same company.
Part of the answer is that people going through airports are often buying expense account ones, and they're quite price flexible.
If you're the contract negotiator, finding a single company that won't complain about the kickbacks you ask for is easier than finding a bunch of them, right? And what's the point of working for the Port Authority if you're not going to be corrupt? This is the agency that snarled traffic in the town of a mayor that wouldn't endorse a candidate of the opposite political party, mostly just for the lulz. Predictably, the structure of the Port Authority ensures that nobody can ever be held accountable, and indeed, nobody was.
(If you didn't follow Bridgegate when it was happening, strap in for the most petty government overreach you've ever read about. I've read this article a number of times and honestly, you start reading and you can't look away. It's so good! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal)
Not quite. One of Christie's appointed directors at the port authority closed the bridge. Later the port authority decided to reverse it's own decision.
The intro blurb skips the appointed director and attributes the closing of the bridge directly to Christie, but Christie acted through a crony at the Port Authority, as can be read further in the Wikipedia article.
I think this sums it up best. Airports charge more for food because, well, they can. Travelers or a captive market, and have no other choice. I'm old enough to remember when people thought you couldn't bring food through security.
But the contract itself is also sold by a monopolist. The sandwiches have to pay for rent somehow.
In the end you can extract X amount of money from all the passengers and that gets split between the landlord and the vendor.
So it's not just that the vendor has a monopoly, if they didn't have a monopoly there would still be some amount they'd pay in rent for the captive audience.
It taxes regular people differently than taxing them directly. VAT rates on food tend to be regressive. Taxing company profits has little effect on prices.
It works in the sense that some people feel better about paying higher taxes if they pay them by paying higher prices to corporations that then pay the tax.
And other people feel better about raising taxes on people if they do so by raising taxes on corporations that then raise prices on people.
There are some taxes that are actually designed to work that way - the most common instance being "sin" taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis as a way to reduce demand on those items by making them much more expensive.
>Despite the "port authority" rules on 'street pricing', the real reason is lack of competition.
I guess that the lack of competition isn't the only answer, in many cases there are many restaurants/stores in an airport and all of them are very expensive.
The price of the rent in the airport also has to be taken in account. In many airports the restaurants pay outrageous rent values that won't allow them to sell cheap food.
It's my understanding that in most cases, the many restaurants/stores aren't actually separate and in meaningful competition with one another. I have often seen airports with the same packaged food for sale at every store. I'm pretty sure they're in effect many faces of the same business.
> in many cases there are many restaurants/stores in an airport
If you lift the peel off, many times they're still operated by the one contractor that has a contract for the whole airport. Even restaurants that typically don't franchise will still run operations under a franchise arrangement in airports. E.g. The Starbucks employees at an airport will be employed by HMS Host (a common airport food concession contractor).
Another captive element is alcohol. Many places only allow licensed establishments to sell it (ie: bars/restaurants), so no competition from the convenience store type concessions. And may be forbidden to consume alcohol outside licensed establishments so can't just buy a beer if convenience stores were legally allowed to sell it so they don't.
(Can recall good times at Amsterdam Schiphol where you could buy a beer for a not-too-insane markup from the convenience store and consume wherever, while in Philadelphia, you were paying like $10+ for one to consume wherever, ugh).
Is the Port Authority also the landlord as well? If so, that means that the Port Authority has the incentive to find the highest 'street pricing' so that the store has the margin to pay higher rent.
> Despite the "port authority" rules on 'street pricing', the real reason is lack of competition.
The real reason is greed. Competitors can work together to fix prices and they usually do. The reason again is greed.
Competition lowering prices only works when the barrier of entry to the market is very low and it's possible for many actors to compete. For SaaS businesses, where competition can virtually scale infinitely, that's true. Not at all for airports, where competition can only be very limited due to material constraints.
How many air travelers are willing to exit the security perimeter, to then need to take a cab to somewhere…
It doesn’t need to be anywhere near that extreme. Lots of people pay exorbitant prices for food at movie theatres and those facilities tend to be in commercial high traffic areas with tons of food service options such as malls, downtown streets, etc.
It’s really not hard at all to grab a bite before going into the theatre yet people still end up buying the ripoff theatre food!
People like the distinct food offerings that movie theaters have and are willing to pay more because it's part of the experience. Not true at all with airports.
The only thing distinctive is the popcorn. Everything else is candy you could buy at any grocery/convenience store or fountain soft drinks and mediocre burgers/hotdogs that can be beaten by any fast food joint or street vendor.
And most theatres don't even give you real butter on the popcorn anymore. It's now this "artificial butter sauce" junk.
The candy offering is absolutely distinct. You can find some of it at standard stores, but not all of it, and not necessarily next to a theater. The popcorn is of course an iconic part of the experience. And if you want your Twizzlers and popcorn, why not just buy the $6 soda to make life simple?
But all that aside, the process of going to the theater and standing in line and getting your overpriced junk food does add to the experience for many people, even if just due to nostalgia. Waiting in line to buy an overpriced sandwich at the airport is not an experience many people crave or are nostalgic for.
EDIT: I don't know what to tell you all. The specific set of junk food at movie theaters in the US is a culturally significant phenomenon. Like most cultural phenomena, it is not universal, but it is universally known (or close to it by anyone who grew up in the US). And for some people, sneaking food into theaters, in response to those high prices, is a culturally meaningful experience! The point being, food and theaters have a cultural history that is meaningful and nostalgic for many Americans. Not so with airports - where hungry people buy shitty food at outrageous prices because they have no choice.
$6 soda? That was the price 15 years ago. Now they're at least $10. I've seen popcorn, soda, and candy combos go for over $20 now. You can count on spending $100 to go to the movies with a family of 3 (2 parents and a child), including tickets and one of those combos for each person.
Why is popcorn "an iconic part of the experience?"
Of course it isn't. You're not going to enjoy a movie more just because you're shovelling puffy sweetened carbs into your face - unless you've been Pavlov'd into it.
Airport food is different, because there's a good chance some of the people who buy it genuinely need to eat.
Popcorn is "an iconic part of the experience" because the theaters have been pushing it for nearly a century.
The theaters don't make their money showing new movies (most of that goes to the studio) - they make most of their money on high margin concessions, mostly popcorn and soda.
Well, when it comes to justifying choices people can pretty much justify anything. For airport it can be simply said the kind of people who travel so much and often have to eat at airport a 15 dollar sandwich is very very low in term of consideration. Further frequent travelers usually pay through expense accounts.
And for infrequent traveler like me, I had no problem in eating airline food when I am coming home from long distance travel or eating outside after leaving airport when there is no food served in plane. If am starting from home its not too much of hassle to wrap a few rolls or sandwiches to carry.
Now for concession food to have authentic movies experience looks more of what marketers would say. I think besides streaming another reason cinema theater attendance is slimming is outrageous price of that authentic experience for large majority of people.
>The popcorn is of course an iconic part of the experience.
I've long had the "conspiracy theory" that they promote popcorn as part of the authentic part of the experience because it's an item that's most difficult to smuggle in -- with the butter, you'd have to pack it down tight, which would ruin it, and yet it's cheap to make at the theater. Plus they can afford to spend more on a machine than the average person would.
There is no conspiracy - theaters will just straight up admit that the prices of soda, popcorn, and candy are what they are because they make (at best) pennies on each ticket sold and make up for that by making a high margin on concessions.
I didn't say otherwise. My theory is just that some foods are more vs less conducive to policing, and theaters benefit from a strong preference for one particularly easily-policed food. That goes beyond the general economic logic of concessions markets that you repeated here.
The really silly thing is that unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane. The US has plugged this loophole, at least to a certain extent, by seizing your food even if you just have a stopover between two other countries. (They took my banana in NYC on a flight from Paris to Vancouver and I'm still bitter about it.)
Fresh fruit is usually subject to customs restrictions for international travel due to concerns about agricultural pests, I don’t think this particular case was collusion with the airport vendors (but these days you never know).
Yeah, I know that, but the import restrictions for Canada should apply, and they're different from the ones in the US. (I'm not trying to imply collusion so much as overreach.)
No, this isn't malice. There's plenty of stuff you could legally bring. Fresh fruit is decided not permitted, though--while the odds of a pest coming along are low the consequences can be severe. We don't permit food to come in that might be carrying pests that are not endemic to the US. Australia is more isolated and thus even more strict because there are more things they want to keep out.
I was walking between two planes in the US, one coming from a foreign country and the other leaving for one, without leaving the building. The only way I could have let the banana loose to destroy New York would have been to run outside and huck it over a fence.
I haven't spent too much time in New York, but I don't think there are a lot of commercial banana growing operations there that could be affected. The real reason is they can't be bothered to track who's going where, but what they can do is seize your stuff, so that's what they do.
American airports generally don't have international-to-international airside transfers. In order to take the connecting flight, you must first pass though immigration and enter the US. You were planning to take the flight to Vancouver, but at that point, you could have chosen to visit the US instead.
There's really no way to do it. The basic issue is that the US has no outgoing immigration control. I have walked from an international departure gate to open air and encountered no obstacles of any kind in the process, although I did pass through a one-way spot. (And the reason for this was pretty trivial--major delay, I preferred the food options elsewhere in the airport.)
How do you have airside transfer when there are no barriers to leaving airside?
yes, I'm not sure the logistics but it's definitely done in other places.
Certainly in Australia if you are travelling international you go through outbound immigration control. I'm not sure what happens if you need to get out again for some reason after you "exit" the country. I assume you have to "re-enter" the country by circling through inbound immigration. Perhaps having no land borders makes outbound immigration control more reasonable.
