Have you had to raise prices on your meat? What would you advise I'd better buy a side of beef from a butcher or buy a whole beast and pay to slaughter it?
I havn’t raised my beef prices except ground since mid covid. The stores drastically raised their prices. Now people can buy mine for the same or cheaper than the grocery store.
Mainly the price of hips cuts has increased, so insides, outsides, tips, trim has stayed high. But strips, ribeyes top butts have not raised the way they do normally in the summer.
Where I have raised my prices was on the speciality items I do, cold cuts, smoked items and so on.
I had to, my labour costs have increased by over $2 an hour, inflation and the fucking carbon tax has driven up the prices on all my packaging goods, like wrap, vac bags.
Spice has increased fairly drastically. Like phosphate was $3.29 a kilo 3 months ago, now $9 a kilo.
I am going to have ot raise my beef prices soon, not because of cost increase on beef, but all my other massivly increasing costs.
Shit, the last 4 months I have had to replace 3 compressers so thats been almost 30,000. Stuffer died 12,000 and a scale died, 4,000.
I just repaired my grinder myself so it was cheap.
You could buy beef from a farmer if you wish, but they are getting good dollar right now, so if you get a wicked deal, you may be eating the mother of 3-4 calves, lol.
I am not sure what cutting charges are anymore, I got out of that part of the business 13 years ago, very little profit, huge amount of heavy work. Plus it takes up a huge amount of space which is very limited in my shop.
If you do go that route, don’t tell the butcher your cutting instructions for 14 days. And tell them on a Friday night, lol. This way it forces them to age your meat 3 weeks, we are all too busy to cut on weekends. Some guys cut early and don’t call you for an extra week to make it seem like they are aging enough, lol. Usually more room in the freezer than the cooler.
