Restaurant owners who survived the hardships of the pandemic are facing the task of staying afloat amid sky-high food prices and rising costs for rent, gas and labor. Food prices in particular have outpaced overall inflation, up by nearly 11% year-over-year in July, according to the latest federal data.

Tim McLoone, the owner of bars and restaurants across New Jersey, said, “The dilemma has been that food costs are really rising but so is payroll. We had to be proactive about the payroll because we were going to lose people. It was a lot of loose money out there. I think we’ve got a pretty good level of employee loyalty but that can only go so far and I don’t blame people at all for wanting to improve their circumstance.”

With regard to the rising cost of food, McLoone said, “I think that the customer has only so much tolerance for price increases so we’ve tried to be careful. Among other things we’ve tried to eliminate stuff that was so expensive that we just couldn’t deal with it, so just take it off the menu. It’s been quite a juggling act. We’re hoping that in the fall it’s going to slow and that everything will become more normal.”