Man, I feel this.
At the start of COVID our neighborhood (~125 families) thought it would be cool to invite a different food truck once a week as a win/win. At first, it went incredibly well. Everyone felt good about spending money with them (and they were truly, openly grateful), while also getting a nice quality meal for our families. After a while, though, the demand dried up and the organizer started pleading with the neighborhood to start showing up or the trucks would no longer bother coming to us. A reasonable outcome that frankly was probably warranted. The reason we stopped going was the prices stayed "questionably" high even as COVID wained while the food seemed to lose it's uniqueness and edge. At some point, I was just paying people a premium to throw together a burger that wasn't really any different than I could have whipped up with minimal effort or just gone to any local restaurant and at least had some service come with that price tag.
And, yeah, the tip is weird. Really any time I'm tipping the *owner* of the business seems off to me.