Phuket Thai Cuisine
The restaurant industry is slammed with rising costs and supply chain hold-ups.
Customers may be seeing the impacts on their menus, but many say they understand why.
“Food prices are going up,” said Madison County native Chris Carter. “I’m sure there’s a lot of cost issues there. They have to charge more for that.”
From groceries to eating at your favorite restaurant, it’s all costing a bit more than consumers are used to.
Suwit Phornroekngam owns Phuket, a Thai restaurant in Huntsville. He said increasing costs are just one part of a much bigger problem.
“Even commodities like rice, oil — even chicken — the price 25% to 35%, some cases doubled,” said Phornroekngam. “It’s much higher than, I’d say, ever.”
There’s also issues with getting food from Thailand to the United States.
“You have to plan it. There’s no way around it,” said Phornroekngam.
It’s all taking longer and costing more.
“As a business owner, you just keep marching on,” he said.
After two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, Phornroekngam thought the restaurant industry was turning a corner, but now, there’s a whole new set of hurdles he just couldn’t plan for.
“With all the stuff that you cannot predict — we thought this year we would get out of the pandemic, or people wouldn’t feel threatened anymore, and now we have inflation and all the things that are going on,” he said.
Despite costs and hold-ups, there’s one thing Phornroekngam is not compromising on: quality.
“The price increasing, the amount of food, the quality of the food — we’re never changing. We don’t change any ingredient to lower the price,” said Phornroekngam.
That’s what keeping some customers coming back for more.
“Every chance I come around this area, I try to stop. This is my favorite place in this square,” said Carter.
Despite a decrease in gas prices, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics said inflation rose 0.1% last month.
