WSJ Your Money Briefing - Your Packed Lunch Could Cost More Than You Think

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

More workers are bringing lunch from home than they have in years. It can save you money, but it might also be hurting the economy. Wall Street Journal reporter Ray Smith tells host Ariana Aspuru about the pros and cons of packing lunch.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's your Money Briefing for Monday, April 21st. I'm Mariana Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. When noon hits and workers reach for their lunches, more of them are whipping out a meal they packed at home, rather than heading out to eat. A big reason is high prices. Workers having to return to the office, they're sort of experiencing sticker shock. They're realizing how much more it costs to eat out.

Pre-COVID, some of us, myself included, we didn't think anything about buying lunch every day, but working from home showed us how much we can save by not eating out all the time. My colleague, Ray Smith, spoke to me about the financial and culinary pros and cons of brown bagging it. Stick around. Hey, wouldn't it be great if life came with remote control?

You know, you could hit pause when you needed to, or hit rewind, like that time you knocked down that wasps nest. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but pre-diabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop pre-diabetes before it leads to type 2 diabetes. To save money, more workers are bringing in lunch from home than they have in years. Wall Street Journal reporter Ray Smith joins me to talk about it. Ray, just how many people are shying away from buying lunch right now? A lot more. We found some statistics that show the number of lunches bought from U.S. restaurants and

other establishments fell 3% in 2024. And we also found that during that same time, purchases of food from grocery and other stores that shoppers intend to eat at home or bring to work for lunch, that rose 1%. And that's all according to consumer analytics firm, Circana. Mm-hmm. So there's like 3%, 1%. You know, they might seem small, but we're talking millions of people.

And we're talking about sort of the start of something. We should monitor this going forward to see how those numbers evolve because we have a feeling, especially with the tariff news and all the economic concerns, that number of people buying groceries to make food at home to bring to work for lunch is going to grow. What kind of impact does that have on the economy with so many people doing it? It can have a really negative effect, to be honest. It's not something that restaurants want to hear. Restaurants in downtowns of cities across the country

have really been counting on return to office to be a big win for them. They were really counting on that lunchtime crowd that sort of disappeared during COVID and was sort of inching back once Return to Office started. They're hoping that more Return to Office would bring more people into their establishments to buy lunch, either for takeout or to sit down.

And if you start to see economic concerns, having people doubt how much they should spend out, that's gonna have a trickle-down effect on restaurant businesses. So it's something that businesses that I talk to are watching closely just to see how consumers are reacting. And if more consumers decide to bring lunch to work, it's just not gonna be good for their businesses.

And you kind of alluded to this there, but what are some of the other reasons why more people are bringing lunch from home? A big reason is high prices. Of workers having to return to the office, they're sort of experiencing sticker shock. They're realizing how much more it costs to eat out. Pre-COVID, some of us, myself included, we didn't think anything about buying lunch every day, but working from home showed us how much we can save by not eating out all the time. We've seen a number of companies requiring

mandating even that people come into the office more days a week. But if you're in the office more than three days a week and you're going out every day, that can add up. Hybrid office workers spent an average of about $21.06 on lunch in 2024. And that's up from $16 in 2023. That's according to a study by Owl Labs. Ray, what's your approach to lunch? Do you bring it from home? I do bring it from home.

And I started post-COVID, to be honest. And a lot of it was just being struck by how expensive it is to eat out and how much more expensive it got. And I did the math and I was like, this math is a math thing. And I just, I need to sort of figure out a way to bring my own lunch. And the other thing was quite frankly, sometimes being disappointed after you spend $20 on something, you want to be fulfilled, you want to be full.

You want to feel like, okay, that was worth it. But often I was spending $20 on lunch and not even being satisfied. So it just started not to make sense anymore for me personally. Yeah. I love that the math is a math thing. Cause like, let's say right there, $20 on a bowl. You're not satisfied. You're in the office three days a week, but $60 a week on bowls that like, you

don't even like at the end of the day. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Packing lunch for work can save you money. In your case, it has worked for you. But it also comes with some drawbacks, right? What are those?

Yeah, some of the drawbacks include, for instance, you can get tired of bringing the same thing or the similar thing or the predictable thing all the time. So there's that risk of sort of being bored with what you brought in. I remember talking to some people who told me they even brought something in and were tempted by a coworker to go to Chipotle or something, so they just left their lunch in the fridge.

The other downfall is that you can forget about it or even have the risk of someone else stealing it, so they're just things that you just have to be more conscious of when you're brown bagging it. And I even talked to some people who make a conscious effort to switch it up, to make sure they cook enough so that they can alternate the days on which they're having leftovers. Yeah. Speaking of those people, did it work for them to bring lunch from home to save money? So far they told me that it is working.

One woman I talked to told me, for instance, that she spent $500 a month easily just on eating out to lunch. And so she's saving in that way and feels real good about it. But she also cautioned that she's not sure how much longer she will be able to keep this habit from getting stale because she's already getting bored of what she's bringing in.

For someone who's looking to do this and they don't already have that like, you know, go-to sandwich that they love or that go-to salad they can bring from home, what are some tips that the people you spoke to recommended? For starters, making sure that it's something that you enjoy eating, like whether you're going to make it yourself or you buy it pre-made, it's just making sure that it's going to be enough to sustain you so that you're not spending on snacks after you've had lunch.

If you have some kind of cooking skills and you wanna get more creative, you can make it fun that way. Like I've always wanted to learn how to cook Thai. So you make it less of a chore than something that you can enjoy as sort of a learning exercise, but also as something that you look forward to eating

because you're proud of what you made. That's a something that you look forward to eating because, you know, you're proud of what you made. That's a great tip to make something and be like, look, I can show you all, my coworkers, I made this for lunch. I feel that way sometimes I make like my own salad dressing because salad dressing can be expensive. And that's one thing where it's like,

I'm proud of this salad dressing that I'm bringing. Exactly. You feel great. Yeah, so it's less of a, I have to do this. And it's like, I enjoy doing that. Can you give yourself a meal out sometimes? You should absolutely have an indulgence day or a cheat day, whatever you want to term that, but it's a day rewarding yourself for being good the other days of the week or just to sort of mix it up again so you're not getting so bored. It can be something that you look forward to because you know it's the only day that you can really splurge. That's WSJ Reporter Ray Smith, and that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was

produced by me, with supervising producer Melanie Roy and Deputy Editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Arianna Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.