It does seem like the cost of adding some secure departure lounges might be less than circling huge numbers of passengers through unnecessary immigration procedures, security lines, etc
> unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane
You can do that at a movie theater too. At least, I did it back when I was poor. Well, not with a sandwich, but I got some M&Ms and a drink at a nearby supermarket to take into the theater, because that saves a lot of money.
But perhaps you did that in contravention of the theater policies; most theaters, if they have a concession counter, will prohibit people from bringing in outside food, but they don't search your bags or anything. In fact, one theater around here disallows bags entirely.
There is also the question of health code regulations. I know that in any restaurant which is inspected by County health inspectors, outside food is prohibited. So if you make a sandwich and you bring it into a McDonald's and you order a Coke and fries to go with your turkey sandwich, you will probably get kicked out. The main reason is because if something were to happen medically, whose food is to blame? Is it the food you prepared at home and brought into the restaurant? Even worse if you shared it to people who didn't know it wasn't prepared at the restaurant. The restaurant could potentially be liable for medical costs of people who got food poisoning, and their license to prepare food could be jeopardized.
Now, having said all that, this is not the case in airports or on airlines. They all allow you to bring in food you prepared at home, because an airport is not a "restaurant" with one kitchen where food is prepared. Aboard an aircraft, you could also eat your home-prepped turkey and Swiss sandwich instead of a delicious, hot, in-flight Kosher meal. If you get sick, well you get sick. I don't know if airlines can be liable for food poisoning, but they sure are cautious about peanut allergies these days.
Yeah, but a restaurant is specifically for food, so it makes sense that they would kick you out for bringing your own, but a movie theater is not a restaurant, like an airport or plane. I pay for the seat in the theater, and I'm not interested in their food.
They may have a policy against bringing your own food, but I don't think it's a reasonable policy and I don't see any reason to obey it if you don't want to and they don't enforce it.
If you want to make more money from the movie goers, just charge an extra buck for the ticket.
>The really silly thing is that unlike at a movie theater, you can make yourself the same sandwich for $1.50 and bring it with you to the plane. The US has plugged this loophole, at least to a certain extent, by seizing your food even if you just have a stopover between two other countries. (They took my banana in NYC on a flight from Paris to Vancouver and I'm still bitter about it.)
Whether it's silly or not, this isn't some new thing to boost revenue at airports. The US has long prohibited the "importation" of food items through airports. In fact, that was a key theme to the 1971 film, La Mortadella[0].
I'm not saying it's a good policy (I even "smuggled" some wonderful Dutch gouda into JFK myself a few years back), nor am I saying it makes sense in this day an age, but it (IIUC) has nothing to do with trying to make you pay more for food at the airport.
Last I checked, cheese was allowed in vacuum-sealed packaging. Meat, fruit and vegetables are what's not allowed. Those you just have to eat before you go through customs after arriving in the US.
>Last I checked, cheese was allowed in vacuum-sealed packaging. Meat, fruit and vegetables are what's not allowed. Those you just have to eat before you go through customs after arriving in the US.
A good point. However, this wasn't vacuum sealed, just the standard wax around the ball of cheese wrapped in paper.
And I wouldn't have been all that excited to wolf down 2+ kg of cheese at the airport.
My wife was apprehended in a Mexican airport by a beagle regarding a banana in her bag.
Did you know that the bananas we have today are different from the ones we had 50 years ago? The standard banana back then was wiped out by a fungal disease. Today’s bananas are all one variety of GMO, and resistant to such fungus.
I believe you when you say there is a lack of competition, but it seems like the system is set up to prevent that from being consequential: as I understand it, the price should be set as a function of the prices of competitors outside the airport, per the Port Authority's own pricing rules.
So, lack of competition inside the airport would not by itself be able to explain this pricing.
Corruption or incompetence within the Port Authority would explain it, and though I will withhold judgment, it's hard to think of what else it might be. It's even easier to jump to that conclusion when they also deny and conceal when asked for an explanation.
>as I understand it, the price should be set as a function of the prices of competitors outside the airport, per the Port Authority's own pricing rules.
That sort of regulation is never very effective. The VA requires that vendors that sell them medical devices do not sell those devices at a higher price elsewhere. They end up buying a lot of SKUs that are only sold to the VA.
I am not sure why do you think it is a single vendor. JFK has 50+ shops in just the "Grab and Go" category. [1] I've been to a plenty of airports that have a lot of different vendors of overpriced crappy food.
It is not the competition. It is about extracting maximum of what the customer could pay. Same reason beer is expensive at the event venues. The second part of your comment explains it perfectly.
> JFK Airport is owned by the City of New York and is managed and operated by the Port Authority which got the lease from New York City in 1947 to build an airport in Queens borough to serve the large NYC Metropolitan area
In some airports Clear with precheck raises the chances you’ll be directed into more favorable screening lanes where TSA are more relaxed, due to it being used exclusively by prechecks or crew.
