- Local restaurants are grappling with food inflation affecting their overhead costs, revenue, and items they can offer on the menu.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture says food prices will increase by 3 percent across the board in 2025.
- Watch now to hear two local restaurant owners talk through how food inflation has affected their business.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
A national issue we've been tracking locally here at ABC27 is food inflation — what that looks like for neighbors, food banks, and other resources.
I'm Alberto Camargo in the Northwest Tallahassee neighborhood.
Tracking how food inflation is impacting local restaurants here in the Capital City — from what they can offer to what they're charging neighbors to eat.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects prices for all food to up by 3 percent this year.
It doesn't sound like much, but Leon Brunson of Leon's at Lake Ella says its more like: "Death by a million cuts. Like everything, aside from eggs, is getting collectively more expensive. Your oils are more expensive, commodity products more expensive, your proteins. Avocado prices, for sure, which we use in our crema, but citrus just in general. That and chemicals, total increase all over the board."
And that's all aside from a drastic increase in egg prices due to bird flu outbreaks.
Brunson says it forced him to make the tough decision to remove a popular pasta dish from the menu — rather than sacrificing quality.
"We started making this fresh pasta in fall of last year, we would rotate it in," said Brunson. "It was made with eggs, egg yolk, olive oil — delicious pasta, great texture. But that was one of the first things to go just because of the price it was costing to make this fresh pasta."
Roy Conway of Conchman Conway on the southside discusses what's increased in his costs.
"Everything from flour, oil, lemons, limes," said Conway.
Despite the added overhead costs, Conway says he's staying firm on current prices to meet his customers' needs as the cost of living continues to go up — even if it hurts his revenue.
"I got loyal customers and I want the prices to stay the same, so I'm taking the bullet to the foot, keeping prices the same and hoping everything gets better pretty soon," said Conway.
Brunson also says one impact he could see being a problem for restaurants is customer expectations with higher prices.
He says customers might reasonably expect more from a $23 hamburger than a $15 hamburger.
In Northwest Tallahassee, Alberto Camargo, ABC27.
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