"If it's (very rarely) something obscene like $80, they come back the next day and are satisfied."
Whenever that happened I would use something more affordable like Litecoin or Dash.
It will be interesting to see how Bitcoin fares if we have a debt / financial reset. I think that's when utility coins/tokens will really shine.
Also, when more people try to actually use the chain.
It works fine for a small collection of people, but not the whole world.