The rising cost of beef is beginning to impact local restaurants as they adjust their menus to keep up with prices. “Just the price of beef especially, is getting insane. Like brisket mainly. For us, when we buy a brisket, after we’ve trimmed it and after we’ve smoked it and everything, right? It’s gone down at least 40 to 50 per cent that we’re losing,” said Denis Hernandez, owner of D&D Smoked Eats. “So, maybe you see it at the stores for $18 a kilogram, but when you lose everything and then you add, you know, the wood that we use and then the labour into it. And all of that, the price has gone up another $8, $9 as it is. Right? So, for me, I’m trying to figure out how do we give something that we can charge a good price and give a fair amount?” Hernandez, who owns D&D Smoked Eats off Victoria Street in Breslau, said he may have to take brisket off the menu soon and find a substitute cut so he doesn’t have to raise prices any further. “Brisket is pretty important because that’s the majority of our sales here. But at the same time, you know, I don’t want to have to give a lower portion and charge the same. I’d rather give more meat and have the same price. ? Also, to keep charging more and more — people already hesitate sometimes to spend $15 on a sandwich. So now I want to make sure that I can give them still a great product and be affordable,” Hernandez said. Other establishments are also making adjustments. The Lancaster Smokehouse in Kitchener posted online about changes to how it serves brisket, offering it à la carte, by the pound or half-pound, with each portion being weighed upon ordering. The restaurant said adjusting that price allows it to avoid affecting other menu prices. “Restaurants are dealing with the same food price increases that we are in grocery stores. And they’ve got to balance providing value to customers with ensuring that they get some margin. I think what’s happening with Lancaster Smokehouse is they have these options where you can get two or three or four kinds of meat on a platter, and if beef is chosen, it’s the most expensive thing on the platter, so it’s hard to do it. My understanding is they’re not stopping having brisket on the menu. They’re just not including it in those single-price option programs where they’re getting squeezed financially. They’re giving you the brisket option, but you have to order it and it will be priced specifically. Forbeef-driven restaurants, this is more of a challenge,” said Mike von Massow, a professor of food, agricultural and resource economics at the University of Guelph. Von Massow said dry weather in Western Canada and the U.S. in early 2020 led to less feed for cattle, prompting farmers to shrink their herds. “We’ve seen beef prices go up, you know, over 30 per cent in the last couple of years. That’s largely driven by — it’s kind of a hangover from dry weather in Western Canada and the Western U.S. in the early 2020s. We had two years that it was very dry. That meant no grass in the summer and less hay for the winter. And so, farmers needed to shrink their herds so that they had enough feed to sustain them,” von Massow said. According to von Massow, how much beef Canadians eat hasn’t changed, but rebuilding the cattle herd takes time, so prices will likely stay high for a while. “This is sort of a cycle that we see pretty regularly. I think this time it was a little bit more significant for a couple of reasons. We know that farmers on average are older, and I would say beef cow-calf farmers on average are a little older than the average farmer. So, if you cut your herd from 300 to 200, perhaps you’re finding that’s easier to deal with. So, there’s less sort of enthusiasm for rebuilding. The other thing is when times are good, it’s hard to retain that animal when it’s worth that much,” von Massow said. Hernandez just hopes customers continue to understand the challenges establishments face. “Just understand why prices are going up on our end, right? We do have overhead. We have labour. We have, you know, a lot of these things. And I think sometimes people may forget about it and that’s understandable. But, you know, we want to make sure that we give you something. I want to make sure that I’m giving you something that is worth what I’m charging for. And that means that if I have to change to a different cut of meat, then that’s what I’ll have to do,” Hernandez said.
