Rashays restaurant founder Rami Ykmour raises prices of popular chain amid cost of living pressure
Rashays founder Rami Ykmour said he’s been left with no option but to raise the prices at his popular restaurant chain as the cost of living crisis continues to wreak havoc.
In a video posted to TikTok, Mr Ykmour said he was forced to hike the cost of meals at Rashays, claiming he had held out as long as he could but admitted he should have raised prices ‘weeks ago’.
In August, he took a defiant stance against raising prices, telling Daily Mail Australia passing on the higher costs could add up to a third to the cost of meals.
‘We don’t follow the giants like that here,’ he said at the time.
‘I’ve had to do it’: Rashays founder says he has had to raise prices to protect the longevity of the business
‘I’ve had to do it. I feel bad for putting up prices but unless we were going to be in business for the longevity you have to react to the market,’ Mr Ykmour said.
‘We have tried to hold on for the last three to four months but now things have caught up big time for the business.’
The founder of the popular restaurant chain said he didn’t think prices would ever drop.
‘I should have been on this probably six weeks ago,’ Mr Ykmour said.
‘I just kept on waiting for the prices to come back and it just never happened and I don’t know that it is going to happen.
‘I think we are just going to keep seeing inflation going up and prices of food going up.’
Rashays founder Rami Ykmour (pictured) said he was left with no option but to raise the prices at his popular restaurant chain as the cost of living crisis continues to wreak havoc
In the video, titled ‘Inflation is the enemy’, Mr Ykmour said he’d made the tough decision to raise prices in order to make sure staff are looked after and the restaurant remained operational.
Many users commented on the TikTok angry at the price hike and saying the restaurant was already overpriced.
‘Your prices were always high,’ one user commented.
‘Prices were already overpriced,’ wrote another.
‘I no longer go to Rashays because of the increase of price,’ said a third person.
Earlier this month Mr Ykmour angrily claimed he would lose customers if he passed on the high costs of lettuce and beef to customers in his 34 stores.
Earlier this month Mr Ykmour angrily claimed he would lose customers if he passed on the high costs of lettuce and beef to customers in his 34 stores
Vegetables, fruit, breakfast cereals, bread, eggs, oils, butter and margarine have all jumped sharply in price in the last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The ABS released its quarterly Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures – the key measure of inflation – at the start of August , showing a 6.1 per cent jump over the last year.
The biggest jump in an everyday grocery item was the cost of vegetables, up 7.3 per cent in the last year, due by many accounts to the continued flooding in southeast Queensland and New South Wales.
In July, Mr Ykmour paid $144 for a box of 18 iceberg lettuces, at $8 a head.
‘The beef prices have also gone through the roof too,’ he said.
‘You know what they tell us, “let’s blame the floods”. You know what I call that? BS!
‘The real problem is we’re short labour … there’s no-one out there to pick cos lettuce. There’s no-one to pick iceberg.
‘There’s no-one to work in our farms. There’s no-one to work in our country abbatoirs, that’s why the prices have gone up.’
Vegetables, fruit, breakfast cereals, bread, eggs, oils, butter and margarine have all jumped sharply in price in the last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
Mr Ykmour claimed governments need to do more to bring in more labour to ‘help small business’.
‘It’s time the government stepped in and said listen “we’re going to open the gates, we’re going let people in to work here and we’re going to make it easy for small business”. Guys this is getting ridiculous.’
