Local restaurants, meat stores are doing what they can to avoid price hikes as beef prices keep climbing

Tim Harty, The Business Times

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 2025 listing of beef and veal’s average retail prices in the United States can be a lot to absorb. There are 16 subcategories of beef within that category.

For the purposes of this story, suffice it to say all of them increased significantly since July 2024. The lowest of the increases year over year was 5.6 percent for the price per pound of “All Uncooked Other Beef (excluding veal).”

The largest increase year over year is 15.9 percent for “Ground Chuck, 100 Percent Beef.” Eight of the subcategories increased at least 10 percent, and two others had increases of 9.9 and 9.4 percent.

And all of them saw an increase of at least 1.9 percent from June to July this year, led by the 4.9 percent increase for USDA Choice Sirloin Steak.

Enough about the numbers. Suffice it to say, anyone who buys beef in the United States knows the prices have increased noticeably, if not dramatically, at the grocery store, the butcher shop, restaurants, cattle auctions, etc.

What’s true for the nation is true for Grand Junction-area consumers and businesses.

The Business Times asked a few area business owners/managers how they’ve been affected by the higher beef prices, and what follows is a sampling of what they had to say.

Restaurants

Snooks Bottom Barbecue

Discussing beef prices with Snooks Bottom Barbecue owner Scott Krug is simple. It’s all about the brisket.

The effects on his restaurant, which has locations at 555 1/2 U.S. Highway 50 and 664 North Ave. (inside Mama Ree’s Cowboy Bar), reminds Krug of the not-so-long-ago Covid-19 pandemic years.

“The prices are reaching a point to where they’re almost hitting the Covid highs. They’ve still got a ways to go, but it feels like Covid,” he said.

Along with that, he said the brisket he’s getting from his suppliers isn’t getting trimmed as well as it had been.

“You’re getting a lot of product that has sloppy work on it at the processing plant,” he said. “And not only are you paying the higher price, but you’re getting a lot more fat on the brisket, because it’s to the processing facilities’ advantage to have that fat on there to get that extra weight.”

Another issue with brisket is the price Krug pays is constantly going up, and in one recent week the amount was shocking.

“It jumped 14 percent basically overnight,” he said. “That was a hard pill to swallow. It’s hard to catch up with that.

“Our cash out has gone up tremendously. I mean, to refill one of our smokers you’re looking at between $2,000 to $3,000 just in cost of goods to put on the smoker. So, you try to be as efficient as you can, because it takes the same amount of wood to cook 28 briskets as it does two briskets. So, you always just make sure that smoker is loaded to the gills before you start the fire.”

Krug acknowledges he has raised his prices a few times as a result. He hates to do it, but he learned the hard way during the pandemic that he has take step increases.

“We’re definitely raising our prices quicker this time around,” he said.

He didn’t have the actual numbers at the ready, but he felt safe saying in the past year, “Our prices have easily gone up 15 to 20 percent.”

There also is a residual effect of the beef prices rising. Pork is getting a little pricier, too, just not as dramatically as beef.

“The pork prices are going up, because they can go up, because they know how much beef costs,” Krug said.

Still, pork is generally cheaper than beef, and that’s leading to a new phenomenon in Snooks Bottom Barbecue’s catering side of the business.

“What I’m seeing on the demand side – and this has just started happening really within the last couple of weeks – all my large caterings, I’m now starting to do catering for people who are excluding the beef, and they’re going with pork.”

He had the perfect example on the day he was interviewed for this story, Aug. 28. Catering for an oil and gas company with 200 workers, the meat offerings were all pork.

Catering, Krug added, is the real money-maker for his business, and it has been a savior, because plate by plate sales at his two locations have decreased.

“The marginal worker, the marginal customer definitely fell off,” he said. “The good thing is we have a very, very strong catering program, so catering saves the day, no doubt about it.”

