Oct. 12—Inflation concerns and supply chain issues have taken over the nation for the last several months, but luckily, local businesses haven’t had much trouble stocking up on their fall specialty items.
Popular fall goods typically include pumpkin, cinnamon, caramel and more.
Cori O’Meara, assistant manager and decorator at Country Cookie, said that supply chain issues have impacted the business but not regarding its fall favorites.
“As far as our specialty flavors, like the pumpkin and the snickerdoodle and things like that, we have not seen an issue with supply,” O’Meara said. “There may have been just a little bit of an increase on those, but we have several suppliers that we use. So we usually have good availability. But the main thing is more like our core ingredients like eggs and like flour. Those core ingredients are the ones that we are seeing increases on more.”
O’Meara said they’ve actually seen a lot of success with their specialty items so far.
“It’s remained steady, so we’re doing well with those,” O’Meara said. “And we are offering those more now as our seasonal time is happening. So those are becoming more popular. We’ve started to release our pumpkin snickerdoodle again and that’s been a popular one. Everybody’s been asking for that.”
As of Sept. 13, the current inflation rate in the United States is 8.3%.
Mike Olinger, the founder of Angry Swede Brewing Company, said they haven’t had any issues so far, but being a small business owner, he’s ready for the possibility.
“I think for us there’s always something else you can find that would be similar to what you want,” Olinger said. “You can kind of substitute all kinds of specialty flavors that may be out of stock at the time. But … we haven’t really had too many issues with specifically fall-related flavors or cocktails beers or anything like that. But of course, inflation is kind of running rampant right now, is what it is. So that’s … always something that we’re having to deal with, being a specialty small business owner.”
Last year in October, there was an actual pumpkin shortage, but this year, things remain stable so far.
Riley Wolfe, cafe manager at Mokaska Coffee, is grateful that the business hasn’t had too many issues stocking up on fall specialties because she knows how hard times have been for some businesses.
“I think we feel really lucky because obviously, it is what people want right now,” Wolfe said. “The white mocha, the pumpkin spice … that’s just like what people are into for the fall. We’d like to make sure people have the flavors that the other like more, not popular, but bigger chain businesses like coffee shops, we want to be able to provide what they’re providing. So it is important for us to be able to do that and we are very happy that we are able to do that and we’re not experiencing any issues.”
