David Brooks whining about the exorbitant cost of airport food (and an EPIC takedown of his tweet) [View all]

[Roland99]

Link to tweet

I think we all sense that Mr. Brooks claiming he paid $78 for a burger and fries meal at Newark Airport is quite misleading, but how can we prove it?

I had the time this early Thursday morning and decided to investigate.

Here's what I found.

(thread)


There are 61 restaurants listed on the website for the Newark Liberty International Airport, from the Abruzzo Italian Steakhouse (Gate C70) to Zaro's Bakeshop (B Food Court). I began by trying to match the table, chairs, and floor to likely suspects w/ bar + burgers.


This proved to be tedious because none of the available Yelp or TripAdvisor online images of any of the burger and bar restaurants that were listed had close matches. But I focused on one restaurant in particular and did a deep search: the Budweiser Brewhouse (B1 Pre-Security).


I found an image bank of the restaurant via the Untapped social drinking app (https://untappd.com/v/budweiser-brewhouse/11494574/photos…). There were rough matches for the table, chairs, and floor in Mr. Brooks' photo. The red chairs temporarily threw me off, but it appears there are several chair types here.


Finally, as best as I could determine, there is only one restaurant in all of Newark Airport that uses the tray-and-paper deal for serving food. Short of traveling to the Budweiser Brewhouse for definitive confirmation, I feel it's pretty likely this is where Mr. Brooks ate.


There's a PDF menu available for the Budweiser Brewhouse on http://newarkterminalb.com

There are three types of burgers offered + with sub fries added to any of them, the cost for the food, before tax and tip, is no more than $22.18.

NJ sales tax (6.625%) + tip (20%) = $28.09


I did not find a drink menu for the Budweiser Brewhouse online, but maybe one of you more resourceful folks can do that.

But if we look at the price before tip ($23.64) and subtract from Mr. Brooks' stated total cost, assuming before tip, it comes out to about $54 on drinks.


If this is after tipping at 20% (I'm assuming Mr. Brooks is decent enough to tip at that rate), the amount spent on food and alcohol, inc. tax, is $60.80. Minus the cost of food ($23.64), he spent about $37 on alcohol.


Anyway, I'm happy to be wrong here. If Mr. Brooks wants to post his receipt, given that this was important enough for him to talk about in the first place, I'd welcome the correction.

What say you,
@nytdavidbrooks
?

/thread

Brooks' tweet

Link to tweet