Posted on 04/12/2008 8:16:06 PM PDT by blam
Food price rise affects restaurant menus
By Ian Johnston
Last Updated: 3:36am BST 13/04/2008
Restaurants have slapped a surcharge on the cost of steaks and dropped popular dishes from their menus as they pass on soaring food costs to their customers.
Owners say the rising prices of staples such as rice, beef and chicken are forcing them to cut the size of portions, use more vegetables and re-write recipes to drop expensive ingredients.
Fish not fowl: Le Raj restaurant owner Enam Ali has introduced pangush fish as a cheaper alternative to chicken
A fillet steak surcharge of several pounds has been added to some menus. Other casualties include mozzarella cheese and chicken tikka biryani, while smoked mackerel is being offered as a cheaper alternative to salmon.
Skimping on side orders is another survival strategy being adopted, with extras such as coleslaw disappearing from plates.
Despite these measures, market analysts said they expected the rate of restaurants going out of business to increase with rising costs - accounted for largely by ingredients - already wiping out the average caterer's profit margin.
Miles Quest, of the British Hospitality Association, which includes the Restaurant Association, said: "High food prices are certainly affecting the industry. I think most caterers are trying to change the menus to reflect this. But where you are serving steak, the only option is to have a smaller portion."
Rising grain prices affect the price of bread and pasta, but also have an impact on meat and dairy prices, with feed wheat prices up more than 80 per cent since April last year.
Vince Margiotta, director of Il Forno Italian restaurant in Liverpool and Sapporo Teppanyaki in Liverpool and Manchester, said they had added a £2.50 extra charge on their menus for customers ordering fillet steak.
"We've had a significant increase on fillet and I've had to pass that on [to customers]," Mr Margiotta said. "I've altered the pricing on the menu with £2.50 on top of the £17.75 list price in an addendum. We have added other cuts of meat to our weekly specials menu."
Rice has seen the most dramatic price rises, with several major rice-growing countries in south-east Asia in effect banning exports to keep prices low for the home market. Basmati rice is the only type coming out of India and now costs British wholesalers about £1,000 a ton, up 100 per cent since April last year. Long-grain rice from Thailand has risen 60 per cent in the last 2½ months.
Enam Ali, chairman of the Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs, said in 30 years in the business he had never known anything like the recent rises in food prices.
Mr Ali, who owns the award-winning Le Raj restaurant in Epsom Downs, Surrey, said in just six weeks the price he paid for 44lb of rice had doubled from £18 to £36, while the cost of 22lb of chicken fillets had risen from £25 to £32. The cost of a range of other ingredients, including ghee and spices, had also gone up dramatically.
As a result, Le Raj's chicken tikka biryani dish will be dropped altogether - charging a market rate would see it rise from £12.50 to about £18.
Chicken tikka massala is staying on the menu, but will rise from £8.50 to £9.50
Tengamita, another chicken dish, is to increase in price from £8.50 to £11.95 while special rice is to rise from the loss-making price of £3.65 to £4.50 or £4.65.
"The rice is a really big problem because 99 per cent of our customers eat rice," Mr Ali said. "I am going to start changing some dishes because I'm losing money. I thought the market would get back to normal, it might be temporary - that's why I haven't increased prices - but now I have to, it's going up and up. It's not stopping.
He is bringing in pangush, a popular Bangladeshi fish dish, and a chicken kebab mixed half-and-half with vegetables as more affordable options. But some businesses, instead of changing the menu, are choosing to serve less.
A catering industry insider said: "We've heard that people are taking away the little embellishments - fish and chips might now be missing the coleslaw. People are taking some of the bigger cuts of meat off the menu. Where before you might be offered a 4oz and 8oz steak, now you can only have the 4oz."
Peter Backman, managing director of the catering industry analyst Horizons, said businesses were being forced into making changes at a time of very stiff competition.
"People are reformulating their menus. One of the solutions is replacing more expensive things with cheaper things," he said.
Chantelle Ludski, who is the founder and chief sandwich maker of the London-based company Fresh! Naturally Organic, has come up with several new sandwich recipes to stave off the worst effects of the rising cost of supplies.
She has decided to replace her roast beef, mozzarella, pesto, tomato and rocket sandwich with a similar one, but using British smoked cheddar and a home-made, sun-dried tomato pesto to keep the cost down to £2.65.
"It's just tweaking the ingredients. You might say we would do that anyway, but we have also been doing it with an eye to the cost of ingredients," Miss Ludski said. However, some price rises have been inevitable, with an egg sandwich up from £1.90 to £2.05.
But Ian Brown, head chef of Glasgow's Ubiquitous Chip restaurant, said it was not necessarily a bad thing if higher costs meant restaurateurs were looking at cheaper cuts of meat. "It takes more skill to use the cheaper cuts," he said.
This is part of the reason why me and my other half don’t go out to eat that much anymore
This must be the new liberal “MEME”.
Same article published in the Boston Globe today but with a local twist.
This is what Idiot liberals do when..
A.) It’s an election year.
B.) Global Warming Policies “ come HOME TO ROOST”!
There does appear to be a worldwide food shortage. Both India and China are prohibiting the export of rice.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
There is a steak house around here that has a beautiful view of a cow pasture.
Oh well, there is supposed to be a global obesity crisis, too. Perhaps one will fix the other.
I am truly sorry for those who are really hungry (and underweight), though.
It seems to me, however, that we should not be reading daily rants about how fat we all are right along with daily rants about how there’s no more food, or what there is is unaffordable.
archer daniels midlands is laughing all the way to the bank with their ethanol tax break.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Me too. We spend a little more at the grocery store for good items and make dishes up ourselves at home.
Yepp!! The idiotic ‘let’s burn our food, it’s cleaner’ nonsense is filtering through the markets. Thanks for playing. Maybe now they see what idiotic policies have wrought.
SPOT-ON! Let's all reduce our CO2 output by 50%, 70% or even 90% over the next couple decades. We'll do it by taxing all fossil fuels! That'll force those evil consumers to mend their profligate energy wasting ways!
Lib response...Oops! Tee Hee. We forgot that all farm equipment is powered by fossil fuels, all ammonia fertilizers originate from natural gas, that food is transported to market with fossil fuels, and refrigerated by fossil fuels in-transit and in the retail store. And we forgot the growing crops for ethanol would displace food crops. Aren't we a bunch of silly gooses?
Arbys is my restaurant of choice.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I’m not spending any more money. Gas has doubled and some grocery items cost 25-50% more now. I’ve basically quit eating out, and buy mostly stuff on sale to balance things out since
I’m not the government and don’t have a money tree in the back yard.
When we occasionally go out though I want to go to a restuarant. They do tend to serve a lot of food (that we expect) Maybe they could offer smaller portion with free 2nds instead , to cut down on waste and cost.
I thought you just went to the store and get rice or whatever you need. Why would growing crops for fuel affect food in the stores? They’re completely different.
:-)
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