BRADENTON, Fla. — A Bradenton restaurant owner says rising food and supply costs are forcing price increases at Willy-Yums, where the restaurant is balancing higher expenses with lower customer spending.
Robert Williams, co-owner of Willy-Yums off 14th Street West, said he has owned the restaurant for nine years with his wife, Kim Williams. The restaurant serves comfort food, including one of its signature items — hot dogs.
“This is my dream. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was 17 years old, and I opened up when I was 46,” Williams said.
Williams said inflation is affecting daily operations, including food and supplies used to serve customers. He said meat, especially chicken, has become more expensive, and paper products have also increased in price.
“A lot of our meats are chickens. A lot of those things have gone up significantly,” Williams said. “Our cost of just paper, your napkins … has gone from $17 up to over $30 per box.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, all food prices are forecast to rise 3% this year. Williams said those increases are adding pressure as customer spending declines.
“We are down 20% in our sales because customer sales are a lot less, from over $19 per person down to $14 per person, per customer sales ticket,” Williams said. “The cost of our products are up 34%, so we’re having to eat a lot of that.”
Williams said the restaurant kept prices the same for about five years but raised some menu prices at the beginning of the month by 50 cents to $1.
Dipayan Biswas, a marketing professor at USF, said higher meat prices are tied in part to labor challenges in poultry farms and meat production plants.
“They have trouble recruiting people for a variety of reasons,” Biswas said. “All those have combined together, have raised their prices for those products, like meat products.”
The USDA predicts food prices will increase again next year by nearly 2.5%. Biswas said higher prices may lead more people to save money by cooking at home or choosing cheaper fast-food options.
Williams said Willy-Yums is also using more social media advertising and specials to help bring in customers.
“We’ve increased that significantly,” Williams said. “We have to, you know, have specials and stuff like that just to get more people to notice who we are.”
