Vanilla price rise proves chilling for ice-cream makers
The price of vanilla has soared over the last two years, sending a chill down the spine of UK ice-cream makers.
At around $600 per kilo the sweet ingredient costs more than silver.
Snugburys Ice Cream is run by three sisters near Nantwich in Cheshire. The business churns out around five tonnes of ice cream in a busy week from the family farm.
Around a third of their 40 flavours contain vanilla in some form and they are paying their supplier 30 times more for the extract than they did in previous years.
“It has really gone up, so last year we decided to buy it forward by a year’s-worth,” said Cleo Sadler, who manages the production side of the business.
“We had to make a decision as to whether we would absorb the costs – which we did in the end.”
Buying ahead means the sisters have sufficient stock for the coming summer and can stick to their prices.
But at least one other UK ice-cream business has stopped serving vanilla due to the higher costs.
Julie Fisher, who founded artisanal ice-cream maker Ruby Violet seven years ago, told the BBC vanilla was off the menu in her London-based outlets “for the foreseeable future” because she can’t afford the thousands of pounds it would cost.
And others are reported to also be reconsidering their use of expensive extract.
Snugbury’s distributes all over the North West of England, but also runs a popular shop on-site where a steady stream of families drop in on their way across the countryside.
Click here to read more (Source: BBC News)