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.
Why aren’t the campaigns focusing on who the heck voted for this famine in the first place?
The campaigns aren’t going to talk about it because they’re part of the problem. Yes, McCain, too.
From Fortune magazine:
“In a flip-flop so absurd it’ll be a wonder if it doesn’t get lampooned by late-night comedians - not to mention opponents’ negative ads - McCain is now proclaiming himself a “strong” ethanol supporter.
‘I support ethanol and I think it is a vital, a vital alternative energy source not only because of our dependency on foreign oil but its greenhouse gas reduction effects,’ he said in an August speech in Grinnell, Iowa, as reported by the Associated Press.”
It's pretty obvious that something named "Peanut Buster Parfait" has peanuts. It simple to avoid that. There are lots of foods on the shelf that have gluten, but fail to explicitly state the fact. That makes it difficult to screen. I've been fighting a dribbly nose for some months. I finally traced it to my daily habit of drinking a Java Monster Big Black. The malto-dextrin used as a sweetener contains gluten. I stopped drinking the Big Black's and my nose quit dribbling.
Well, I am with you! Most of the things on my list are either on sale or there’s some special on.
We may have an easier time not eating out, as we pretty much never got into the habit to begin with.
Where are you where gas has doubled? Out in CA? We pay more than the natl ave where I am because we have to use a special gas formula and are in an ethanol-mandated area (ugggh).
You’ll get a lot more than just salmon if you buy it from China.
What's your solution?
Drilling in ANWR. Exploration and drilling off shore where it isn't allowed now. Massive expansion of nuclear. Curtailment of any fuel that could be used as motor fuel (oil, natural gas) for electrical generation. Coal. Yes coal. As soon as the AWG fad has passed more will be possible. Burning food is stupid.
That said , what I would really like to see is the government stop fining and feeing the average citizen for "inventing" Why not, instead of punishing, permit individuals to register and try to come up with an alternative energy. Give them a year and the winner a million dollars. Our country didn't become the great nation it is because of bureaucrats. Regular folk with ideas and dreams made it happen.
Once global cooling starts they’ll be begging for coal plants.
Or sea turtle from Gaza.
I can't remember ever buying anything from Pakistan. Considering the crud the probably pours out of the Persian Gulf they probably had two heads.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.