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The other day, a friend admitted that she’d paid $36 for a salad. She said it almost shamefully — like she’d failed a life competency test. The salad, which came from a popular counter service spot, was a normal size, she reported. But she’d added salmon, which was maybe how the price had gotten so high. She wasn’t sure. But she was shaken.

You’re not supposed to lose control of the price of lunch. Dinner, sure — that’s what the second cocktail is for. But lunch is meant to be sustenance: habitual, pragmatic, and affordable. It’s not supposed to make your eyes pop when you see the check. But lately, the tender hour of noon has come with some heart palpitations.

My own limit for a workaday meal is $20 — a tidy, if arbitrary, line I’ve drawn for the ideal price of a to-go sandwich or a bowl of something relatively healthy or reputable. But sticking to that is getting harder. When I forked over $19 for tofu and noodles to-go at my favorite under-the-radar Vietnamese joint, I realized one of my steadiest go-tos was edging into special-occasion territory. Of course, that included tax and a tip — because these days, every digital payment screen includes the stern suggestion that you add at least 15%, lest God pass judgement. 

I’m not the only one with a lunch-spending threshold. If anyone understands the psychology of the midday meal, it’s Leslie Silverglide, cofounder and CEO of Mixt, the San Francisco-founded salad chain celebrating its 20th year. (For the record, it predates L.A.’s Tender Greens and DC’s Sweetgreen.) Mixt’s mostly organic, responsibly sourced salads fall between $12 for a Caesar and $18 for the Bachelor, a hearty bowl of potatoes, blue cheese, and flat-iron steak. Not outrageous. For the quality, it’s in fact quite reasonable. 

Silverglide says the company has held its prices firm for the last three years despite the increasing costs of food — prices for butter lettuce and arugula have increased 100% year over year — and labor. “We live in fear that we’ll reach a point where people say, ‘I’m not going to pay for this,’” she says. “We can’t charge a lettuce surcharge. People wouldn’t understand it.” Ironically, the same people don’t seem to have a problem paying an extra $10 to have a salad delivered. Silverglide watches, equal parts bemused and resigned, as customers order through DoorDash. “Sometimes, their office is just a few blocks away!” 

Adam Mesnick has been making his cultish sandwiches at Deli Board in SoMa since 2009, long enough to watch the rising cost of goods quietly compound. Corned beef has gone from roughly $1.50 a pound when he opened to nearly $9 today. The 49er — corned beef, pastrami, brisket, American cheese, cherry peppers, coleslaw, and thousand island, all thoughtfully stuffed into a French roll — now sells for $24.

It’s a vulnerable price point. Mesnick points out something I hadn’t fully considered: lunch spots operate without a safety net. “You don’t have the easy bonus money, like booze or the dinner add-ons,” he says. “There are no workarounds. So you have to be very, very transparent with your price.” He says this with the calm of someone who knows he makes a damn good sandwich and has to abide by the math. “I will price a sandwich up to $32 if that’s what it has to be. If no one wants to buy it, that’s their choice.”

Sometimes, that choice feels easy to make. When Jane the Bakery opened its Third Street location as part of the SFMOMA, I had lunch with owner Amanda Michael. I ordered the salmon salad, and what arrived felt like two dishes in one: a half-pound piece of salmon on a hearty mix of greens, pricey avocado, sweet potato, pumpkin seeds, and cotija cheese. “We always want to give the best value,” Michael told me that winter afternoon. “I love it when I go somewhere and it feels generous.”

That salad cost $23 — technically over my self-imposed limit, but far less than $36. I took half of it home (and told Michael she needed to charge more). Considering that a salmon entrée at dinner is often well over $35, the salad seemed like a deal. Of course, at a full-service restaurant, you’re paying for the room, the server, the whole production. But the fish is often the same fish.

So what are we budget-minded lunchers supposed to do? First, accept that the cost of lunch will continue to rise. It’s an inevitability. I don’t need to give a lecture on the current costs of goods, labor, and skyrocketing gas prices. 

Second, when you do go out to grab lunch, try your best to reframe it as a less expensive dinner: same ingredients for a fraction of the damage. If there’s any upside, investing in lunch might force us to give the meal a little more respect. Take 20 minutes to eat with friends. Turn off the screens, have a seat in a chair without wheels. And stop treating lunch like a meal that doesn’t matter.