Sorry but COP$38,000 for a main course is not a modest restaurant. A modest restaurant costs COP$7000 for two courses and a fruit juice.
COP$38,000 is double the daily wage a person earns on minimum salary
It is also approximately double the cost of chicken thai green curry somewhere like Wok. A restaurant charging 38 mil for a main course is exactly the sort of place that you would expect to include the propina.
People earning US$1 per hour do not eat at 38 mil per main course restaurants unless they work there and allowed to have a meal during their shift.
Assume with tips, a server earns US$2-3 per hour, then they are more likely to eat in the COP$7000 place.
McDonalds is an upmarket treat for Colombians and certainly not a staple. See a Big Mac meal costs double the two courses in a cheap restaurant. McDs are normally found around shopping centres and wealthy areas.
US cheap food is expensive in Colombia, where as clean healthy food made up of corn/beef/chicken/potatoes/salad is cheap
Originally Posted by
golmaale
During this trip I have patronized mostly modest restaurants, where the bill rarely exceeded COP$38,000 for a main course. But looking around me, most of the other diners seem to be local and do not appear to be particularly affluent. So how do they manage to afford these prices if the hourly wages are a little more than US$1.
I even popped into a McDonald's in Cartagena, and the prices there seemed to be higher than the average US McDonald's.
So how does the economy function?