Smashed avocado discounted in cafes in wake of controversial saving advice for millennials

Updated

Brunch-loving millennials will now be able to have their cake — or indulgent breakfast food in this case — and eat it too, with cafes across Australia introducing discounts on smashed avocado to help them save for a house.

Key points: Cafes discounting smashed avo in wake of controversial weekend newspaper column

New, cheaper dishes nicknamed The Retirement Plan, Avonomics and The Baby Boomer

Brunch lovers sharing photos of homemade smashed avo on social media

The sale comes in the wake of yesterday's uproar over KPMG partner Bernard Salt's weekend newspaper column, which suggested young Australians should be spending less on breakfast and instead be saving for a home deposit.

"I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more," Salt wrote.

"I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this?"

Well, young people may not need to make the sacrifice, with several cafes this week offering new, home-saver-friendly prices.

At Little Big Sugar Salt in Melbourne's Abbotsford, a new penny-saver version of smashed avocado on toast is now on the menu.

The dish, now named The Retirement Plan, loses the expensive goat's curd and beetroot kraut offered on the more luxurious $17 version and offers simply avocado, Vegemite and tomato on toast for $10.

"We'd rather be happy and full with some friends in a cafe than sad, hungry and alone in some run-down investment property any day," a post on the cafe's Facebook page says.

"Save $7 on our avocado take, put it towards the Retirement Plan."

Other versions of the dish being offered within the trendy Melbourne cafe scene include The Baby Boomer, Avonomics and the Corn-tract of Sale, which includes a corn salsa.

In Sydney, similar dishes include the Home Saver's Signature Avocado and The Millennial.

The debate on whether young Australians should forgo smashed avocado breakfasts to afford a home deposit also hit politics, with Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson holding up a real avocado to highlight the debate during a Senate Estimates hearing.

Senator Whish-Wilson asked Treasury secretary John Fraser whether he agreed with Salt's comments that "millennials" should bypass $22 smashed avocado at cafes and save the money for a house deposit. The Treasury boss joked he would rather talk about the "exorbitant" cost of coffee in Melbourne.

But it appears at least some have heeded Salt's advice and have instead opted for a homemade smashed avocado this morning.

"DIY smashed avo at home this morning because we're saving," wrote Instgrammer louureadd.

Here is what some others have had to say:

Topics: offbeat, human-interest, food-and-beverage, business-economics-and-finance, community-and-society, lifestyle-and-leisure, australia

First posted