Food Budget London/Scottland

I find these particular questions extremely hard to answer. There are so many factors.
First factor: Is breakfast included in your lodging? No need to budget more. Will you eat a full breakfast in a hotel restaurant? 28 pounds/day Will you pick up something at the corner store or Bakery? 15 pounds/day
Second factor: Lunch. Are you a grab a sandwich at the corner store person? 16 pounds/day Are you let's have a nice break mid-day person? 30 pounds/day
Third factor: Dinner. Is this your big meal of the day and "must have" for a good meal experience 40 pounds/day.
Fourth factor: Snacks. Do you require coffee, tea, soft drinks, ice cream, etc during the course of the day? 10 pounds per person.

Obviously these are all guesses. They may or may not be accurate. That is why it is so hard to determine a budget for someone else. What is the purpose of your budget? Is it to make sure you have saved up adequate funds in advance? Are you thinking you need to have cash available for those costs? Cash is less and less necessary in the UK. Some places that I ate at in May would not even accept cash and had signs that said, "card only."

I have to admit that my strategy is to buy what I want as I go on food. I'm not an extravagent person and this is never a budget breaker for me.

Shellybean, Carol is right - there are so many vagaries about the way people eat and buy food that it's hard to give budget advice.

For example, I'm very irregular when it comes to meals. Some days I will have a late breakfast, skip lunch but then have a coffee and pastry mid-afternoon and a late evening dinner. Other days, I might have a large lunch and skip dinner for a glass of wine and some small bites. Or I might bring some food back to my B&B or hotel.

If you really want to stick to a budget, then figure out what you can afford and use that as an average, keeping in mind that prices for food will be higher than average in London. And as Carol said, try to book places that offer breakfast, which will save you money. Every place I'm staying (so far) in Scotland next year has an included breakfast.

Breakfast in a hotel £15 pp. Pastry and a cappuccino in a cafe £5 pp. Pot of tea £2-2.50.

Lunch - sandwich, fruit and a soft drink £4 from a supermarket (meal deal). Cafe - sandwich and a coffee eat in £10 pp. Pub hot meal £10-15 main course or £15-25 in a gastro pub (same price for the evenings) plus £5-10 each for starter and pudding. Afternoon tea £15-20 pp.

Dinner - anything from £25 in a pub to £55 pp for two courses for fancy places plus drinks. Bottle of wine £20+. Pint of beer £7 in London and £5 in the provinces.

I can’t go from breakfast, even if it’s large, to dinner without something at lunchtime, so having a huge breakfast that makes me lethargic doesn’t save any money.

We too, in the UK, stayed at B&Bs, breakfast included, sometimes, especially farmhouses, we could get a nice dinner at a reasonable price. Hotels often have a fixed price meal with some choices and dessert for a good price. For lunch we bought things to go from a grocery deli so we could keep touring. For Supper we would buy a meal at a Pub, my favorite is the Scampi Basket, and have a nice beer or cider. In the big cities you can go out for a Curry Buffet. Having Tea at a Museum or Historic site cafe can be a treat. We ate well; we didn't need fancy. We had planned to spend a lot more than we had too. Consider the exchange rate to see what you are spending in your home money. Today one pound is $1.21.

Consider what you spend at home for a restaurant meal with a couple drinks, tip and tax, it will be comparable there, except all the cost is in the menu price (well in London, they will likely add a 10% service charge, or expect you will)

Figure all of the areas you mention are at the higher end of the cost spectrum, especially if you enjoy meat and fish dishes, so a typical entrée will run 15-25 GBP. Alcohol, a beer or wine, is no bargain compared to the rest of Europe, closer to what you would spend in the US for a craft beer or decent wine.

You can certainly find bargain lunches, lots of shops like Pret a Manger, or even groceries offer ready to go sandwiches and salads. Markets offer food stalls. Basically you can be frugal during the day and have a nice meal in the evening for 75 to 100 GBP per day for two.

I recommend looking at some actual restaurant menus online before you leave home. What places are on your list as possible stops, based on comments here or info in guidebooks? Check out a few of those, because people have very different ideas of what is affordable, and experience-based cost estimates may be out of date right now, the way prices are rising.

I do what I can to avoid hotel breakfasts, because even if they are good, it's more food than I need and you are certainly paying for them via a higher room rate. And all too often, for an American who likes crisp bacon and well-done eggs, they are not good (for me). I will say that hard-boiled eggs in the UK usually are hard-boiled, which I have found all too often is not the case in Scandinavia (8 or 10 minutes? Really?)

While everyone here is correct that there could be a wide range, we budgeted 100GBP/day for the two of us and didn't come close to spending that.

We usually got a scone and hot drink for breakfast, stopped for a quick lunch either at a market or similar street food type place, and then had supper at a casual sit down restaurant or pub.

We're not drinkers, and we usually had an entree each and split either an app or dessert. We also enjoy snacks, like gelato, market stall bites etc.

This was the first trip where we really overestimated the food cost. Happy surprise!

if you want really cheap - go into a supermarket and buy something that can be eaten outside - say on a park bench. Many supermarkets also have their own cafes where you can get a meal for about £10 or even less. Fish & Chip shops are also good value for money although the standard can vary. You can find them on Google Maps and then click on them to get Google reviews from customers. (Note that you will get proper chips in the UK - not those silly little stick things that north Americans call French Fries).

Note that in the centre of cities such as London & Edinburgh, that eating establishments are likely to be more expensive.

I was in London in April--solo, so my eating was all over the place--usually a pastry or granola bar with coffee in my room to get me going, sometimes I was off on a train so got something breakfasty at the station, then it all depended on what I was doing that day for other meals. Sometimes lunch was at a museum cafe (the V&A, Tower and Hampton Court had especially good offerings), or a restaurant like the Cheese Bar, and pubs always had something I liked including a cider for around 14 pounds. Dinner was sometimes a pub, or an upscale restaurant like The Ivy in Soho, that included a cocktail, appetizer and entree and was 60 pounds. A couple of nights I had take-away, and my first jet-lagged night I brought back a bag full of yummy things from the wonderful food hall at Harrod's. As others mention, there's a wide range of restaurants and eating options for every budget in London.