Home Cookin'

It is a Wednesday afternoon, as I leave work, I am racing to school where I will spend the next 4 hours in class. After a long day at work and school, the thought of going home to cook and work on homework has me drained more then I already am. My easiest option is picking up food on my way home. Now this could be happening about 3 to 4 times a week depending how late I am working on schoolwork. Saturday evening, my friends and I get together to catch up on our long weeks, on whatever our lives have been up to, we go grab dinner and drinks.

In about a month I could spend maybe over $200 on eating out, maybe even more with restaurants raising prices. Of course, it all makes sense, you are paying for service and convenience fees, you simply just must go in and order and everything is done by the restaurant. At the same time other factors play a part that we the consumer do not see.

I worked in the food industry for about 10 years and got a firsthand look as to why prices go up.  The cost of transportation goes up, the prices in the restaurants go up.  When bad weather occurs, it takes a toll on the food, which is now limited, if it’s a product that is in demand you can believe they will raise the prices, and the restaurants will follow right after.

Now we are living through a pandemic, during this time restaurants all faced difficulties but the number one thing that they are facing right now is labor shortage.  They do not have enough workers to meet the number of customer’s demand.  Let me tell you I was right in the middle of all that when the pandemic lockdowns began last March, and we were running out of food a lot faster than we normally would. Customers would be non-stop for hours resulting in my staff being burnt out and ultimately quitting, and I could not blame them one bit.

A lot of factors play a part as to why restaurants are raising prices, and it does not look like they are going to change any time soon. Now one of my favorite things to do is trying new recipes and making the time to cook. Instead of using that money towards buying food, in makes more sense for me to put it towards my grocery which in the long saves me money.  The best benefit in my opinion is being able to see what ingredients are actually being used and just enjoying what I am eating. What are you guys waiting for? Get cookin’!