Restaurants Meat Prices (5-5-20)

Restaurants Meat Prices (5-5-20)

Restaurants are just beginning to reopen this week after months of being shut down they're facing yet another financial burden.

Meat prices are skyrocketing as some protein is in short supply.

Kq2's kilee thomas spoke with a local steakhouse on why there's such a disruption in the food supply.

Yet another hoop restaurants have to jump through"we're not ones to go out and raise our menu prices.

We're just gonna have to suffer for as long as we can and make cuts in other directions to stay in business."

Nationwide meat demand is up 40% while production is down 25%... resulting in shortages and meat costing a pretty penny "what we're seeing is upward prices in your briskets, your ground beefs.

Your higher ends cuts are staying about the same as it was 3-4 months ago."

The difference in price between the cuts of meat all comes down to labor "anything that has to be deboned is they don't have the labor right now with everything going on right now to debone it.

Stuff with a bone in it, pretty common to get."

Restaurant owners attribute price increases to the drop in labor at meat processing plants "what i'm seeing is we're running about 50% capacity in the meat packing houses across the country."

Across the board, suppliers are only getting part of their order "one said he ordered 40,000 lbs of pork.

He received 6,000 lbs."

But brokers say there is more than enough meat in storage"our storage level for meat is big.

We have tons of meat in storage.

So, i don't know why we're having such a hard time at grocery stores and stuff and people putting limits on it because the storage numbers on it are huge."

Panic buying is being linked to grocery store shortages"if customers are panic buying that's where you end up with increased prices and shortages in the grocery store."

So, weighing the price buy the steak reporting in st.

Joseph, kilee thomas, kq2 restaurant staff say they expect this meat supply disruption to last for at least 3-4 months.