It’s been great to see restaurants opening again to full or near full capacity this week in many parts of the country. For those that survived the COVID counter-measures, congratulations on your success at surviving a tough 14+ months.

But it’s obvious that restaurants aren’t out of the woods yet. Some still have reduced capacity restrictions. Many are struggling to regain employees that have been lost into the "vortex of ease" resulting from government over-funding of over-extended unemployment benefits. The jobs lost last year in the restaurant industry are back, but where are the workers now?

Many former employees have fallen so deeply into the large divots in their couches that they require cave rescues. And when rescue is offered, their Stockholm-syndrome love affair with their government-subsidized lifestyle means they will only come back to work if the pot is sweetened with substantial raises in wages. I’ve seen restaurants in Colorado this week offer $25 per hour starting wages and a sign-on bonus if they stay for six months. They still can’t find workers!

Also, prices for pretty much everything restaurants use are up from a year ago, including paper products, produce, dairy, fry oil and meat. I’ve asked around and haven’t found price reductions on literally anything that restaurants use compared to a year ago. Do you know of anything that’s actually gone down?

Just in time for Memorial Day, summer grilling and Father’s Day, beef-middle meat prices are climbing faster than ever. I had to raise prices by $2 a pound on middles from just a week ago. I fear that I will have to raise prices daily instead of weekly very soon.

Last week I had a customer return several cases of fresh chicken breasts because they were “too big.” I explained to my customer that chicken plants everywhere are short on labor, and consequently birds are bigger than normal at slaughter. There’s not a whole lot anyone can do about it in the short term. The customer returned them anyway. I guess chicken sandwiches were removed from their menu this week. “No soup for you!” has become, “No chicken sandwich for you!”

What miracle can I perform to rectify this problem? Oh, I know, I’ll just ask for small bird breasts next time from all the vendors with the oversized birds. Sure, that will work.

Maybe you’ve noticed that when you order chicken wings at your favorite wing joint that the wing count per order is going down and the wings are getting bigger and more expensive. Do you think restaurant customers will pay $20 for a plate of a dozen chicken wings? At one of my favorite stops in Denver, an order of 12 wings has now become eight wings, and the price is now up to $16 for wings as an appetizer. After a drink and a tip, that’s nearly a $30 tab. Wow. Would you pay this for a plate of wings?

Many of my restaurant-operating customers have been working hard on their new summer menus. For some, I think they’ll have to just print “market price” for items that are price-volatile. Some will scrap the printed menu entirely and just use a digital menu that they can easily change prices on weekly. That seems like a smart idea, given the cost of frequently reprinting menus when many economic forecasters and prognosticators are all sadly predicting the continuation of food inflation.

The saving grace for many independent and burger-centric restaurants has been the almighty beef burger. Yes, prices are up some, but not like beef middles or chicken wings. The food cost on an all-beef burger is still excellent at below 25% for most operators. The resilience of beef burger popularity has demonstrated that a restaurant can charge nearly $20 in most big cities and consumers will happily pay it for the rich satisfaction that a burger and fries brings to the pallet.

What trends are you observing from your restaurant customer’s behaviors to find help and to mitigate food cost inflation?

Higher meat prices in 2021: Mitigating complications arising from food cost inflation

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