‘Nailed It!’ judge and James Beard award-winning chef Jacques Torres on making customers happy despite rising prices.
The Easter holiday is being hit by rising inflation as seasonal sweets like the chocolate bunny are continuing to feel the squeeze of soaring prices.
However, “Nailed It!” judge and James Beard award-winning chef Jacques Torres promises not to pass the skyrocketing prices on to his consumers.
The celebrity chocolatier told “FOX & Friends,” Wednesday that it used to cost him $9,000 to buy packaging from Indonesia several years ago. However, he recently spent $20,000 alone for the “price of transportation.”
“The price on containers coming from overseas tripled… that’s not even paying for the packaging,” Torres stressed.
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He went on to say that the soaring costs of raw materials such as sugar, dairy and cocoa have made filling the Easter basket even more expensive due to inflation, but Torres vowed not to upcharge his customers during these tumultuous times.
“If we want to keep our customers and ride this big wave of inflation… [we’ll] wait until things calm down. I think we have no choice to make the customers happy, keep our customers, and hopefully when things become a little bit easier, we will still be in business,” Torres remarked.
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The master chocolatier – known for creating his signature six-pound gigantic chocolate bunnies — mentioned he has not reduced his use of chocolate during inflation.
“It’s difficult to put less chocolate because it will not work with the mold… the weight doesn’t change,” he explained.
Many small businesses, including Torres’, have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Before the risk of coronavirus and now inflation, the chocolatier had seven stores open for business.
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“[Now] we have two stores, one in DUMBO, one in Grand Central Terminal, and this is the only way to stay in business… We will come back stronger,” Torres emphasized.
