Reeling Restaurants See Bacon Prices Hit A 40-Year High

NEW YORK CITY —The cost of bringing home the bacon is higher than at any time in the last 40 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). And that has New York restaurants double and triple-checking their weekly food costs.

For many restaurateurs, the soaring prices are just one more headache, according to Victor Flores, executive chef at Joe Allen, the Restaurant Row hotspot where theater patrons have been noshing before and after shows since 1965.

Flores says that his 46th Street eatery was forced to raise prices upon reopening on August 18. "Before COVID," he explains, "when things were normal we were able to use more expensive cuts of meat. Now we have to use other cuts, secondary cuts, which are not as expensive. For example, skirt steak went up 44 cents over the same time. So we've just had to learn to improvise."

A few doors down, another restaurateur declined to give his name and asked that Patch not identify his business. He's seen prices going up too, but so far says he's managed to keep his menu prices close to what they were in 2019.

Meanwhile, costs for pork products are continuing to rise, according to the farm journal AG Web. The site reports visible contraction in the market, and quote AGMarket.net analyst Jim McCormick, who says the price of pork is liable to remain volatile for some time.

McCormick's reasoning, he told AgDay TV host Clinton Griffiths, is that "the hog herd got smaller; a lot of contraction had to do with feed prices.”

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The shortage began with last year's COVID-19 outbreak, when consumers raided supermarkets and brought home the bacon and other meat products to freeze. The other problem was actually worse: meatpacking plants, where workers toiled side by side for hours indoors, became an incubator for viral transmission, and many were forced to close.

What got less attention (although The New York Times took notice) is that the factory closures led to pigs being euthanized by the millions — either through gassing or being shot.

Now pork chops are running 7 percent more than they did a year ago and bacon slabs are up 28 percent, the Consumer Price Index says.

Some have come to agree with the Biden Administration, who believe that too few companies in control of too much of the market share, play a large role in the price increase.

McCormick also points out that the labor shortage remains, and many meatpackers are already operating at their fullest capacity, which is not what it was before the pandemic hit. As a result, he expects that a higher price for pork products could be a part of American life for the foreseeable future.