Sometimes with just precheck you’ll still get into general use lanes with annoying requests such as removing laptops from bags, no matter if you are precheck or not. This is because there is no Clear employee who can ensure you only end up in the best lane.
Regardless, my airport experiences after subscribing to Clear have always been far better than simply only having precheck alone, especially if you’re the type who likes to arrive late to a flight to minimize waiting at the terminal. Really does feel like a pre-9/11 world.
> In some airports Clear with precheck raises the chances you’ll be directed into more favorable screening lanes where TSA are more relaxed, due to it being used exclusively by prechecks or crew.
Clear itself isn't giving you access to Precheck, though. You are only allowed in the Precheck lane if you have Precheck.
As I said above, the only thing Clear is doing (and claiming it does) is verify your identity so TSA doesn't have to. What lane you get sorted into is entirely based on what's available (ie. if the Clear lane you used feeds into Precheck or just regular screening) and whether you have Precheck or not. You can't get into Precheck using just clear and you'll be turned away if you don't have the Precheck status on your boarding pass. I have seen it happen at SeaTac.
Sure, and if you pay for general aviation, you can have an actual good experience flying.
Paying the fees for TSA pre-check or Clear to opt out of unnecessary screening feels like paying the mafia to opt out of unnecessary physical injury and property damage.
You can either live your life angry that you had to pay for better treatment, or angry that you didn’t get better treatment for free, but only one of those options is more comfortable than the other.
Or you can be angry at an exploitative situation and try to change it for the better, rather than just resigning yourself to expect better treatment that is not conditional on price gouging.
Rest assured I have utmost respect for those fighting tyranny. I always take a moment to admire their patience as I pass by them on my way to the front of the line.
No they don't, IME. Pack all your food in one bag in one compartment of your luggage. IME, TSA don't care unless they think it has liquid content. Keep your water bottle separate and empty.
Things you can't get through security check ('liquids'): yoghurts, the salad dressing on a salad. Doubtful about hummus.
On international flights: some fresh fruit (e.g. apples, US CBP), and some dried fruits and nuts, depends on country, see guidelines.
Useful tip: buy trail mix in bulk and repack in a small ziplock food bag in your luggage.
this is plain gougeing being hidden by a veil of we cant tell you why because we are obeying the law.
this is becoming a plague, for a further recent example, i cant ask an alexa instance what it just said, it will quote HIPAA as a reason to deny the command
Their argument that they don't want to disclose the names of individual vendors is flawed but somewhat logical. I've seen redactions, for example, on the breakdown of a town's tax revenue by industry when there was only one small business working in a specific industry.
Disclosing the price charged for a sandwich seems far less sensitive however. My hunch is there is likely no record of the comparison sandwiches, and I hope the author of this article appeals their records request to find out if that's true or not.
But they don’t have a monopoly and that’s not normal Manhattan pricing. As the article mentions, you can go down the street to Panera or McDonald’s or anywhere else more easily than in the airport.
Was able to enjoy the Business Class Lounge a few weeks back in JFK Airport. The lounge sounds almost like a steal in comparison when reading those prices.
For the past five years, I have a no eating on travel days policy. Not only do I feel like I am avoiding these high costs, my stomach is less active which is great on travel days.
Yeah, if you get used to not snacking between meals, you begin to learn that typical hunger generally passes, especially if you stay busy/distracted. I usually only eat once or twice a day, and have fasted as long as a week.
Same reason you can’t buy anything but crap hotdogs in Central Park - vendors pay millions for the exclusive contract to sell and then they sell crap at high prices to cover their investment.
No competition, no innovation, no reason to not gouge tbe punters.
It's not just a Central Park problem: a lot of north america basically forbids the sale of anything from a cart beyond pre-cooked hotdogs and burgers (putting it on the grill is mainly for show and to warm it up).
Kinda makes sense because of lack of hand-washing facilities, but those aren't impossible to set up.
It’s really not difficult to build sandwiches that won’t require refrigeration and can be packed into a container for consumption on long trips, people just don’t really know how to make them. But it will vastly improve the quality of your life.
Cheese and chorizo, with mayo, or a nutella sandwich. I don't get the point about not requiring refrigeration, aren't most sandwiches OK for a couple days out of the fridge?
On my travels, a bag of chocolate brioches has always been good
>> "To protect the integrity of the fact-finding process, as well as agency deliberations, the Port Authority’s longstanding policy is to maintain the confidentiality of these types of Inspector General investigative reports."
What requires protection here, other than the absurd consumer price gouging among a captive audience that occurs in EVERY airport across the country and those that let it occur? They are absolutely right in the article, this should be something easy to be transparent about, and shouldn't be a secret process run by lobbying restaurant companies, city management on the grift, and decrepit municipal process.
