Food Prices Are at Their Highest Since 2022. Is Your Costing Keeping Up?

Global food prices have climbed to their highest level since November 2022.

The FAO Food Price Index rose 1.9% in August, with every major commodity group increasing. Sugar alone jumped 11.9% in a month.

That is the headline. But for food businesses, the more important question is much simpler:

When did you last update your recipe costs?

The Spreadsheet Hasn't Changed

We see this all the time.

A food business builds a detailed costing spreadsheet. Every ingredient, piece of packaging and finished product is carefully entered. It is accurate on the day it is created.

Then flour goes up. Butter changes. Packaging increases. Freight moves. A supplier quietly updates a price on an invoice.

The spreadsheet does not.

Within a month or two, the business is making pricing and production decisions using costs that are already out of date. Eventually, nobody is quite sure when the file was last updated—or which version is the right one.

Small Increases Create Big Leaks

Most cost increases do not feel dramatic on their own. A few cents here, another few cents there.

But if a product costs 20 cents more to make and you sell 20,000 of them, that is $4,000 in margin gone.

The product still sells. Revenue still looks healthy. The spreadsheet may still show a great margin.

Meanwhile, money is quietly leaking out on every unit.

Your Costs Should Update When Your Costs Change

Recipe costing should not be a quarterly clean-up job.

When purchasing, recipes, inventory and production are connected, the latest ingredient costs can flow through every recipe and sub-recipe that uses them. You can see which products have lost margin, where the increase came from and whether pricing needs to change.

That is the difference between calculating a cost once and actually managing it.

You do not need to predict what global food prices will do next. You just need to see what supplier changes are doing to your own products—before another month of sales locks in the loss.

If your recipe costs still live in a spreadsheet, open it today and check the last-updated date.

You might not like the answer. But it is better than discovering it in your P&L three months from now.

Book a demo of Supply’d ERP to see how connected purchasing, recipe costing, production and margin reporting can help you stay ahead of changing costs.