Inflation and Pricing

For the last year or so, we have all been dealing with increased prices for too many items (as someone with an academic background in economics, I understand that much of the inflation is driven by naked profiteering and that makes me pretty cranky). Understanding the greed that is causing it does nothing to help me weather it, so I have a few choices.

• I can reflexively raise my prices for every event to account for presumed increases in cost of ingredients.

• I can spend the time researching the price increases for each recipe in your menu proposal and then pass the cost of that effort to you, dear potential client.

• I can price your event with my best assumptions based on more than a dozen years of doing this and ask clients to understand that a 5-8% inflation surcharge may be added to final payments after purchases have been made.

The first two choices will cost my clients more money. Can we agree on the third?