Even saying 'fill 'er up' with rice is growing pricey
The way some restaurants use rice, you'd think the supply was inexhaustible. But a recent surge in the price of the staple grain has hit home in multiethnic Somerville, hammering businesses and changing the way some people eat.
"Rice is the main food for the Chinese families," said restaurateur Michael Qiu. In his roughly 14 years as owner of China Delight, he's never seen the prices so high. "This time's the worst. Never happened before."
That's why he's teaming up with other local businesses, hoping to find buying power in numbers.
While the rising price of gasoline grabs the headlines, consider the price of rice. A gallon of unleaded regular gasoline in Massachusetts rose by roughly one-third, from about $3 at the start of the year to nearly $4 last week, according to gasbuddy.com. While rice prices declined last week, the price of the benchmark Thai rice in commodities markets has nearly doubled since the start of the year, to almost $800 per metric ton. For Byron Cabrera, whose family runs a Somerville grocery, La Internacional Food Corp., that means the price of a 20-pound bag of rice has been rising a couple of dollars a week. He now sells it for $22.50 a bag.
According to the US Department of Agriculture's website, the explanation is simple supply and demand, influenced by global politics and weather.
Several countries banned rice exports to meet rising appetites at home; Bangladesh incurred major crop damage after cyclones and flooding last year.
"We're calling the company for more," said Cabrera, and workers there say "we don't have more." He started seeing the increase in March. The store orders 200 pounds, its supplier sends 100, he said.
Cabrera said he takes some consolation that his store's price increases haven't sent his customers to a competitor, because everyone is in the same boat.
For consumers, meanwhile, high prices means that some have - almost literally - tightened their belts.
"Now we only cook a little bit" of rice, said La Internacional customer Roberto Flores, 52, of Arlington.
"We eat vegetables sometimes because it's more cheap," he said.
La Internacional is rationing supplies, allowing only one bag of rice per customer. People used to buy 10 bags of rice at a time, Cabrera said. The window-front rice display, which he used to fill "at least three times a day," is now filled twice a week.
Juana Hernandez, proprietor of El Potro restaurant, whose remarks were translated by her son, Jason Interiano, said she has raised prices a dollar or two per dish and cut the portions for more-expensive ingredients a tiny bit. It has helped, Hernandez said, that she's gotten a lot of customers lately. Hernandez used to rely on Restaurant Depot, a to-the-trade warehouse in Chelsea, for supplies; now she also shops through Sysco, and says that even Costco is cheaper.
Seokbin Oh, 25, of Medford, noted that "the price was, like, way higher," but hadn't changed his habits. He was buying 20 pounds of Nishiki medium-grade rice at Reliable Market, an Asian grocery, for $19.99. His household goes through one of those bags every six weeks or so.
To buck the trend, a new business organization, Somerville Local First, is attacking the problem collectively. It started a campaign May 15 to try to find local restaurants "a supplier that is willing to cut them a deal," said executive director Joe Grafton.
By focusing on such a pressing need, Grafton said, he hoped to attract members to the fledgling group, which consisted of 15 locally owned independent businesses as of last week, plus more than 10 that have applied to join, said Grafton.
Qiu, a Local First member, said he's hoping for a 10 to 15 percent discount. Grafton said that six suppliers have expressed interest in working with the group.
