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Supply chain woes putting pressure on local business owners

2 years 3 months 4 days ago Wednesday, December 22 2021 Dec 22, 2021 December 22, 2021 9:34 PM December 22, 2021 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - Businesses around the capital area are feeling the effects of global supply chain issues in some major ways.

Sarah Joy Hays, who sells baked goods at Counterpace BR, says they are working to keep up with the challenges.

"It's been interesting. A lot of things we have been able to source locally throughout the pandemic, and it's just been in the past three or four months we noticed local suppliers such as restaurant depot, Costco are not carrying some products we rely on," Hays said.

The bakery faces shipping problems and issues getting all the ingredients for the pastries. The issues turn up the heat for Hays and are leaving behind a bitter taste.

"So for some time, I was driving to New Orleans to other suppliers' stores to get what we needed," Hays said.

Main ingredients like cake flour, sugar and more are impossible to find. It's the things she needs most to get her bakery running. Instead of shopping local, she instead turned to shipping.

"For example, cake flour cost has gone up about 10 times because the freight on 50 pounds of cake flour is about as much as the cake flour itself cost," Hays said.

And the cost of the goods getting shipped is higher too.

"The price of the chocolate chip has gone up 25 percent," Hays said. "Paper products have been hard to come by. Throughout the pandemic, we haven't had as much of an issue until the last three or four months."

Paper, ingredients, and all other increases mean there's not much wiggle room with the books

"And we are not going to have the same cushion this year, just because the cushion we might have had was absorbed by the cost of boxes increasing, gloves... With the pandemic, the cost of plastic gloves has gone up 18-fold," Hays said.

Hays says she hopes things can improve in the supply chain market, but until then they will eat up the cost to keep sweets on the shelves for the Holidays.

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