LITTLE ROCK, Ark — While we've all seen noticeably higher food costs lately, those who run their own food businesses and those who buy from suppliers have been a large group of people affected by those costs.
Butter is one of many ingredients that has gone up in price and that has driven bakery owners to make adjustments to their prices before the holidays arrive.
Next time you're at your favorite bakery, you may notice that prices have gone up.
A couple of bakery owners explained that though they avoided it as long as they could, as butter has nearly doubled in cost, it has made things more challenging.
Suzanne Godbold, owner of Three Best Bakery in Benton, said that recently she has had to pay almost 5 dollars a pound for her main ingredient— butter.
"A year ago, this time we were at $3 and 25 cents a pound. And now, if I were to buy butter from my supplier today, it would be $4.94 a pound," Godbold said.
She had to increase prices because of the higher ingredient costs and expressed that there was really no other option.
Even though it costs more to bake her treats, she said it's worth it because she doesn't want to switch out ingredients.
"I would rather give my customers a good quality product that they know and love from us, then start cutting costs, cutting good quality products, cutting things with things like Crisco and other things," she said.
Butter isn't the only thing that has risen in cost, so have many other key ingredients.
Steve Lewandowski, the owner of Blue Cake Company, said he's had to pay a lot more for both butter and shortening.
"Shortening has more than doubled it's almost tripled," Lewandowski explained.
He also said that butter has been hard to come by.
"We buy unsalted butter. And that's not always something available. So I've got to get salted butter and then we have to adjust our recipes, which not a big deal makes I'm getting better but there's times where I can't even get butter," he said.
He also recently raised his prices because of all the higher costs.
"What we're doing is already from scratch. So it tends to make my prices a little higher. So it's the last thing I want to do is raise my prices, more than anyone else. And I think we're in line with everybody else," he added.
Both Lewandowski and Godbold mentioned that though they've raised their prices, customers have been understanding. And they hope it stays that way.
"Right now I feel comfortable as long as the prices don't go up anymore because really, I try to take the hit myself before passing it along as long as I can," he said.