AAAAAARGGHHH

update - Sept 23, 2008

So... "crisis" might have been a bit overstated. Nobody actually ran out of food in North America. The media all but dropped the topic after about a month. We don't know much, sadly, about how the crisis played out in less bountiful countries than our own.

But, on the upside... the price of flour seems to have stabilized for the moment... it's still higher than it was BEFORE the "crisis" but it's not the astronomical prices we paid for about 8 months.

On the downside, easily 50% of the ingredients we buy went up in price by 15% or more... so it all balances out. Flour goes back down a bit, and other stuff goes up.

And some still continues to rise. Nuts. Dairy. Petroleum-based packaging... check the blog for more on this topic.

update - June 8, 2008

Well, it seems that - manufactured or not - this "crisis" is real and not going away quickly.

The whole "cost of flour" thing is really just the beginning of the problem.

Since January we have tracked costs, and basically EVERY food staple we stock has gone up in price...

Packaging has gone up. Biodegradable packaging is even MORE expensive.

A couple things have gone down, tho... dry wax sandwich bags, mustard seeds, yogurt...

But more stuff has gone up: margarine, butter, eggs, chicken, ham, canola oil, walnuts, pecans, coconut, mayo, sour cream, whipping cream, coffee cream, sugar (of all sorts), molasses too, chocolate, cheeses, cranberries, bacon, spinach, jalapenos, tomatoes...

We can't fight it any more, we're afraid. We HAVE to put prices up, or we're going to go out of business, there's simply no two ways about it.

It makes us very sad, because we started on this adventure to be a place where anyone could go - for a treat or for a regular stop - without having to spend time considering their budget... or planning for it. We wanted to be that place where you could just GO because it was easily affordable and good. I'm afraid, if we want to stay in business, that will not be altogether possible now... certainly we won't become Spence or the Blue Heron, but we have no choice but to be more expensive than Wendy's or Subway... we don't have their buying power nor their volume of sales.

We have some new ideas in the wings, and hopefully will be able to enact them over the coming months... money is definitely an issue... we have to generate enough revenue to pay all the bills AND live AND grow the business... right now that's not really the case. We have to become better business people... which sadly means that we have to let go of some of our original intentions and revise them to allow for sustainability of our venture.

Suggestions and ideas and help are all welcome!

March 8, 2008

Ok, so we've been going on about this for a while... the cost of flour is rising, that means prices may need to reflect that...

And, sadly, it's currently far too true.

We're doing our research to make sure we don't panic unnecessarily: there's some suggestion that this is a manufactured crisis and that it's not necessary to panic and start putting prices up, that it will all calm down as fast as it went sideways. There's MORE evidence, however, that it is a true crisis and that panic - or at least some immediate price increases - may be legitimate.

We will be mitigating some of this flour, egg, dairy, sugar increase with some other increases in areas where we HAVEN't recently raised prices.

Additionally, we were warned about 6 months ago that RICE FLOUR is also careening toward a shortage - tho we haven't heard anything more about that recently. That said, we've been keeping gluten vs. gluten-free pricing equal, and we won't be able to do that much longer. Our costs for gluten-free flours has always been triple the cost of wheat, so we're forced to reflect some of that. The gluten-free muffins and special order items will go up slightly. We expect that the standard sweets will not go up noticeably, if at all. We may have to institute a surcharge for the brown rice tortilla option on sandwiches.

Whatever we do, we'll keep you as informed as we are, and do our best to keep any raises to a minimum. As we're sure you can appreciate, we have to make a living doing this too... we love what we do, but not enough to lose our house over it.

So here's some reading for you, if you're interested. We'd be very happy to receive your comments & questions - email eat@wildbistro.com

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Wild Bistro & Bakery - 1a-682 Gibsons Way, Gibsons BC, V0N 1V9