Schools and hotels in Britain and Ireland are reportedly now struggling to keep some beef dishes on the menu due to ever-inflating prices.
The surging price of meat has left schools and hotels in Britain and Ireland in the lurch, with many institutions now reportedly struggling to keep various beef dishes on the menu due to their rising costs.
It comes as a major investment bank expressed its belief that Europe as a whole would likely fall into recession as a result of rising prices, largely brought about by the seismic rise in oil and gas prices.
According to a report by state-owned broadcaster the BBC, catering companies operating in British elementary schools have had to wrestle with their menu as previous lunch items become too expensive to keep on plates.
For one caterer that is reportedly responsible for looking after nearly 70 different schools, this has meant pulling beef from the menu in favour of serving cheaper meats, with chicken also being replaced by lower-cost turkey for some meals.
The supplier is also struggling with the rising cost of potatoes, which has allegedly been brought about due to the fact that their local British suppliers are struggling with the increasing price of fuel and fertiliser.
“The costs that are coming forward make it impossible for us to continue, unless some very difficult choices are made,” said Brad Pearce, the chairman of school caterers association Laca, who said that the group’s member companies may have to look abroad in the hopes of sourcing cheaper meat.
Schools are not the only location where inflation is hitting how easily beef can be supplied to customers, with one of Ireland’s most famous hoteliers saying that he has had to take fillet steak off the menu of his expensive establishments.
“We have taken fillet steak off the menu because we can’t afford to put it on anymore – because people will look at the menu and the price and go ‘ohhhhhh’,” the Irish Independent reports Francis Brennan as saying, despite the fact that a night’s stay in one of his establishments can cost up to €795 (~$830).
Brennan emphasised that other beef dishes had managed to stick around on the menu, but that steaks had simply become too expensive to keep serving, with the hotelier saying that the price had risen by 42 per cent compared to the previous year.
“…the price in America has gone through the roof as well, so it’s not just Ireland,” Brennan also said, reportedly claiming that the price of steak in the U.S. could reach as high as $69.
Like school caterers in the UK, the Irish hotelier said that one of the biggest problems facing the industry is the rising price of food, an issue that has been brought about through the inflation of energy prices throughout Europe caused by the continent’s response to COVID-19, as well as the war in Ukraine.
These factors now appear like they may plunge Europe into recession in the coming months, with Investment bank Nomura now saying that it sees such an eventuality as being likely.
“[Europe is struggling with] conditions that are very much global in nature (surging energy prices and inflation, rising geopolitical risks and uncertainty), which leads us to believe that European economies will suffer the same fate — recession — as the US,” an economist for the group, George Buckley, is reported by The Guardian as saying.
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