CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — The holidays are in full swing — and so is the price of meat!
Back in September, I introduced you to Peter Patel and how he's navigating the rising cost of his meat at his market. I went back to visit him to see if anything has changed for his customers.
"The holidays are going to get tough," Peter Patel, Meat Market Owner, said.
That's Peter Patel, he owns several meat markets in the city. In September, we talked about his customers opting for cheaper cuts of meat to help keep money in their pockets.
Two months later, he says:
"It went slight down. Not tremendous. Not that we saw last year," Patel said.
But not enough for customers to go back to their old spending habits.
"This year is record high price. We've never seen sales of ground beef at six or seven dollars a pound. This year is the year," Patel said.
And he feels for his customers who are just trying to feed their family.
"It's very hard to sustain the price. We try our best to keep the price down," Patel said.
I met Terry Tolbert and Edward Green as they were shopping. The men tell me they skipped a full turkey and went with turkey legs instead.
"Food has always been high. It's really high now. But it's not going back down," Edward Green, Shopper, said.
"You used to buy a chicken for a little to nothing. Now, a whole chicken will cost you $10," Terry Tolbert, Shopper, said.
Terry says right now, everyone is in the same boat.
"I might not have much. I'm on a budget just like everyone else," Tolbert said.
And says even if he has to buy the cheaper meat, he wouldn't miss his holiday family dinner for the world.
"We got people that's not here no more. But they looking down on us, and they're smiling," Tolbert said.
He also feels for business owners like Patel, saying they don't want these prices either.
"They putting a high price. And it's hurting them. They gotta raise the prices up," Tolbert said.
But at the end of the day, he says something has to give.
"The way things is right now. We gotta live. They gotta cut these prices down. They really do," Tolbert said.
Patel says he's hoping prices level out so customers can get back to their traditional holiday meats.
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