Cafe problem - wording £ prices on menu

Fen1

Hi. On our day trip today we stopped at a cafe. The price on the menu for a hot chocolate was £2.50. The price on the board was £2.75, but we were charged £2.80. ( Same type of hot chocolate, no marshmallows etc.)
Also, on the menu it stated ' Food served all day'. There were no time restrictions printed on the menu e.g. breakfast served until 11a.m., or lunch 12 - 2 p.m.  
We arrived at about 2 p.m.and ordered a hot drink each.  We waited ages for the drinks to arrive, by which point I was getting a bit hungry ( we had a late breakfast and no lunch). I tried flagging down a waitress to no avail. Eventually, the drinks arrived. I asked to order food ( sandwich type place, not sit-down restaurant) and was told that they were now only serving cake.

I'm really not happy about the price differences, nor the fact that they said that they served food all day but don't. Food for me is a savoury meal - a slice of cake is not the same.
If I knew that they weren't going to serve food - only cake -  in the afternoon, I would have gone somewhere else.
I've gone round and round the .gov site to try and find out what cafes can and cannot print on their menus, but cannot find anything specific.
Any advice, so I don't get caught out again?

MikeJXE

Don't go there again lol

SiliconChip

Did you raise the price discrepencies with them, and if so what did they say? I'd have just paid the £2.50 and left.

As for "food all day" I very much doubt of there is anything that says what "food" is, and after 2pm I wouldn't be that surprised to find that they were only selling things that had already been prepared rather than spending time making meals from scratch when they were probably going to close in less than 2 hours time.

As suggested, vote with your feet and don't return.

MACKEM99

Or only go to get your 30ps back!  😄

tightauldgit

While I would imagine that the cafe is struggling to keep up with price increases and just haven't updated the menus, they can't put one price on the menu and then charge you something else. They should have amended the prices or at least blanked them out. At the very very least they should have informed you that the menus were just there for reference but the prices were out of date. You probably should have queried it at the time. 

The food thing - cafes can serve what they want when they want and since a cake constitutes food you can't say the menu was inaccurate. How to avoid it in future? Ask when you sit down.

Do bear in mind that right now a lot of small businesses like cafes are really struggling, so while the letter of the law may say one thing it's also worth being somewhat understanding of the situation and allowing them a little leeway if they don't seem to be taking the p. 

 

photome

What did they say when you queried the price difference.

as for the food, they were serving food,

Diamandis

You're searching government websites rather than just saying "oh you charged me incorrectly "? There's no law that they have to sell you a sandwich either.

Fen1

The service was awful. When I raised the price discrepancy they were rude. This was why I wanted to know that I was right to query the difference.
I fully understand that the price in a printed menu might be out of date, but there was no excuse for a different price again on a handwritten board, a foot from the till.

I repeatedly tried to flag down a waitress to order. The people that she was taking orders from were ordering savoury food ( we could hear them.) But the person who brought out our drinks ( eventually ) said cake only. He was miserable, unsmiling, and by that point I was already feeling vulnerable with the way we were being treated.

Awful service. Over 30 minute wait for a cuppa. Rude when I asked to check the prices.

No, we won't be going back.

HillStreetBlues

Happened to me once with breakfast in a cafe.
Handed them the correct cash, they said it's gone up since menu was printed,  I just said "not for me it hasn't" and walked off
Never went back again.

baser999

Fen1 said:

The service was awful. When I raised the price discrepancy they were rude. This was why I wanted to know that I was right to query the difference.
I fully understand that the price in a printed menu might be out of date, but there was no excuse for a different price again on a handwritten board, a foot from the till.

I repeatedly tried to flag down a waitress to order. The people that she was taking orders from were ordering savoury food ( we could hear them.) But the person who brought out our drinks ( eventually ) said cake only. He was miserable, unsmiling, and by that point I was already feeling vulnerable with the way we were being treated.

Awful service. Over 30 minute wait for a cuppa. Rude when I asked to check the prices.

No, we won't be going back.

Not sure why you put up with it and didn’t simply walk out? 

Fen1

We were about to when the drinks arrived.