1 day Ago By Katelyn Umholtz
By Katelyn Umholtz The ongoing uncertainty of President Donald Trump’s tariff plans has Greater Boston food service businesses on edge. Matt McPherson, owner of Cafe Iterum in East Boston , said it didn’t much matter that Trump had paused “reciprocal” tariffs — which he did on April 9 for 90 days. McPherson and his small team are preparing to raise prices and prepare for the worst.
“We’re going to increase prices now to brace ourselves for the coming tariffs,” McPherson said. Despite the fact that Cafe Iterum tries to choose local, McPherson said it’s impossible for small businesses to avoid using the global supply chain in some way. One big item that could be impacted by looming tariffs is coffee — a crop that the U.
S. does not produce at as wide of a scale as consumption demands. Cafe Iterum sources its coffee from Brazil, and McPherson has already had to raise prices on a cup of joe due to climate change’s impacts on coffee-growing regions.
Jaho Coffee Roaster & Wine Bar , which has locations in the South End , Back Bay , Chinatown , Cambridge , and Salem , has also had to navigate the already uncertain market of coffee due to extreme weather. In early April following Trump’s tariffs pause, owner Anil Mezini said he wasn’t thinking of tariffs and its impact on his coffee shop and wine bar until his team needed to. “It’s just another thing at this point,” Mezini said.
“We’re focused on what’s in front of us and being engaged today.” Weeks later, he received a warning from some of Jaho’s product vendors that prices on “some products” may soon go up. That’s despite the pause, but during a period when the U.
S. is in an aggressive trade war with China, which now faces 145% duties. Though some Americans may not feel the pain of these tariffs yet, Bloomberg reports that companies are expecting supply and demand issues by May , which means “empty shelves and higher prices.
” During the initial tariff threats that followed Trump’s “Liberation Day,” Tres Gatos assistant general manager Trae Wier said they were notified that some wine vendors couldn’t work with the restaurant’s wine representative, fearing tariffs would eventually price them out. The Spanish restaurant in Jamaica Plain has a menu of mostly Spanish wines and spirits, and Wier said they try to work with smaller production, higher quality winemakers instead of mass-production big names. But the tariffs will hurt the former the most, and at Tres Gatos, it could mean a menu change.
“We’re a small business and like to uplift other small businesses,” Wier said. “A lot of the worry for us is that we weren’t going to be able to have those connections with those people anymore because they couldn’t get their products to us.” Ingredients like chocolate and vanilla beans used to make vanilla extract — staples of ice cream shops — would be impacted by tariffs because they are widely grown outside the U.
S., said Grant Burley with Honeycomb Creamery . And the announcement that such tariffs are paused is only a temporary relief.
Burley pointed to the current tariffs in place, 145% on China, that impacts all restaurants, including Honeycomb. “America doesn’t manufacture the packaging that all food businesses use,” Burley said. “We go through a lot of cups, bowls, and pints, so that’s always a cost concern.
” These items are throwaway costs, McPherson said, because restaurants don’t typically charge customers for to-go boxes or the food containers they may use in the kitchen. It would be much more expensive to get American-made food packaging and containers, something that customers wouldn’t even notice or care about, McPherson added. “It’s now a matter of either increasing menu prices, or start charging people that use the products that are getting more expensive,” McPherson said.
Katelyn Umholtz Katelyn Umholtz covers food and restaurants for Boston.com. Katelyn is also the author of The Dish, a weekly food newsletter .
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