IT’S a small world after all: just ask Catherine Leopardas who sells hot pancakes at a stall on a street in Coron, Palawan, nearly 9,000 kilometers from Ukraine. A war there has made her pancakes smaller.
She said she uses 5 kilograms to 10 kilograms of sugar and as much as 10 kilograms of flour daily. Leopardas noted that flour prices have risen 50 percent to P60 per kilogram in March while sugar prices continued to escalate beginning P85 per kilogram that month at local retailers. In January, she said a kilogram of sugar would slash P65 from her purse.,” she said when asked what’s the most expensive ingredients they are using every day. [It is really the sugar that hurts my pocket the most.
In 2018, Leopardas said she sold approximately 500 pieces of mango shake cups for P10,200 at P20 each; and 300 pieces of pancakes for P5. Her average daily sales have hit P10,500. Filipino pastry businesses like that of Ms. Cups & Cakes are reeling from the rising cost of ingredients, particularly of flour and sugar.THE challenges are evident during the pandemic and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine war, notably in small food industries like online baking businesses and street-food vendors. These small businesses were hardly operating due to lockdown measures the government imposed beginning 2020 and intermittently in 2021.
She was raking in P20,000 to P40,000 a month depending on the season. Last March, she clocked a revenue of P40,000. She said that from April to June, however, revenues declined to P25,000 a month. The all-purpose flour she used to buy from the Malabon Public Market cost only P48 per kilogram last year but climbed to P60 per kilogram in June this year. Hence, the prices of her products also increased.
Before, her clients could buy a customized 6-by-6 cake at a starting price of P1,200, which is now P1,300. A 7-by-6 customized cake that she used to sell at P1,550 now costs at P1,600. Bautista said she’s not selling cupcakes now because of the very low profit she earned from them recently. She kept her profit margin for all her baked goods at 20 percent.
Ukraine and Russia are among the major exporters of wheat in the world. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity , Russia was the top exporter in 2020 with $10.1 billion. Ukraine is in fifth place with $4.1 billion.