Because New York City is like deep space: fundamentally hostile to life, especially human life. Once people get past their sensory overloaded twenties (or luck into the kind of wealth that triggers syncophantic personalities to suck up to them), it becomes clear that everything you try to do in the City involves a fight (and I'm not just talking about the days when you get multiple parking tickets, or the late nights when the F Train seems like it's never coming, or the kid behind the Deli counter gives you a sour look when you're counting out singles to pay for that double-digit sandwich on Seventh Avenue). A titanic struggle for survival in a high rise hellscape. And everyone is on edge, ready to pop off at any moment because they've reached their limit of being beaten down.
OK. The real answer is that The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that regulates vendors at its facilities is a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley. Clearly George Lucas had experienced one too many visits to JFK. Or was it LaGuardia?
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 469 ms ] threadIt’s just basic supply and demand. Travelers are already exhausted from travel so they are willing to pay high prices for small comforts. Also, some travelers are business travelers and their company foots the bill.
If all travelers collectively stopped buying these foods, the price would drop. But people keep buying them, understandably.
So no, it is not just a simple issue of supply and demand, it is an issue of lack of governmental transparency.
The article is trying to understand how they determine the base price.
Anyone got a recommendation for a JFK lounge that's a good deal when you're paying for access?
Despite the "port authority" rules on 'street pricing', the real reason is lack of competition.
A single vendor receives the food contract for the airport, and they now have monopoly positioning and a captive audience. When business X is the only seller, and when the customers are held captive and unable to "go elsewhere" [1] then prices will naturally rise to the maximum the captive audience is willing to pay.
[1] How many air travelers are willing to exit the security perimeter, to then need to take a cab to somewhere (most airports are not located near dense shopping/restaurant areas) to purchase food, to then have to go back through security to return to their flight? And what few even have enough time between flight legs to even consider that "go outside the airport for food" trip as even possible? Plus by the time the "cab fee" is factored in, even if they could find the identical sandwich for 5.50 on the outside, the $10 + tip or more cab fee there and back would make the sandwich $15 or more in the end anyway.
And there you have it, a perfect description of value. The sandwich costs $15 at the airport, because at the airport it’s worth $15. It may be worth less elsewhere, but that’s its value there.
They’re not selling a sandwich, they’re selling a sandwich you can have between flights.
Correct. A sandwich is worth more if you want a sandwich than if you don’t.
I always travel with sandwiches that I either make at home or buy. Throw it in your carry on bag and eat it whenever you want.
[0]: some restrictions on liquids or if you’re crossing a border with certain foods
You can technically bring an empty bottle of water or container and fill it up inside of the airport.
Your options would typically be a water fountain, bathroom sink or asking a bar tender to fill it up. Typically if you go the bar tender route you may end up tipping them so you don't escape some cost there.
I've also heard you can bring a frozen water bottle. The idea there is if it were a dangerous liquid then it wouldn't freeze so you're allowed to bring it. The hard part would be ensuring it stays fully frozen while waiting on line.
Without the artificial barrier of the security perimeter, you'd be able to order food to be delivered to the airport.
But I meant ordering a pizza and having it delivered, or having a street food van selling sandwiches outside. Neither of those are possible.
At the airport, the vendor captures most of the surplus value due to their monopoly. Elsewhere, the consumer captures a lot of the surplus value due to robust competition between different vendors.
It's not the same as market price or market value. Market price is what you actually pay, value is the maximum you would hypothetically pay. The difference between the two is the "consumer surplus"[2].
It is situational, but I don't think it varies much in this scenario. You aren't any hungrier inside the airport than you are outside. If food was equally scarce in both locations, you would pay the same amount.
The value is the same in both locations, but the price is higher in the airport. That means consumer surplus is higher outside the airport. The cost to the producer is also roughly the same, so the producer surplus is higher in the airport. The producer has used their monopoly position to take a larger portion of the economic surplus inside the airport.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(economics)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus
I think the poster was claiming that in fact the value is not the same. You aren't hungrier, but you are typically more tired, more rushed, and focused on bigger problems than what to eat for lunch, etc. It's a reasonable argument. That doesn't mean it's thing going on.
Literally every bit of theoretical marxism, including the Labor Theory of Value, the "absolute general law of capital accumulation", the "tendency for the rate of profit to fall", and the entire set of predictions around "dialectical materialism" are all debunked by more than a hundred years of history. Can we drop it now, or do we have to be enamored by his fashionable nonsense for another hundred years?
In Shenzhen every single person seemed to be running a business, and it felt like one of the most truly capitalist places I have ever been. In New Zealand people are dependent on their government, and few people try to run their own business. You don’t need to risk much in New Zealand, so most people don’t.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus#Consumer_surplus
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value
Perhaps review: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
7-11 is ok in Japan or China (or say a Co-op Pronto in Switzerland). I wish we could get those in the states.
Here’s Thundercloud, a popular chain (often described as “a step up from Subway”):
https://thundercloud.com/main-menu/
I also checked Jersey Mike’s, another familiar chain, and a regular size “original Italian” is $9.95 here.
