Hospitality owner’s chilling warning about coffee prices
A hospitality business owner has issued a dire warning about what people should be expecting to pay when it comes to a cup of coffee.
A hospitality business owner has issued a dire warning about what people should be expecting to pay when it comes to a cup of coffee.
Josh Rivers, who owns four South Australian venues including Australia’s first Chicago deep-dish pizza restaurant Remy’s, claimed on the Eat With Us podcast that the next two years would be the worst ever for the hospitality industry.
“It’s everything. Six months ago, we had the award went up, super went up, gas went up, electricity went up, all the major food groups, cheese, eggs, meat and bread all went up,” he said.
He said that coffees should be $8 or $8.50 for a small but they’re stuck at $5.50 as customers don’t have the money to pay for it.
Mr Rivers said the award agreement has gone up and while it’s not enough for people to survive on it’s also too much for cafes, adding frustrating with economists repeatedly telling us “it’s going to be okay”.
“You don’t really know, you’re just predicting based off of curves and I get to see it in real time,” he said.
“Being on the cafe floor I’m seeing people go ‘I’m going to have one coffee, not two’ or ‘I’m going to share a meal with my friend instead buying one for myself’.”
He said hospitality businesses are seeing a downturn in expenditure and it’s “only going to get worse”.
Mr Rivers isn’t the only one with thinking it, with Richard Forbes, the chief executive of Independent Food Distributors Australia, whose members provide food to 60,000 cafes, restaurants, pubs and clubs, telling news.com.au that distributors have seen a 30 per cent increase in the cost of food over the last three years.
“We’ve all seen the price of beverages and food rise. That’s not going to get any better until we start doing something to rein in the costs of business,” Mr Forbes said.
“We can see it getting to a point of a $10 cup of coffee if things don’t improve … and if things aren’t done to stabilise the cost of business.”
As well as food, Mr Forbes said those in the supply chain are facing other rising costs including rent, insurance, petrol and energy.
“Our average members are facing energy bills of $25,000 per month – not per annum, per month,” he explained.
“All of those costs have to be absorbed. And at the end of the day, when you have rising energy costs, insurance, rents, fuel and labour costs in the beginning of the supply chain down to the end of it, then the people that end up paying more for their coffees, their piece of carrot cake, their meal at a restaurant, their parmigiana at a pub, are the consumers.”
Mr Forbes stressed cafes should not be blamed for increases prices, as businesses are simply trying to survive in an “operating environment that is unviable”.
However, Australians have shared frustration at the rising costs of dining out or ordering takeaway.
Nikki Potter was left shocked at the price and size of a small coffee and Vegemite on toast, which set her back $13.90, and took to social media to ask if she had a “right” to be annoyed by it.
She then showed the size of her coffee, which she claimed was an extra small as she “knew what a small coffee looked like” and claimed what she got wasn’t it.
She then said she was given the butter and Vegemite in separate containers so she could spread it herself, which she understood as everyone has different rations, but she wasn’t given a knife to do it with.
She then held up two pieces of bread, with one slice being almost double the size of the other.
“They are laughing their heads off that they managed to get away with giving me that. That’s annoyed me,” she said.
An anonymous Australian woman expressed her frustration at paying $50 on fish and chips — which featured chips, two battered pieces of fish, calamari rings, a seafood stick and potato scallops — and being frustrated with what she got.
“This is $50 worth of fish and chips, and a horrible lot it was,” she captioned the image of her food that was shared to popular Facebook page Meanwhile In Australia.
“The chips were yellow and the spring roll and calamari were burnt, the old school fish and chips shops are sorely missed.”
Hot chips can become yellow due to the oil they are fried in.
It’s not the first time Australians have complained about the quality and price of hot chips, with one woman complaining about her experience at a New South Wales cafe after paying $10 for the salty treat.
When she called the cafe to complain, the Aussie was told that due to the current times, they had made a decision to reduce serving sizes.
Unfortunately, the explanation did little to settle her rage and after taking her frustrations out to the public, she realised she wasn’t the only one who experienced this at the same eatery.
One frustrated Sydney diner took to Reddit to complaint after buying a bowl of “sauce-less” hot chippies in a pub that had set him back $16.10.
“No sauce, yes on a Sunday [so possible weekend surcharge], but what has happened?” the man questioned.
Without a presumed 15 per cent surcharge, the chips would’ve cost roughly $13.70 – which sadly is on par with prices across a lot of Sydney venues.