‘The price has to go up’: Popular cafe to charge $8 for a scone

Friday, 23 May 2025

Christchurch hospitality businesses are taking a hit as the cost of butter and cheese continues to skyrocket, prompting at least one cafe owner to up the prices of their popular cheese scones.

Foundation Café owner Sarah Niu said she was making a “brave” move next month, when she would increase the price of a cheese scone from $6.50 to “$8, at least”.

“The price has to go up,” she said, just 10 days after becoming the new owner of the busy café in Tūranga, the central city library.

Small businesses were “suffering” from the rising cost of grocery items, she said.

“We have to pass the price on to the consumer at the end of the day.”

She said the scones were barely making a profit, and a $1.50 price hike would still only see a profit of about $1 per scone.

Two years ago the cafe was selling nearly 200 cheese scones a day at $6 a pop.

Bellbird Bakery churns out hundreds of pastries, slices and breads every day, using up to 300kg of butter a week, production manager Dave O’Brien said.

Buying two varieties from a supplier, one is supplied in 25kg lots, and the other in 500g weights. The prices vary, O’Brien said.

On Thursday, he said the 25kg blocks had decreased in price by 7%, down to $14.75 per kilogram, fixed for the next three months.

However, the 500g blocks had increased from $15.44 to $17.90 per kilogram.

“We’ll just make an adjustment on how we use things.”

Price changes were built into the purchase price to avoid continual hikes for consumers, but the baked goods hadn’t gone up in 18 months, so it may be time to pass some costs on, he said.

“We can only absorb as much price increase as we can afford to. When it creeps inside a certain profit margin, we need to change and pass it on to the customer.”

Stats NZ data shows butter prices have increased significantly over the past year, with the cost up by more than 65% in the 12 months to April.

The price hikes are seeing some chefs thinking outside the box to reduce their consumption.

Odeon and Story owner and chef, Shafeeq Ismail, said he was considering making his own butter.

“Back in India we used to make our own butter.” He said it had a whitish hue as opposed to the yellow colour Kiwis were used to.

“Most of the women that don’t work, in rural areas, that’s their job, they do everything for the house.”

In the meantime, Ismail has been cutting back on butter by using rendered down protein fats for savoury dishes, putting the flavour back into the meat, and olive oil instead of butter where possible.

“If we can make meaningful changes, we’re doing it.”

But he said he wasn’t feeling the pinch as much as bakeries - “I feel for the bakeries”.

Moment Cafe owner Emma Cole said she doesn’t buy from a supplier as it was cheaper to get it at the supermarket.

“We use a lot of butter here.”

Their cheese scones were made with buttermilk so were largely unaffected by the soaring butter prices, unlike the afghan biscuits that had 600g in a batch - using $13 worth of butter, she said.

The price hike probably wouldn’t be passed on to customers, she said.

“It is quite sad for New Zealand; we’re still paying high prices while our things are being shipped overseas.”

Cole said if customers couldn’t afford to buy their own butter, it was unlikely they would be supporting cafes.

“People are having to change where they spend their money.”