I will say that generally Texas tends to have lower prices on food than coastal metros like NYC/SF/LA, but the airport prices mentioned in the article for NYC still seem absurd.
Texas makes up for not having income tax by having big property taxes. So, you may make out on that exchange depending upon what your family situation is. If you're earning are closer to median, California is probably better than Texas. If you're a high earner, Texas is probably better because California is biting you via income tax.
However, if you're coming to Texas, make damn sure your healthcare situation is sorted out. California is good about healthcare--the exchanges are decent and you can by healthcare retail for the price advertised on the exchange. This shocked me at one point as it meant that a friend could completely bypass the exchanges for healthcare and just buy it. Yeah, you wouldn't get reimbursement like the exchanges, but you could just whip out a credit card and purchase it retail.
Texas, on the other hand, is terrible at healthcare. The Republicans have sabotaged most things from the Federal government. Most of the hospital chains are mediocre and below, and many publicly available health plans are ferociously bad.
Property taxes are proportionately higher than in California but lower on an absolute basis for a similar property due to the large difference in purchase prices.
No state income taxes means most people with decent incomes will come out ahead in Texas.
What the sister comment says about healthcare in Texas is true, unfortunately. Most healthcare providers are private equity backed and treat healthcare as an assembly line. It is difficult to find providers who prioritize quality care over checking boxes.
As for publicly available plans I don’t have personal experience, but I don’t doubt the sister comment’s claims. Best have a good job with a quality healthcare plan.
A comparable, frankly better looking, sandwich at Whole Foods in Columbus Circle is $7.99.
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/whole-foods-market-...
7-11 is the worst offender I've seen. Cheap sandwiches or salads for $8+. $3+ for a 20oz soda. No prices listed on anything. Or if they are it's only when you buy two or more.
Profiteering plain and simple.
In a further note, profit has got to be one of the most misunderstood things in economics. Every endeavor of human commerce has to involve profit for at least one party, otherwise the transaction would not occur at all. If you can put together a sandwich for $1 in ingredients and, say, $4 in your time and labor, why would you sell it for less than $5 plus some profit? At exactly $5 you may as well not engage in this business at all, since you've effectively gained nothing.
For the love of god what freakin city are you guys all Stockholm Syndromed on?
Don't be a cheapskate! head over to Zabar's Cafe and pay $29[0] for a ham and cheese sandwich! /s
[0] https://gothamist.com/news/why-does-this-ham-and-cheese-cost...
I guess it depends on how posh you want your sandwich.
You really have to try to get a Subway (the chain) sandwich that expensive. Same with a burrito from Chipotle, although that may be heretical[1].
---
1. https://flowingdata.com/2017/05/02/sandwich-alignment-chart/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/12i4fot/29_ham_and_che...
It’s about the port authority not publicly revealing what the 3 market comparable prices are.
So if the three vendors names tried to collude, then they would no longer be the lowest prices.
Part of the answer is that people going through airports are often buying expense account ones, and they're quite price flexible.
I bet the government is involved on that decision from your local one.
(If you didn't follow Bridgegate when it was happening, strap in for the most petty government overreach you've ever read about. I've read this article a number of times and honestly, you start reading and you can't look away. It's so good! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal)
The intro blurb skips the appointed director and attributes the closing of the bridge directly to Christie, but Christie acted through a crony at the Port Authority, as can be read further in the Wikipedia article.
In the end you can extract X amount of money from all the passengers and that gets split between the landlord and the vendor.
So it's not just that the vendor has a monopoly, if they didn't have a monopoly there would still be some amount they'd pay in rent for the captive audience.
And other people feel better about raising taxes on people if they do so by raising taxes on corporations that then raise prices on people.
If this logic doesn't work, then there are some unstated assumptions.
I guess that the lack of competition isn't the only answer, in many cases there are many restaurants/stores in an airport and all of them are very expensive.
The price of the rent in the airport also has to be taken in account. In many airports the restaurants pay outrageous rent values that won't allow them to sell cheap food.
If you lift the peel off, many times they're still operated by the one contractor that has a contract for the whole airport. Even restaurants that typically don't franchise will still run operations under a franchise arrangement in airports. E.g. The Starbucks employees at an airport will be employed by HMS Host (a common airport food concession contractor).
Another captive element is alcohol. Many places only allow licensed establishments to sell it (ie: bars/restaurants), so no competition from the convenience store type concessions. And may be forbidden to consume alcohol outside licensed establishments so can't just buy a beer if convenience stores were legally allowed to sell it so they don't.
(Can recall good times at Amsterdam Schiphol where you could buy a beer for a not-too-insane markup from the convenience store and consume wherever, while in Philadelphia, you were paying like $10+ for one to consume wherever, ugh).
The real reason is greed. Competitors can work together to fix prices and they usually do. The reason again is greed.
