Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, and as families prepare to buy all the ingredients for traditional holiday meals, soaring food prices weigh heavily on shoppers. Restaurant owners also feel the crunch of higher prices, especially when trying not to pass the expense on to customers.
Jesse Garcia, a sous-chef and business partner at Bam’s Vegan restaurant in Irving, told NBC DFW, as a restaurant owner, “You do not want to raise your prices and start moving your meals up to $20” because “you don’t want to gouge customers.”
He said, “Because you still want them to come in.”
Garcia said vegan options tend to have a higher price point. To combat prices, he moved more of his restaurant’s operations in-house — making their own sauces, making everything from scratch, and negotiating with vendors.
Overall, the restaurant industry has lagged behind the grocery industry regarding raising prices, according to Joe Monastero, Texas Restaurant Association’s chief operating officer.
Monastero told NBC 5 DFW, “While operators have been fighting inflation throughout the year, this is after coming out of a pandemic and dealing with the supply chain crisis and labor shortage crisis,” he said.
“So whether it’s beef, chicken, fats, oils, vegetables, fruit — all of them are at different amounts, but across the board — it’s 27.5% higher to buy your food for a restaurant than it was last year,” Monastero added.
Restaurants have to get creative to keep costs down, and with avian flu impacting the turkey supply and prices, venues are taking the opportunity to sell early.
“Lots of restaurants are offering packaged meals where you get a turkey or ham or prime rib and all the fixings to go with it to have your Thanksgiving meal,” explained Monastero. “You can certainly support your local restaurants by ordering your Thanksgiving meal from them and then save the cleanup in the kitchen.”
Restaurants have undoubtedly faced enormous challenges over the past two years, but Garcia said he continues to push through.
“You have to believe in your vision,” he said. “Of course, when you build a business, you can’t always plan for peaceful times; you got to roll with the economy and [set] higher goals.”
“Through ups and downs, you got to be able to have that vision long term no matter how hard and rocky stuff may be sometimes,” Garcia added. “You got to stick to the plan that you’ve laid out.”
