Menu margins: How restaurants price your favorite meals
Ben Smith, owner of Cooper-Young’s Tsunami, is one of the Memphis-area restauteurs facing fluctuating food costs. (Benjamin Naylor/The Daily Memphian)
Many chefs and restaurateurs will tell you that running a restaurant, especially lately, feels like being on a roller coaster.
The past few years have been some of the most volatile in history in terms of the cost of ingredients, with prices often fluctuating weekly — if not daily.
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Ben Smith, owner of Tsunami in Cooper-Young, said he is worried about the fate of small, independent restaurants.
“Restaurant operators have been through it the past four years – COVID, shutdowns, supply chain issues, labor issues,” he said. “When customers see a busy dining room, they think things have returned back to normal for us, but they haven’t.”
Smith said that one of the biggest issues has been inflation and ingredient costs fluctuating more rapidly than they ever have before.
“There is no predictability,” he said. “I have been open over 25 years and have never seen it like this.”
Topics
Tsunami Ben Smith The Bar-B-Q Shop Eric Vernon Jim's Place Grille James Taras Ben E. Keith Stephen Hassinger Subscriber OnlyThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Jennifer Chandler
A cookbook author and former restaurateur, Jennifer Chandler has been writing about food and dining for more than 25 years. In her role as the food and restaurant writer for The Daily Memphian, she covers food news, provides readers an inside look into their favorite restaurants and offers suggestions for what to order at eateries across the Memphis area.
Chandler’s stories and recipes have been featured in national publications such as Real Simple, HGTV Magazine and Woman’s World. She’s also appeared on a number of national broadcast cooking segments including Food Network’s “Dinner: Impossible” and Ducks Unlimited TV. She also hosts a radio show “The Weekly Dish” on Memphis’s NPR station WKNO-FM.
She is the author of four cookbooks: “The Southern Pantry Cookbook,” “Simply Salads,” “Simply Suppers,” and “Simply Grilling.” While she boasts a degree from Le Cordon Bleu, this Memphis native is about making real food accessible for real families.
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