Costs Keep Rising

We bought The Greedy Pig back in 2017 and over the years have invested repeatedly in order to transform it into what we know today as Citrus. In that timeframe, we have faced challenge after challenge from Global Pandemics to energy crises and meanwhile, everything else has been costing more and more behind the scenes. I have created this page simply to show what we have to contend with just to open the doors.

Main cost factors

Some of the biggest costs we face are directly related to government policies. The biggest issue to us is VAT. I’ve spoken about this until I’m blue in the face but as a food business, incoming costs are mainly 0-rated which means we have nothing to claim back on our outlay yet the second we create something in Citrus, we have to give 20% of the sale price to the government in the form of VAT which often leaves us with no profit.

After that, we face ever-increasing minimum wages. This is the reason we cannot afford staff. We have Ollie who is fantastic but we now pay him from our own wages as we can no longer afford to pay him from the business.

Business Rates were not an issue to us being a Rural Small Business, up until 2022, we were exempt but Labour changed that. They are now removing all remaining discounts. Despite lowering the ‘rate multiplier’ they have stripped all discounts meaning we face a huge rate bill.

The cost of coffee is at a record high. Just take a look at the following stock price over the duration which we’ve had the shop.

Breakdown

We hate putting up prices and the last thing we are, is greedy. That being said, for the past 8 years, Jake and I have done everything we can to keep our prices the lowest and most competitive in the area (we have been between 11-26% cheaper) but we simply cannot do it any more. 

I know that we will get a lot of criticism for putting up our prices and this article isn’t here for pity, its simply here to help people appreciate what we’ve done up to this point and so you know what little margins we work with so you can understand why we’re having to do this now.

It is worth noting, we are still between 1-10% cheaper than the average, locally and I hope that any of our regular customers will appreciate that all the time we have had Citrus, we have never stopped improving it and putting what little money we have directly back into the business.