Madison Reporter

Inflation is forcing restaurants in Wisconsin to take a heavy hit, as many owners are choosing to take big losses rather than increase their prices.

As prices for items such as beef and fish rise about 25-30% over the past two years, restaurant owners have had to get creative rather than risk losing customers by hiking their prices. For example, Chef Nick Dawson at Barringer's in Green Bay, Wisconsin, could charge up to $70 for a steak to break even, but he’s choosing to eat the loss, so to speak.

“We've never had a complaint on any of our prices that we've set, mainly because I always have a standard,” Dawson said in an article on NBC26’s website.

To Dawson and others, quality is the main ingredient, and they’re not willing to cut back on that.

What they have had to cut, however, has been staffing. With increased labor and supply costs, which has meant increased challenges to restaurant owners such as Dawson.

“A lot of times a lot of chefs, a lot of managers used to manage and really be chefs,” Dawson said in the article. And while many owners may have moved out of the kitchen, COVID-19 has moved them back. 

“The pandemic has brought us back into the kitchen. We are doing a lot of the work ourselves,” Dawson added.

Educator Jerry Lintz, restaurant management instructor at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, suggests that there are other ways to minimize the damage besides simply raising their prices.

“You can make minor changes in price, ingredients, change your business hours," Lintz said in the article. "There's other things to do rather than looking at cost-cutting. Cost-cutting carries a negative approach.”

For owners like Dawson, however, there will always be a solution to the problem, one that will continue to allow customers to come through the door.

“I'll always find a way," Dawson said in the article. "That’s kind of the magic of cooking, and that's why I love it, is that it is constant problem-solving game. And that's why I think that a lot of people in the restaurant industry, the ones who have come out on top and been successful, are the problem-solvers within the industry.”