Blue Moon Bar & Grille

Brad Brehmer opened Blue Moon Bar & Grille, 120 N. Seventh St., on July 20, 1987, and nearly 40 years in business has thrown enough at him that he knows how to adjust to adversity.

Higher-priced beef isn’t ideal, but it can be dealt with, because he’s been dealing with it.

“This has been going on for five years,” Brehmer said, referring to increases in beef prices during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said Blue Moon has had to raise prices, but it’s more than beef that’s been the issue.

“The cost of doing business in general has escalated a lot over the last X amount of years,” he said, “and there’s a lot of factors attributed to that. Costs of everything we do … supply chains, labor costs, there’s a lot of factors involved.”

Regarding beef specifically, he said he designs the menus, and, “You might have to go more to the pork market. There’s chicken dishes. There’s things that are more affordable proteins out there. You know, it’s just survival of the fittest, to be honest with you.”

Brehmer said price increases on menu items haven’t taken a toll, in part because Blue Moon has a lot of loyal customers.

“It hasn’t really affected our volume,” he said. “They’re paying the price, and they understand it.”

Brehmer thinks supply and demand eventually will normalize beef prices, and he added, “I hope it gets back on track sooner than later.”

The Rockslide Brew Pub

Brian Oliver, co-owner and general manager of The Rockslide Brew Pub, is of a similar mind to Brehmer on beef prices. He, too, said the high price of beef goes back to 2020 and the pandemic, and increased costs are across the board, not confined to the one meat that shows up on about half of the menu items.

“Since COVID, I’ve probably taken a 20 percent increase across the board on my food,” Oliver said. “And it really just comes down to supply and demand.”

He added he does menu price increases once per year, then weathers what comes in the ensuing year.

“I’m into that product cost for usually at least 10 months, so I don’t get to pass that along to the guests until that time comes around,” Oliver said.

To address beef specifically, he said he could adjust what’s on the menu instead of raising prices. He gave the example of the price of chicken wings going up after McDonald’s decided it wanted them on its menu.

“If the demand is really high, the supply is really low, so I navigate somewhere else,” Oliver said. “I don’t have wings on my menu right now. Because I don’t want to have to charge $20 for an appetizer of wings. So it’s off my menu.

“And the same thing will be with any beef products that I have, you know, other than burgers. It makes me choose, or pass on the price to the guests, which I don’t always want to do. That’s important to me.”

The Goat and Clover Tavern

The Goat and Clover Tavern, 336 Main St. in Grand Junction, is owned by GSN Hospitality, which owns several other restaurants in Grand Junction, including one that closed a couple months ago: Blade and Bone, 753 Horizon Court.

Goat and Clover General Manager Spencer Faupel said Blade and Bone was open about a year, and its demise was directly tied to high beef prices. He knows, because he said GSN Hospitality tasked him with turning that restaurant around about six months after it opened.

It wasn’t just high beef prices at issue, it was fluctuation of prices on varying cuts of steak, as Faupel said, “We would see, you know, a ribeye for 10 bucks a pound, and then the next week it would be 20 bucks. It makes it very difficult for a restaurant to print menus that are going to have a consistent price on it when you’re running food costs at one week, 20 percent, and the next week you’re running it at 50 percent.” 

Faupel said Blade and Bone started off as “sort of a steakhouse and a Spanish-tapas-style food, kind of food conglomeration of those two concepts.” He said it tried to pivot to a family-style restaurant with more affordable options.

“Ultimately the steaks had to go,” he said, “but it was just too little, too late, really.”

With Faupel’s focus returned to Goat and Clover, beef prices remain a challenge, because on its Irish-food menu about “60 percent probably has some sort of beef product in it,” he said.

Faupel said Goat and Clover has resisted increasing prices on the menu, because “it’s a high priority of the owner and management to make sure that we keep our prices within an affordable range for our guests.”

However, some price increases had to be made.

