Restaurant owner says there’s little profit in a chicken parma
A $33 chicken parmigiana may seem expensive, but according to one Adelaide pub owner, there’s barely two dollars profit to be made.
Duke of Brunswick owner Simone Douglas told Today that she has been forced to defend herself for the high cost of the dish and said that small business owners are "stuck between a rock and a hard place".
"The cost-of-living pressures are real and they're affecting family budgets, but they're also affecting business budgets," she said.
"So our costs are going up and we still have to make sure all the suppliers get paid, we still have to make sure the tax gets paid and somewhere in the middle, we have to try and make a living as well."
Douglas urged upset patrons to have a word personally with her instead of becoming keyboard warriors.
"It's a tough market, that's why so many hospitality businesses are closing - we're the fastest closing industry in the country right now," she said.
Hospitality owners are dealing with rising base food costs, bills, rent and wages as well as overheads.
"If you look at kind of overheads that we need to cover on a monthly basis, my rent is $14,000 to $15,000 and it's just been increased by three per cent, we've got a quarterly electricity bill that's between $11,500 and $12,500," she said.
"And first question I always get asked is, 'why don't you have solar on the roof?' and I do, we have as much solar as we can possibly install and all of those overheads have still gone up anywhere between 38 and 42 per cent."
Jonathan Jackson, 2nd October 2024
