The humble croissant is perhaps the perfect breakfast on the go, an easy-to-hold, delicious-to-eat pastry that has sustained the French for centuries.
Paired with a coffee, this buttery, flaky crescent-shaped patisserie will see you right ’til lunch… or at least Elevenses – but would you pay £8 for the pleasure?
The croissant, widely agreed to have actually originated in Austria but adopted by the French as a national dish, costs pence to make – its ingredients a simple blend of butter, flour, sugar, salt and yeast.
Over in France, the average price of a croissant is around €1… but on this side of the Channel, Brits are increasingly likely to pay significantly more for a taste of Le Continent.
Just like with coffee, our ongoing love affair with high street cafes has seen the mark-up on the French staple jolt sharply in one direction.
Competition is supposed to bring down prices, but that old theory no longer seems to apply when it comes to the daily cappuccino and breakfast pastry.
Supermarket prices remain reasonable – a four-pack of all butter croissants from the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury, M&S and Waitrose retail at anywhere between £2.20 and £2.50, well under a £1 each.
However, if you’re heading to a high-street cafe, you can expect that price to treble. At chains such as Pret a Manger, Starbucks, Costa Coffee, current croissant costs are between £2.70 and £3.
Sacre bleu! The humble croissant has almost hit the £5 mark in London’s high street bakery chains. Pictured: A chocolate hazelnut croissant priced at £4.95 in a branch of French-inspired cafe Oree
Over at Ottolenghi in Richmond, Surrey, a pain au chocolate will set customers back £5.60…ensuring there’s little change from £10 if you also have a coffee
The latest outpost of chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s foodie empire is in South West London, but the pastries don’t come cheap
Head to bakery of the moment Gail’s – increasingly a bellwether on upmarket neighbourhoods and even an influencer of house prices – and you’ll find a host of pastries edging ever closer to the £5 mark.
An almond croissant eaten in at the branch on Askew Road in Acton, West London, costs £4.60, £3.90 if you take away.
Fancy a little ham and cheese with your breakfast favourite? You’ll pay £5.90 to sit down and eat it and £5 to take it away.
Over at French-owned patisserie chain Oree, which has branches across London and is inspired by the boulangeries of Paris, the croissants also don’t come cheap.
An almond croissant costs £4.95 to eat in, and £4.50 to take away – as does a chocolate hazelnut version.
At Danish all-day bakery Ole & Steen, which has branches across London and in Oxford, a filled danish pastry is priced at £4.15 to dine in, and £3.95 to take out.
Meanwhile at Ottolenghi, an almond croissant tips well over the £5 mark in Richmond, priced at £5.60 to eat in or takeaway – couple it with a fancier coffee and the you’ll likely get zero change from a £10 note.
Some might argue the labour in a croissant or pastry requires more than other baked items – a croissant’s pastry is laminated, meaning butter is folded into the dough to create the flaky texture.
Food influencer Humzah Ghauri dipped an £8 croissant into a coffee at French patisserie Cedric Grolet in The Berkeley Hotel (right)…but deemed it not worth the money
At Gail’s, which has become a bellwether for middle class areas, a plain croissant costs £2.70 but opt to eat an almond croissant in and you’ll pay £4.60
Cheap breakfast? Not quite…the price of coffee and pastries has soared in recent years (Pictured: Gails in Walthamstow, north-east London)
Danish all-day bakery Ole & Steen has proved a hit in Oxford and London…and a slice of their signature cinnamon roll will set you back £4.95
And there’s time and patience required to make them from scratch, with a proving and resting period key to their success.
However, it’s unlikely any of that adds up to £8, which is the cost of enjoying a croissant at the Cedric Grolet bakery at The Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge.
The renowned French pastry chef charges £8 for a plain croissant. One Instagrammer who tried it out admitted it was painful to pay for a bakery staple.
Food influencer Humzah Ghauri, who has 36,200 followers on Instagram, said: ‘The croissant itself was lovely but just don’t see how it’s worth that much – unless it was loaded or had some filling.
How much your coffee costs: Far more goes into upping the price of your favourite beverage than you might think – such as the rent of the shop and maintaining the complicated machines
‘Yes it ticked a lot of boxes but I still can’t justify those prices.’
A short stroll away at Harrods, which charges £12 for its signature croissant, at least shoppers can rest assured they’re getting a topping of gold leaf on the French breakfast classic.
According to marketing organisation Project Cafe UK, the coffee shop market was worth a total of £4.9 billion in 2023, up nearly 12 per cent on the year before.
The industry seems to have breezed through the switch to working from home: the number of cafes grew 4.4 per cent to 9,885.
And while we can all make coffees at home…prepping a croissant at dawn isn’t quite so easy, which means the £10 barrier for a coffee and croissant combo is likely to be sticking around.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .