Slight price increases from May on our menu

It's with a shrug of acceptance and sigh of resignation that we have had to slightly increase the prices on some of our menu items this month. We have absorbed many increases up to this point, as have our local suppliers, but they and now we have had to make the decision to pass at least some of the costs on.

It has mainly affected some of our smoked meats and our Sunday Carvery, due to an increase in pork, beef and lamb at present. Some other menu items are affected due to the increase in the cost of elements like our burger buns and cheese.

The overall increase is on average 4%, which to give some examples means our carvery will go from £13.50 to £14 per adult and £10.50 for a child's portion. Our beef burger meals have increased slightly more, from £12.50 to £13.50.

We always try and keep our prices in the realms of reasonable, but maintain the quality of the ingredients we use. As our regulars know, our meat comes from Wares in Torrington, our spices from Torrington Refill Store, our buns and chips from Chadds in Bude and our fresh produce from Heddens. All are small suppliers working in the local area and therefore any money we spend with them helps fuel the local economy. So you can rest assured your hard-earned cash is supporting livelihoods in our area when you eat with us.

We are hopeful we won't need to do any more significant increases in the near future. Our ales still start at £3.90 a pint, our ciders and lagers start from £4.40. One truth that is shining through is this - the smaller, local producers and breweries are keeping their prices reasonable, whereas the larger national drinks producers are happily adding the full inflationary rate (and sometimes more) to their prices, which we have had to pass on. As an example, San Miguel recently went up by 11%, whereas our local Utopian lager has gone up by just over 4%. So there is literally no better time to shop local when you can!

Card payments

On the same note, we have put a sign up on our bar asking for those paying by card to try and reduce transactions to the smallest number possible. We are happy to run tabs for your table or for drinks to help with this (although we may ask to keep a card if you're sitting outside or we are very busy). This is because the card processing companies have added a charge per transaction on top of the % fee per transaction. It's a charge we can't get away from and with more of us opting to pay with the convenience of cards, it's one small way we can save costs and keep our prices down.

#costofliving #keepingcostsdown #local #keepitlocal