Shortage impact
Restaurant owners suffer revenue drop
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WHILE the current onion crisis affects all consumers nationwide, at the forefront and facing the brunt of the damage to revenue are restaurant owners with a desire to stay true to both their recipes and their patrons.
While some smaller establishments may have the option to leave onions out of their recipes or temporarily alter their menus in favour of dishes that don’t use onions, onions are a staple ingredient in some ethnic meals forcing restaurants that wish to continue serving those meals to incur losses for the period of the crisis.
Owner of Indian food and snack restaurant Chatori Chaat, Amit Sinha said “Onion is inseparable from Indian menus. We cannot make any curries without onion. We make the mother gravy out of onion for all the curries,” further stating that he does not want to raise meal prices to compensate for fear of losing customers.
“We have to accept the loss, there is no other way,” he added.
Maya Dhaba owner Harminder Singh noted that some suppliers that do have remaining onion stock have significantly raised their prices.
“Normal price was $40 to $45 for a 20kg bag. These days it’s $120 to $150 per bag. We can’t change price on our menu, it will cost us more.”
Margaret Davies Raisele, owner of The Food Stop in Nasese said this may be an opportunity to promote buying local.
“I guess these food shortages are to be expected, as it’s a global crisis.
“We will just need to improvise and there are still other spices available and it will encourage us to use more locally grown produce,” she said.
“But we still have to buy onions despite the price increase, as it’s an important spice for cooking,” she added.
According to a press release the Consumer Council of Fiji has stated that the supply of onions should be normalised in a few weeks.
The new Government will also reportedly be exploring diversification of sources of key commodities such as onions.