Some restaurants and eatery owners in Abuja on Tuesday said the incessant increase in prices of foodstuffs forced them to have price hikes in their food.
Some of the restaurant owners in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said the current hardship in the country was forcing them to compromise their ways of cooking.
They think that the government should check the prices of foodstuffs, adding that some traders were just exploiting the masses.
Mrs Chi Okoli, a restaurant owner in Nyanya, said the constant increase in the prices of foodstuffs had taken a negative toll on her business.
Okoli said she was considering changing her line of business if the increase in the prices of foodstuffs continued.
“Food business before this current economic hardship used to be a lucrative one but now people no longer patronise restaurants and local food vendors like before.
“Before now, I cook and sell six “mudus” of rice in a day and I will sell all before noon because a plate of food then was between N400 to N500.
“But now a plate is N1000 and above, so I hardly finished two “mudus” of rice.
“Some restaurants sell more than that and how many people can afford this price in our Nigeria of today? This is making my business slow,” she said.
Mrs Ayanfe Joseph, another restaurant owner in Garki, said lately she had been battling with low patronage, as only a few people come to her restaurant.
Joseph said with the high cost of foodstuffs many people prefer to cook at home and take to their offices instead of patronising restaurants, adding that it was more economical.
“I noticed most of my customers that come here to eat during break hours now bring their food to work because of the constant increase in prices of food.
“Since January I have increased the prices of my food more than twice. This is affecting me because I make little or no gains at the end of the day.
“Most times after cooking I sell just a little and end up taking the remaining food home which I cannot even sell the next day.
“This is always a big loss for my business,” she said.
She said the current situation had forced her to reduce her workers since she could no longer pay them.
Joseph added that the ones remaining were just there because of her relationship with them.
She said the government should proffer a solution to this hardship so that small businesses like her own would not close down.
Ms Glory Orji, a restaurant manager, said food which was one of the basic needs of man was currently becoming unaffordable.
“I know how people flood in here to eat before but with the current state of the country, you can now count the number of people that come here.
“I want to say that Nigerians are starving currently and nobody seems to care. I prayed something was done urgently before things got out of hand.
“I go to market myself and I can tell you it is not funny. If people like me are complaining what then will the poor masses say or do?
“I want to believe that the government is doing something to change the current situation. I also want to believe that this will not continue for long,” Orji said. (NAN)
