While most restaurants have reopened for in-person dining and many customers feel things are back to normal, Verde Valley restaurants are still feeling the effects of food shortages and price increases.
While for the most part, the frequency of food shortages has declined dramatically since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants are still very much feeling the pains of increased costs and slower delivery times. And many of the items that are hard to come by seem to vary by distributor, brand and just general luck.
According to the U.S.Department of Agriculture, there are not currently any nationwide shortages of food. However, a number of factors, including port delays that keep ships full of supplies waiting at docks for extended periods of time, are contributing to supply-chain issues that are greatly impacting distribution timelines and prices.
Noah Skelton, general manager of Mount Hope Wholesale, a bulk food distributor based out of Cottonwood, said while they’re not currently out of any items in particular, items like cashews, kiwi and chili powder have been in high demand and are difficult to source right now.
“It’s really random what is hard to find,” he said.
The majority of the issues has to do with a significant delay in shipping times, he said. One example of a product that has been delayed as of late are peanuts, which are taking around three months longer to arrive than usual.
“Trying to order your demands three months in advance can get really difficult,” Skelton said.
In addition, every item they stock has gone up in price by at least 10%, and while Skelton said they’ve done what they can to keep from raising their prices as a result, they have had to increase what they charge for some items.
The delays and price increases have been felt by restaurants as well, many of which have had to raise their prices or discontinue menu items as a result.
Brenda Clouston, owner of Colt Bar & Grill in Cottonwood, said she has noticed a significant increase in the cost of things like cooking oil and meat, as well as non-food items like gloves, buckets, paper products and paint. Additionally, items like ketchup have been difficult to come by.
While they haven’t had any recent issues with sourcing meat products, the cost of meat has gone up by 60% to 70% since the onset of the pandemic, she said. In fact, she, like Skelton, can’t think of a single item that has not gone up in price.
“Anything that you need for your nice restaurant, chances are either you can’t get it or now it’s more expensive than you paid before,” Clouston said. “It’s across the board …. Businesses like mine, they’re affected greatly because we rely on all these products.”
While she did have to raise her prices a bit around six months ago to offset the higher expenses, she has been able to absorb most of the cost and has no intention of raising them again unless she has to.
And she’s not alone. Other restaurants, like Outlaw Grille in Sedona, are currently in the process of raising prices to counter the steadily increasing costs.
“Since the whole COVID started, things started going on and just hasn’t gotten better,” Outlaw Grille Manager Sylvia Robles said. “It just kind of keeps going, like it might not be super significant all at once but they just continue to go [up].”
Robles also cited meats as costing more these days as well as things like onion rings and soda bottles. Luckily, she said, their distribution representatives have been able to substitute many of the items they usually order that are out of stock or delayed with similar products.
Gail Cronin, general manager of Crusty’s Pizza in Camp Verde, said they have also had to make substitutions for many of their regular ingredients, but other than that, besides a few of their favorite salad dressings being discontinued, they haven’t had too many issues lately besides battling the ever-increasing cost of ingredients.
“There have definitely been price increases. We haven’t passed them on to the public though,” she said. “We’ve had a little bit of where we couldn’t get our product that we’re used to and had to deal with substitutions, but we’ve managed.”
Steve Martinez, kitchen manager at La Fonda Mexican Restaurant in Camp Verde, said they’ve also had to raise their prices and continue to have issues ordering things like children’s cups and tomato sauce. They’ve also noticed a significant increase in the cost of ingredients and echoed that meat has been especially expensive as of late.
“Chicken and meat are my biggest headaches right now,” he said. “It’s gotten a little better, but I wish it’d be like it was before.”
Not only are costs and shortages impacting businesses, but across the board, restaurants have complained of a lack of staffing.
“It’s not even, like, not finding the right person,” Robles said. “People are just not even looking.”
