00:00 Speaker A
What about your costs at the at the restaurants, right? We talk all the time here at Yahoo Finance about inflation. There’s a lot of talk about the affordability crisis. I know that your raw ingredients probably have gone up too. Um, have you been raising prices at the restaurants because you’re seeing that happen?
00:20 Speaker B
Yeah, I think listen, we we monitor it really closely. We bring in ingredients from all over the world every day. Um, for us, you know, we sort of took a stance that we’re not going to change our ingredients. We’re not going to, you know, tweak the recipes because of these tariffs. Like we’re we’re going to continue to provide the same product that we always have. If that means we have to pass it along to the customer, especially again at that luxury sector, you know, I think there’s a willingness to keep paying for it. They’d rather, what I believe is they’d rather pay for the exact same dish than us start to search for an inferior product because of the tariffs. So we’re there’s there’s an unwillingness to change especially being a chef in in the core ingredients. We’ve spent so many years finding these ingredients, narrowing them down, working with farmers and vendors and fishermen that, you know, we’re we’re not going to change now. We’re going to keep our products and we’re we’re going to just sort of pass along the expense.
00:58 Speaker A
I I’m curious your thoughts in particular on this new proposed tariff on some of the pasta makers in Italy that could be as much as 100% that got a lot of attention recently.
01:13 Speaker A
Do you are are you bringing in dry pasta from Italy at all? And I mean, what do you think about that potential?
01:17 Speaker B
We definitely we definitely bring in dry pasta from Italy. Um I think there’s great pasta makers in the United States now that are going to get a chance to shine.
01:26 Speaker B
Um we again, we’re going to probably continue to use the same ingredients that we’ve always used. Um but I think it’s a great opportunity for those, you know, local vendors who are going to be making them here in the states. Um but
01:45 Speaker B
I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I think it’s it’s a really important ingredient in on the supermarket aisle. Um, especially in the Northeast.
01:54 Speaker A
Yeah.
01:54 Speaker B
So, again, I think we’re going to continue to buy those ingredients that we know because again, I need to know that that spaghetti is 7 minutes exactly the same way every time. Like, it’ll cause chaos if I start changing these ingredients across, you know, 60 restaurants.
02:08 Speaker A
Right.
02:08 Speaker B
So, um we’re going to we’re going to hold steady to those price to those, you know, those ingredients, but I think it’s a great opportunity for the American-made pasta companies, which there are a lot of.
02:16 Speaker A
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. On the flip side, do you worry about the economic viability of some of those Italian pasta makers who, you know, maybe they don’t all have the luxury of having a major food group as a client. um that some of them might might be forced out of business.
02:32 Speaker B
Yeah, many of them are small vendors too. You know, they’re still virtually family run operations, some of them that we use that I know for sure, um are not the the juggernaut brands that you know. Um they’re going to be hit the hardest. Uh so yeah, a definite concern there. Hopefully it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t last too long because um they are a dying breed to begin with these craftsmen, these companies. Um it’s a very special process.
Dining and Cooking