Competition lowering prices only works when the barrier of entry to the market is very low and it's possible for many actors to compete. For SaaS businesses, where competition can virtually scale infinitely, that's true. Not at all for airports, where competition can only be very limited due to material constraints.
It doesn’t need to be anywhere near that extreme. Lots of people pay exorbitant prices for food at movie theatres and those facilities tend to be in commercial high traffic areas with tons of food service options such as malls, downtown streets, etc.
It’s really not hard at all to grab a bite before going into the theatre yet people still end up buying the ripoff theatre food!
And most theatres don't even give you real butter on the popcorn anymore. It's now this "artificial butter sauce" junk.
But all that aside, the process of going to the theater and standing in line and getting your overpriced junk food does add to the experience for many people, even if just due to nostalgia. Waiting in line to buy an overpriced sandwich at the airport is not an experience many people crave or are nostalgic for.
EDIT: I don't know what to tell you all. The specific set of junk food at movie theaters in the US is a culturally significant phenomenon. Like most cultural phenomena, it is not universal, but it is universally known (or close to it by anyone who grew up in the US). And for some people, sneaking food into theaters, in response to those high prices, is a culturally meaningful experience! The point being, food and theaters have a cultural history that is meaningful and nostalgic for many Americans. Not so with airports - where hungry people buy shitty food at outrageous prices because they have no choice.
Of course it isn't. You're not going to enjoy a movie more just because you're shovelling puffy sweetened carbs into your face - unless you've been Pavlov'd into it.
Airport food is different, because there's a good chance some of the people who buy it genuinely need to eat.
I beg to differ. It definitely is a part of the experience for me.
The theaters don't make their money showing new movies (most of that goes to the studio) - they make most of their money on high margin concessions, mostly popcorn and soda.
And for infrequent traveler like me, I had no problem in eating airline food when I am coming home from long distance travel or eating outside after leaving airport when there is no food served in plane. If am starting from home its not too much of hassle to wrap a few rolls or sandwiches to carry.
Now for concession food to have authentic movies experience looks more of what marketers would say. I think besides streaming another reason cinema theater attendance is slimming is outrageous price of that authentic experience for large majority of people.
I've long had the "conspiracy theory" that they promote popcorn as part of the authentic part of the experience because it's an item that's most difficult to smuggle in -- with the butter, you'd have to pack it down tight, which would ruin it, and yet it's cheap to make at the theater. Plus they can afford to spend more on a machine than the average person would.
I like how grocery stores carry "theater packs" of candy. Perfect for a special home theater experience, along with some popcorn of course.
Unfortunately I don't have an icee machine at home.
I'd like to see a write up on why that is, because it seems like an insanely stupid arrangement at face value.
How do you have airside transfer when there are no barriers to leaving airside?
Certainly in Australia if you are travelling international you go through outbound immigration control. I'm not sure what happens if you need to get out again for some reason after you "exit" the country. I assume you have to "re-enter" the country by circling through inbound immigration. Perhaps having no land borders makes outbound immigration control more reasonable.
It does seem like the cost of adding some secure departure lounges might be less than circling huge numbers of passengers through unnecessary immigration procedures, security lines, etc
You can do that at a movie theater too. At least, I did it back when I was poor. Well, not with a sandwich, but I got some M&Ms and a drink at a nearby supermarket to take into the theater, because that saves a lot of money.
There is also the question of health code regulations. I know that in any restaurant which is inspected by County health inspectors, outside food is prohibited. So if you make a sandwich and you bring it into a McDonald's and you order a Coke and fries to go with your turkey sandwich, you will probably get kicked out. The main reason is because if something were to happen medically, whose food is to blame? Is it the food you prepared at home and brought into the restaurant? Even worse if you shared it to people who didn't know it wasn't prepared at the restaurant. The restaurant could potentially be liable for medical costs of people who got food poisoning, and their license to prepare food could be jeopardized.
Now, having said all that, this is not the case in airports or on airlines. They all allow you to bring in food you prepared at home, because an airport is not a "restaurant" with one kitchen where food is prepared. Aboard an aircraft, you could also eat your home-prepped turkey and Swiss sandwich instead of a delicious, hot, in-flight Kosher meal. If you get sick, well you get sick. I don't know if airlines can be liable for food poisoning, but they sure are cautious about peanut allergies these days.
They may have a policy against bringing your own food, but I don't think it's a reasonable policy and I don't see any reason to obey it if you don't want to and they don't enforce it.
If you want to make more money from the movie goers, just charge an extra buck for the ticket.
Whether it's silly or not, this isn't some new thing to boost revenue at airports. The US has long prohibited the "importation" of food items through airports. In fact, that was a key theme to the 1971 film, La Mortadella[0].
