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The last time I was riding in Yorkshire with my mate Alex Jones we ended up back at his house on limited time and I needed something to eat (he had absolutely thrashed me on the bike and I was about to die)

What I didn’t realise about Alex was that he’s a chef. He made two poached eggs and some avocado with some chilli and some lime in it. I think it was on a slice of brown bread.

The ingredients weren’t expensive but the circumstances I ate them in and the way they had been prepared were worth about £1000 (don’t tell Alex that, he’s not getting it but he probably will read this!!)

An interesting thought that isn’t it?

I’ve had the privilege of going to Sat Bains restaurant in Nottingham three times in my life but not after he got two Michelin stars and not after he was voted the fourth best restaurant in the world on Trip Advisor I’m told!!

The thing about Sat Bains is that he uses almost all locally sourced produce and I know where to get it. I can go and buy it but I can’t eat it at Sat Bains and I can’t prepare it the way the Sat Bains team do.

The cost of the food at Sat Bains is expensive and doesn’t reflect the cost of the ingredients and almost always that’s the case, so why in dentistry do we not charge for our expertise and be proud of it? (Assuming that we do have that expertise in the first place)

Should I be ashamed that it’s expensive to have an implant carried out by me, who has been doing it for 20 years, who has placed 5,000 implants and who has been invited to speak in other countries about it or should I just charge the same as the other guys? Diving down into the soup of commoditisation.

The funny thing about this model though is that it does reflect backwards in food in a way that you wouldn’t believe. You can go to Sat Bains and have a £7.50 cup of coffee after your meal or you could nip off to Tesco and buy a large coke for £1.50. You would imagine Tesco’s margins are tiny on that and that it probably costs them £1.40 to provide the coke but it doesn’t.

When I was a student I worked for Tesco and they built a new shop that we moved into. They proudly showed us around the restaurant in the shop and proudly presented us a large coke in a cup with a lid and a straw and ice and told us that it cost Tesco 6p for the whole lot and they sold it for 99p.

It amazes me in dentistry where people charge £400 for a GBR procedure when the material costs £2 – 300. Before we can possibly expect patients to value the work that we do, the service we give and the care we bestow we must first love ourselves and value what we do.

In order to do that we must work together to be a better profession and to be one that lives up to its promises.

Blog Post Number: 1911