“Before you order,” warned Molly Whiteside the other morning when the gang sat down at Mabel’s Grill, “since you guys never look at the menu, I should warn you that the price of the bacon and eggs breakfast just went up a dollar.”
    “Oh, well, I guess I’ll just have to make up for it by leaving a smaller tip,” George Mackenzie said with a sly smirk.
    “Your math’s not very good, George, ” said Molly sourly. “If you cut my tip by a dollar I’ll owe you money!”
    “Is Mabel having to raise prices to make up for her losses during the pandemic?” Dave Winston wondered sympathetically.
    “No, it’s because the cost of bacon’s gone up so much,” Molly explained.
    “That’s right,” said Cliff Murray, “I saw on TV that the price of bacon is up 28 per cent over last year.”  Winking at George he suggested, “I guess Dave can afford to treat us poorer farmers this morning.”
    “Ha! It may be up over last year but people forget I had pigs I could hardly sell last year with packing plants closed and restaurants not serving meals,” Dave grumbled. “We cut back production so now there’s a shortage of pork and everybody’s grumbling! Funny how people only notice when the price goes up, not when it goes down.
    “Yeah, yeah,” grumbled George, “tell that to my wife! She was grouching about the cost of everything in the store being higher when she went shopping last week.” 
    “A farmer’s wife was complaining about the cost of food?” wondered Molly. 
    “Yeah well, when she’s doing the farm books she might be wishing the cost of beef was higher but when she’s in the grocery store Marylou’s just a consumer like everybody else,” said George.
    “Besides,” said Dave, “if the farmer gets a buck extra for a pig, everybody from the packer to the grocery store gets two or three! I mean, no offense to Mabel, but when I bought a pound of bacon last week it cost me under eight dollars. There were 16 slices so that’s 50 cents a slice – or a dollar total for a serving of two slices – but she’s putting up the price a dollar because the price went up – what, about 28 cents!”
    “Hey, he’s sharp this morning!” chuckled Cliff.
    “Well no matter what the math, it’s still hard to feed two kids at these prices,” sighed Molly. “I mean, I try to cut back but then Jack Junior complains ’cause I didn’t bring home any potato chips.”
    “I hope you don’t consider potato chips food,” Dave said.
    “They are to my kids,” Molly said defensively. “Besides, they are made of potatoes.”
    “What gets me,” said Cliff, heading off Dave before he could say something he’d regret to Molly, “is all these ads I see on television for these companies who bring you all the ingredients for a meal so you don’t have to go to the store and buy them cheaper. I sure hope those customers don’t turn around and gripe about the high cost of food.”
    “Or the companies that deliver take-out to your door,” said George. “I mean I heard on the TV the other day that 54 per cent of Canadian families buy take-out once a week!”
    “Yeah, but if the price of basic food wasn’t so high think how much money people would have left over for take-out,” said Molly. “I mean think about how much more business Mabel could do.”
    “Yeah but Mabel’s customers actually have to come to the Grill to pick up the food,” said Dave. “That’s too much work for a lot of people these days. They want somebody to bring the food right to their door.”
    Molly started laughing. “That can be a problem,” she said. “Didya see about those people in Toronto who had a meal left on their doorstep but before they could get to it, the neighbourhood raccoons ate it.”
    “Humph,” George grumbled when they stopped laughing. “I’ll bet feeding the raccoons gets added into the high cost of food, too!”◊