CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Coastal Bend businesses are feeling the effects of rising grocery costs as one Padre Island business explained they are barely making a profit, regardless of the high numbers of customers.
Local business owners on the island said they're paying two-to-three times more for groceries this year.
Island Italian Restaurant has been open on Padre Island for 36 years. Owner Anthony Tagliaferro spoke with 3NEWS and said, they serve about 200 people a day, five days a week. But the winter season means less foot traffic, despite rising food costs.
"Very frustrating, yes. We've had one of the best year customer-wise but profit-wise was one of the hardest years." Tagliaferro said.
However, business owners are holding on to hope that prices will go back down. Tagliaferro explained, "Hopefully they'll go down this year, you know, I mean eggs, chicken, stuff like that are really hurting everybody out here. All these businesses need a little help.".
Tagliaferro said he noticed the prices increase in early 2022, thinking it would go back down, but it never did.
Since they want to pay employees well to keep them there, he said they might have to scale the menu down, so they don't have to keep as much food in stock. That also means potentially raising prices on the menu, something he's reluctant to do to his frequent customers.
Tagliaferro said, "They're very willing to pay whatever we charge. We don't want to do that, but we're going to have to do something to make the margin go up a little bit."
For context, Island Italian used to pay $25 for Romane lettuce, now it's $72. Fry oil used to be about $20, now it's $50. They now pay $3.60 a pound for 120 pounds of cheese and $100 for 10 boxes of gloves for their staff.
Despite the increase, Tagliaferro said he's confident prices will go back down eventually. He added, "One hurdle is the next. We had the hurricane, we had COVID, now we're on to this. So as long as we can keep our head above water, that's what we're going to do."
Tagliaferro said, his daughter is already training to take over the restaurant once he's ready to retire.
He told 3NEWS, his family will make sure the businesses make it through challenges like these in the meantime.
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