Oy! A Dollar a Bagel

New York Post article on the impact of high wheat prices:
At first, it was a dollop of money here and there, but with wheat prices skyrocketing, a plain bagel now costs a whopping dollar across the city.

At Coney Island Bagels in Brooklyn, a plain bagel with nothing on it has reached the one-dollar mark - up from 60 cents last year.

And a bagel at the famous H&H Bagels on the Upper West Side has rolled up to $1.20.

Bakers blame the bulging prices on wheat flour - currently selling at an all-time high of just under $12 a bushel.

"We don't have any choice but to raise prices," said Shahim Islam, manager of Tal Bagels at Second Avenue and 79th Street.

"Some people will complain, but we'll just have to explain that flour has doubled and the cost of everything is going up," he said.

Bagel prices at Tal went up again this week, another 20 cents, to $1.20 each.

Today's bagel prices are far outpacing historical trends. Twenty years ago, a bagel cost about 30 cents. Ten years ago, one of the hand-rolled edible New York icons was about 35 cents, and they cost only about 50 cents just five years ago.

"The cost of wheat is a real issue, and likely not to get better for a number of months," said Jason Ward, an analyst at North Star Commodities in Minneapolis, who noted that grain prices have about tripled in a year from their previous all-time high.

The huge increase is part of the general inflation trend in the United States, he said, but wheat is going even higher than other commodities.

That's because growers are producing less wheat than usual. The credit crunch and bad weather during recent growing seasons have halted wheat production to a third of normal, he said.

Those are just some of the reasons why New York bakers like Sammy Abbis, manager of Pick-A-Bagel at Lexington Avenue and 77th Street, have had to raise prices again - and also reduce staff.

"In the last year I've had to let four people go," he said.

He now sells bagels for 95 cents - up a dime from a few months ago. Some of his custom ers are so angry about the higher prices that they walk out of the shop when he rings them up at the cash register.

"They are p- - -ed off, and they leave their bag on the counter and say, 'Now I don't want anything,' " he said. "I'm worried about my customers."

Mareike Wegener, a 24-year-old New School student, said he usually eats a bagel for lunch because it's a cheap and filling meal, but the higher prices are causing him to reconsider.

"I don't have a lot of money," he said, "so every bit makes a difference."