“We were kind of hopeful that we would see a decrease at some point,” Faupel said of beef prices, “but it’s just continued to increase, and finally we had to pass that on to the consumer.”

The result, he said, was updated menus several weeks ago “and increased prices on basically everything to find ways that we can make that profit. Everything … because you can’t just do it all on one, you’ve got to spread it out.”

Meat stores 

Quality Meat Co.

Co-owner Phil Emerson said Quality Meat Co. was started by his father in 1946, and Phil has been at the store since 1979 or 1980. Historically, he said, many increases and decreases in beef prices are seasonal. For example, ground beef tends to cost more in the summer, then after Labor Day its price goes down. He expects it will be the same this year.

Of course, supply and demand plays its part, too, and Emerson acknowledges Quality Meat Co. is paying more for its beef and in turn having to charge customers more.

But Quality Meats’ increases don’t rival the grocery stores, where ground beef prices this summer suddenly shot up about $2 per pound.

“There was no $2 increase in ground beef,” Emerson said. “There was none. It didn’t happen. 

“I mean, I could graph out my hamburger, my ground beef purchases along with price costs, and there was no $2 increase in ground beef. Why did the grocery stores decide to raise the price $2 a pound? I heard about it. You’re not the first one to walk in here and tell me that. I heard about it, and people were coming in here and buying ground beef like crazy, because they probably thought I was a damn fool, because I didn’t raise my prices. But I didn’t.”

Emerson said seasonal planning and having five suppliers allow him to get the better prices and keep his prices lower.

“We call up our suppliers, and we check prices – on not just how much is a head of beef, because we don’t care – but we get the price on prime ribs. We get the price on New York strips. We get the price on chuck roasts and culottes and all that type of thing, and they give us the prices.”

Then, Quality Meat Co. goes with the best price.

Emerson said he hasn’t seen any drop-off in demand for beef at his store.

“People are really doing pretty damn good right now,” he said. “The economy is really pretty good. People have money, and they keep spending it. I don’t see anybody cutting back on their ribeyes, on their prime New Yorks. We’re having trouble trying to keep up with getting them in in order to keep up with the demand for high-end cuts. 

… The demand is real strong.”

For people looking to save money on beef purchases, he offers this advice: Shop. And shop for quality, not just quantity.

“I used to say that buying in bulk was like money in the bank,” Emerson said. “Now it’s better than money in the bank if you’re buying beef, because prices are gonna go up.”

Another good option is buying in bulk.

“Buy in bulk, buy a half of beef from (local rancher Janie) Van Winkle. Buy a half of beef from Joe Schmoe,” Emerson said. “There are local people that do that.

“We have our meat bundles, our meat packages, check into that. That’s where people can fill up your freezer, because it’s a bargain, and it isn’t going to get any cheaper.”

Emerson also offered some parental wisdom he received a long time ago: “As my father would say, it’s kind of like squirrels. You want to put your nuts away for the winter.”

Fisher’s Market

Brandi Pollock, who owns Fisher’s Market with her husband, Jay, said they definitely have seen the increase in beef prices, estimating they’ve been around 10 percent this year.

Fisher’s Market carries higher-quality meats than typical grocery stores, so it starts at a higher price points, and its customers are used to that.

“For the most part, we have not had to increase yet,” Pollock said of her store’s beef prices. “Right now we’re not having to increase our prices on (beef), but obviously if it continues to go up, then we’re gonna have to increase our prices for our customers.”

During an Aug. 12 interview, she said “just this week, tri-tips went up 10 percent,” and one vendor’s prices on average went up 6.5 percent.

“I’m a little bit more worried about what’s gonna happen in the future as far as the next few months and how much harder it’s going to get, more expensive it’s gonna get,” Pollock said.

If beef prices continue to rise, Pollock said Fisher’s might stock more pork and chicken, but she’s not worried about losing beef customers, because many are beef loyalists. What they might do, she said, is buy smaller portions and supplement meals with vegetables to be more cost-effective.