Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
We're thinking about Moral Day, We're thinking about what goes into a Memorial Day picnic and celebration. This is happening as global food prices climbed to their highest level in more than three years, as the Iran War disrupted supply chains. You know, we kind of kicked it off talking with Stuart and Mike Michael McKee of course about inflation concerns and that includes food. So we've got a great voice to get into all of this.
Well, let's head to Stu Leonards in Norwalk, Connecticut, to the president's CEO of Stu Leonards. Stue Leonards j Stu Leonard Junior joins us. Stu Happy Summer. I just want to start off with the question, is is it a happy summer at this point? What are sales telling you? What are customers telling you?
Well, first of all, Hi, Carol and Tim hoy doing first of all the thing that would make me happier if he didn't talk.
About all the rain and everything that you know that that doesn't help our sales.
We want everybody to go out and barbecue and cook jeez burgers out the.
No.
But I would say, right now, sales are brisk, customers are buying, but they're also complaining.
Okay, they're complaining about the.
Prices of food right now, and not only just food, but I think they're overall, you know, expenses in their normal lives. Like as an example, the other morning, I got a phone call from our farmer, tomato farmer in Florida. He said, you know, I got some bad news. He said, you know, we had a big freeze down here. I had to replant my crop. Tomato prices are gonna be up, and it's gonna cost me two thousand dollars more to send the tractor trailer truck from Florida up to the
New York area to your stores. And then I come down here in the store and I'm talking to a customer that just said, hey, I just went and filled up my suburban and that cost me fifty dollars more and my energy costs and home insurance everybody.
So I'm stuck in the middle a little bit.
On one hand, I got to negotiate with this farmer, which I did, and we're going to split the cause. But I can't raise price. So you know, our prices at Stud's compared the last Memorial Day, probably up about three percent. They don't need be up like one percent if it wasn't for meat, you know. And you asked me about some props earlier, but you know here's one of our great Oh yeah, this is what you know.
If you can put this on the Gorilla week and you know for a World Day, it's the crowd please but.
Stu, yeah, it would be. But that's going to set you back. I mean, you're talking about a very expensive cut of meat there, and you mentioned cheeseburgers earlier. Mike McKee talking to us a little earlier and he said, you know at some places they're charging you just for walking by the meat department. That's how expensive it's gotten.
Yeah, but you know one thing people are doing is they're switching from their protein like you know, that's obviously the most expensive thing, and buys a big rip by steak. Then you can also go down to just getting some plain hamburgers. So you've noticed people switching a little bit.
They're going to chicken and that's only in the four to five dollars a pound range right now, they're going to port I've even been doing that instead of having a steak, get a nice port chop, and it's like ten bucks a pounds less?
How much how much is that tomahawk that you held up per pound?
Oh gosh, I bet you this will be about seventy dollars. Okay, get this, but hey, if you went to a restaurant and you ever ordered something like this, you'd just be paying one hundred and fifty or at least double or more for that page.
So how many people?
How many people can eat that chop?
How much would I eat?
I know my husband be like, that's mine, But I'm just saying two or three people could probably chop into that, right.
Oh yeah, for sure. You know, it really depends. I mean, who's a big meat either. You know, your husband probably would love to devour I got a son in law who loves me all the time, and he could make a big dent in effic so you know.
But but you.
Know it's you know, right now you're seeing people really just trying to save money. But you know what the thing with meat right now is we're at a fifty year low and herd price ouse sizes in America. We just had some of our ranchers back from the Midwest and they're really just saying there's just less cattle.
And why is that?
Because you know, it costs them a lot of money to feed them because of the droughts and everything that happened in the Midwest, and there's not as much you know, grass out in the field for the cattle to eat. They got to import the corn and the soy and al balpa for the cattle to eat.
So see, that was that was that was a problem. I feel like last year too, like we've been talking about the herd situation for a while, is that as you talk to the ranchers, any of that going to get better or easier or.
No, it's it's getting better now.
But it takes two years to really grow a little cab from like three four hundred pounds when they're born all the way up to maybe sixteen hundred pounds when they're you know, harvested. So you know it takes time, but you're seeing it build right now. It is, it is growing. And that's why I'm optimistic about a couple of things. One of them is I do think meat prices are going to be coming down in the future. You know, even our ranchers and everything agree with that.
And the second thing, I really think fuel prices are gonna come down once we get things straightened out in the Middle East, which can't be forever.
I mean, it's got to be resolved at some point.
So I think we're gonna see some softening on these inflation numbers as far as food goes.
In the future.
But you know, here, here's what's really interesting, Carol, I think you have to break up this inflation and to supply and demand and actual cost like from our standpoint, Like I'll give you an example. You can go buy this watermelon right here by the way. Watermelons are great right now. They're really sweet. So here's here's a watermelon. You can go buy that. It's about six bucks or seven bucks or four you can do this. We can
have somebody cut these up. The labor for me to have a nice lady or guy back there cutting these up. It's for us nearly twenty five dollars an hour right now without benefits, and that's never going So that's never going down. And so there's a couple of things that are not going to go down. Labor is not going to go down. That's that's inflationary right now. But I think the supply and demand of food. Like for instance, I always laughed when I would read about people saying
about egg prices. Eggs had nothing to do with inflation, that no government policy or anything. That just had to do with the Avian flu. So supply and demand is is built in. And if you look, we just had some fires out in Simi Valley, as I'm mentioned, the cold snapdown in Florida.
Right, so the droughts out these affect food Trust.
We got to run. Always love checking you with you, Stu, Happy Memorial Day. We're going to keep our fingers crossed you don't get rain. Stu Leonard Jr. Of course, President CEO of STU Leonard's enjoyed talking with him. We talked with his daughter, Blake, who runs their spirits and wines business a little bit earlier