Restaurants deal with higher costs

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers IT'S IN THE SAUCE- Verona Trattoria Restaurant owner and chef Pomposo Perez prepares marinara sauce before the Camarillo eatery opens Tuesday. Perez, like many local restaurant owners, has seen a steep rise in food prices. Not much has changed at Blimpie, the small submarine sandwich shop Ray and Lee Louie have owned for three years. Not on the surface anyway.

The Louies, who live in Oxnard and commute to their Camarillo business seven days a week, still bake bread, chop vegetables and slice meats and cheeses as they always have since opening Blimpie in a strip mall along Adolfo Road in Camarillo.

But for the last few months, food prices have been creeping up, straining the bottom line, Ray Louie said.

As if that weren't enough, the Louies are losing customers. They blame record gasoline prices for creating a perfect economic storm- food costs more to truck in, and customers have to cut back on eating out so they can afford to put gasoline in their cars.

Ray Louie understands his customers' situation.

"The way I look at it, you have to fill one tank or the other- your stomach or car's gas tank," he said. "They don't have a choice- they have to get to work."

Food prices across the country have climbed this year to an annual rate of about 5 percent. People are paying more for such items as bread, beer, coffee and rice.

After surviving a year of downtown construction, business at Verona Trattoria in Old Town has slowly been improving. But now the mounting cost of food and wine is putting an economic squeeze on the Ventura Boulevard eatery.

"We noticed a big jump when gas prices went up," said Jerry Perez, restaurant manager for 13 years.

Perez estimated the restaurant's food and alcohol tab is about $400 more than it was six months ago for the same amount of food and wine.

"I don't even want to look because there's nothing you can do about it," Perez said. "We're the ones that are taking the hurt the most."

Recently distributors began charging a small fee for delivery; the service used to be free.

Perez said other restaurants in the area have been affected, too, some forced out of business.

"The only way we have been able to hold on is we've been here 13 years and we have pretty good clientele," he said.

Instead of raising prices and possibly losing customers, Perez said he's likely to offer creative menus and dinner deals.

The Louies also said they don't want to raise prices and risk scaring away even more customers, although they soon may be forced to.

"We say to each other, 'Let's see if we can survive this time; maybe it'll be better next month,'" Lee Louie said. "We're trying to hold on as much as we can."