Thanksgiving is two weeks away and as families prepare to buy all the ingredients for the traditional meals, grocery prices are top of mind.
It's the same for restaurant owners who are navigating the higher prices while trying not to dump it all on customers.
"You don't want to gouge customers because you still want them to come in. If you raise your prices up and start moving your meals up to like $20," said Jesse Garcia, a sus chef and business partner at Bam's Vegan restaurant in Irving. "You know, it's hard for people because they're suffering through the same thing your suffering through."
The vegan restaurant, which uses plant-based ingredients, has become known for its dishes, especially its nachos, which exclude all animal products.
Garcia said with the holidays around the corner, they've started advertising their Thanksgiving menu.
"People normally have a hard time finding vegan options around the holidays because, usually, family members aren’t vegan. So they provide the turkey and all that while you're sitting there eating sides," explained Garcia.
He said that's why they have a pre-packaged menu for Thanksgiving and while they focus on their recipes, they also have to keep an eye out for rising prices.
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"You go into like a lot of stores now and stuff that’s normally like $3 here is now $6. There's rumors of a butter shortage, so I don't know how that's going to affect the plant-based market, because now, those prices are crazy, because a lot of like vegan food is already marked up a high price and just because the labor," he said.
Garcia said they've moved more of their operations in-house, such as making their own sauces, making everything from scratch and negotiating with vendors. He said they're also mindful of utilities, such as lights.
He said they don't want to raise prices too much because they still want people to come through the door.
“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 the labor shortage crisis. But the average cumulative difference right now is 27.5% of year-over-year food costs," said Joe Monastero, chief operating officer for the Texas Restaurant Association. "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."
He said even with those hurdles, restaurateurs have not increased prices as much as the grocery industry.
"Restaurateurs have been having to make that very difficult decision a lot over the last year in deciding when do they increase their prices and trying to keep up with things," said Monastero. "Overall, the restaurant industry has remained a little bit behind the grocery industry as far as raising prices. You'll see upwards of about 8% to 9% on the restaurant side; 17% On the grocery side. So in some cases, restaurants are actually pacing ahead of grocery stores when it comes to the costs."
He went on to say that many in the industry have had to be creative to keep costs down, and now with avian flu impacting the supply of turkeys and costs, places are taking the opportunity to sell early.
"Lots of restaurants are offering packaged meals where you get, you know, a turkey or ham or prime rib and all the fixings to go with it to have your Thanksgiving meal. You can certainly support your local restaurants by ordering your Thanksgiving meal from them and then save the cleanup in the kitchen," said Monastero.
Garcia echoed the same message.
"If you want to try a different type of alternative, if you want to save a little more money than a whole big turkey, come try us out," said Garcia.
Even with the economic curveballs in the past two years, he said they continue to push through.
"You have to believe in your vision, so we had a vision for the business, of course, when you build a business, you can’t always plan for peaceful times, you got to roll with the economy and higher goals, so through inflation, through ups and downs, you got to be able to have that vision long term that no matter how hard and rocky stuff maybe sometimes, you got to stick to the plan that you've laid out," said Garcia.
