After a slight decrease in the first months of the year, payments for lunches in Slovakia started to grow again in April. While in March it reached the average spending 8.95 euros for lunch, it rose to 9.22 euros in April. This follows from the data of the TRC index of the company Edenred, which monitors the real payments of employees with meal cards.
- The average cost of lunch in Slovakia rose to 9.22 euros in April.
- The difference between the real price of lunch and the amount of the meal allowance is deepening.
The average for the first four months of the year reached 9.07 euros. Complete expenditure on food, snacks and drinks is included in the data. The highest payments for lunches have been registered for a long time in the Košice region, where the average expenditure reached 9.84 euros. They are followed by the Nitra region with an average of 9.79 euros and the Banskobystrický, Bratislava and Prešovský regions, where people paid an average of 9.23 euros for lunch. The lowest payments were recorded in the Trenčín region, at the level of 7.06 euros.
“Although the rise in lunch prices appeared to have stabilized in the early months of the year, April’s data shows that the pressure on workers’ wallets continues. The difference between the real price of lunch and the amount of the meal allowance is deepening again, and more and more people have to pay extra for lunch out of their own money,” said Edenred’s PR director Lívia Bachratá.
According to the company’s data, nominal payments increased year-on-year the most in the Bratislava region, where they increased by 53 cents. They are followed by the Banskobystry region with an increase of 33 cents and the Nitra region with an increase of 32 cents. The most stable prices are recorded in the Trenčín region.
At the same time, the average prices of lunches continue to move away from the minimum meal fee, which currently amounts to 6.98 euros. According to data from Edenred, more than 60% of employees receive this minimum amount. About a fifth of the employees receive a meal allowance of between eight and nine euros, less than ten percent of people receive an allowance of more than nine euros. Approximately eight percent of employees receive the maximum meal allowance of 9.30 euros. “Long-term data show that the minimum food allowance in many regions is no longer enough even for an average lunch,” added Bachratá.