I'm not saying it's a good policy (I even "smuggled" some wonderful Dutch gouda into JFK myself a few years back), nor am I saying it makes sense in this day an age, but it (IIUC) has nothing to do with trying to make you pay more for food at the airport.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Liberty_(film)
A good point. However, this wasn't vacuum sealed, just the standard wax around the ball of cheese wrapped in paper.
And I wouldn't have been all that excited to wolf down 2+ kg of cheese at the airport.
Did you know that the bananas we have today are different from the ones we had 50 years ago? The standard banana back then was wiped out by a fungal disease. Today’s bananas are all one variety of GMO, and resistant to such fungus.
That’s why produce is particularly scrutinized.
https://www.treehugger.com/extinct-banana-5201723
If my limited experience with hospital shops is anything to go by, yes, but it’s not the shop killing your pocket.
The landlord says some variation of ‘you’ll be the only coffee shop’ and the rent is about 8x what is sane.
The shop gets guaranteed business but has to charge a lot to pay the rent.
So, lack of competition inside the airport would not by itself be able to explain this pricing.
Corruption or incompetence within the Port Authority would explain it, and though I will withhold judgment, it's hard to think of what else it might be. It's even easier to jump to that conclusion when they also deny and conceal when asked for an explanation.
That sort of regulation is never very effective. The VA requires that vendors that sell them medical devices do not sell those devices at a higher price elsewhere. They end up buying a lot of SKUs that are only sold to the VA.
It is not the competition. It is about extracting maximum of what the customer could pay. Same reason beer is expensive at the event venues. The second part of your comment explains it perfectly.
[1] https://www.jfkairport.com/at-airport/shops-restaurants-and-...
https://airportllc.com/who-owns-jfk-airport/
> JFK Airport is owned by the City of New York and is managed and operated by the Port Authority which got the lease from New York City in 1947 to build an airport in Queens borough to serve the large NYC Metropolitan area
At SeaTac, there’s separate lanes for Clear with and without Precheck.
Sometimes with just precheck you’ll still get into general use lanes with annoying requests such as removing laptops from bags, no matter if you are precheck or not. This is because there is no Clear employee who can ensure you only end up in the best lane.
Regardless, my airport experiences after subscribing to Clear have always been far better than simply only having precheck alone, especially if you’re the type who likes to arrive late to a flight to minimize waiting at the terminal. Really does feel like a pre-9/11 world.
Says the person opting into a biometric surveillance dystopia.
Are you for real?
Clear itself isn't giving you access to Precheck, though. You are only allowed in the Precheck lane if you have Precheck.
As I said above, the only thing Clear is doing (and claiming it does) is verify your identity so TSA doesn't have to. What lane you get sorted into is entirely based on what's available (ie. if the Clear lane you used feeds into Precheck or just regular screening) and whether you have Precheck or not. You can't get into Precheck using just clear and you'll be turned away if you don't have the Precheck status on your boarding pass. I have seen it happen at SeaTac.
Paying the fees for TSA pre-check or Clear to opt out of unnecessary screening feels like paying the mafia to opt out of unnecessary physical injury and property damage.
Fuck you very much for normalizing automated tyranny.
Things you can't get through security check ('liquids'): yoghurts, the salad dressing on a salad. Doubtful about hummus.
On international flights: some fresh fruit (e.g. apples, US CBP), and some dried fruits and nuts, depends on country, see guidelines.
Useful tip: buy trail mix in bulk and repack in a small ziplock food bag in your luggage.
this is becoming a plague, for a further recent example, i cant ask an alexa instance what it just said, it will quote HIPAA as a reason to deny the command
But when public groups restrict data even after an FOI request, it's hard not to wonder if something foul is going on.
Disclosing the price charged for a sandwich seems far less sensitive however. My hunch is there is likely no record of the comparison sandwiches, and I hope the author of this article appeals their records request to find out if that's true or not.
I thought the large pastrami sandwiches for almost $20 was crazy before the pandemic. But for a regular size ham & cheese?
see https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/inflation-raises-price-of-ham-...
https://thepointsguy.com/news/pricey-airport-food/
It has less to do with the actual price of making the goods or service
No competition, no innovation, no reason to not gouge tbe punters.
Kinda makes sense because of lack of hand-washing facilities, but those aren't impossible to set up.
Just stop buying these expensive sandwiches.
On my travels, a bag of chocolate brioches has always been good
What requires protection here, other than the absurd consumer price gouging among a captive audience that occurs in EVERY airport across the country and those that let it occur? They are absolutely right in the article, this should be something easy to be transparent about, and shouldn't be a secret process run by lobbying restaurant companies, city management on the grift, and decrepit municipal process.
OK. The real answer is that The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that regulates vendors at its facilities is a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley. Clearly George Lucas had experienced one too many visits to JFK. Or was it LaGuardia?
The OTG managed hospitality experience at LGA is the worst crime against aviation in the last 21-and-a-half years. Try their $20 burger. I dare you.
JFK at least has ShakeShack.