From Local to Washington D.C., Everyone Has an Eye on Rising Prices

Jonson Kuhn | North Forty News

There’s no denying that prices all across the board are on the rise and while the mounting pressures from all over the world have certainly helped contribute to this, many local business owners have been feeling the squeeze as far back as the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Moe Kamandy has been the proud owner of the Mountain Café at 226 W. Mountain Ave. for 31 years.  Despite having seen a constant trend in prices increasing, Moe has made the tough decision to avoid raising his own prices as a way of staying loyal to the strong customer base that’s kept him in business for so long.

“My customers have been coming in for two or three generations and I know some of them well, they cannot afford to keep coming in if I’m raising prices.  I’ve had to raise my prices a little but not that much. Every other week, for sure, there has been a rise in prices from the companies we buy from, the prices keep going up and up and up, never come down.  Like, as an example, the bacon I buy, it’s the best bacon around, I used to pay $35, now I pay $90.”

Moe says he definitely saw a change in costs as a result of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, primarily because of gasoline used for deliveries, but Moe says he’s been seeing a gradual increase in general prices within roughly the last 8 months.

“Right now, the deliveries, like with the coffee, they used to only charge $6 but now it’s $15 because they say the increase in gas. We saw an increase before but now more since Russia.  And the food costs are for sure going up, about every two weeks I see they go up a lot.  The margins are getting thin, we just do the best we can.  Hopefully, someday the prices go down; I know some restaurants had to shut down, they increase prices and customers complain, what can you do?  It’s a bad situation for everyone, especially middle-income people, even waitstaff see it in their tips.”

In a press release issued by the office of Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, he directly addressed the increase in prices as they hope to push forward with a bill to provide relief for American consumers specifically for the rising costs of gasoline.

“We need to use every tool at our disposal to protect Coloradans from rising energy costs and provide them relief, and this legislation will help us do that,” said Bennet.  “As Putin wages a reprehensible, lawless war on Ukraine and sends the global energy market into chaos, we need to hold large oil and gas companies accountable and prevent them from using this moment to exploit American consumers. We also urgently need to invest in America’s clean energy economy to cut costs for families and strengthen our energy independence, which we can do; by passing the extension and expansion of the clean energy tax credits included in the Finance Committee’s budget package.”