Chicken crunch: San Fernando businesses feel the squeeze

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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By lunchtime in San Fer­nan­do, chick­en is still on the menu. But be­hind the coun­ters of the city’s restau­rants and food out­lets, get­ting enough of it is be­com­ing a more com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness.

At one pop­u­lar bar­be­cue out­let, a work­er told Guardian Me­dia that the restau­rant is still get­ting enough chick­en from its reg­u­lar sup­pli­er to keep serv­ing cus­tomers. The prob­lem is what it is now cost­ing to do so. The busi­ness is spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars more each week on chick­en, yet its cus­tomers have not been asked to pay more. Its meal prices re­main un­changed.

And if the restau­rant needs ad­di­tion­al chick­en, the su­per­mar­ket is not much help. The work­er said the quan­ti­ties avail­able at su­per­mar­kets are not suf­fi­cient to sup­port the out­let’s dai­ly op­er­a­tion, leav­ing the busi­ness de­pen­dent on its reg­u­lar com­mer­cial sup­pli­er.

The squeeze is al­so be­ing felt in Philip­pine, where the own­er of a Chi­nese restau­rant said he is now buy­ing chick­en al­most dai­ly be­cause his reg­u­lar sup­ply is not enough to meet de­mand. He said the restau­rant can run out of chick­en be­fore the end of the day, forc­ing him to re­plen­ish his stock more fre­quent­ly. The own­er pre­vi­ous­ly used im­port­ed Tyson chick­en but switched to lo­cal poul­try af­ter see­ing stronger sales, leav­ing him more de­pen­dent on the do­mes­tic sup­ply chain.

A short dis­tance away, the ex­pe­ri­ence is dif­fer­ent. An em­ploy­ee at a South Park food out­let said the busi­ness has not been af­fect­ed by the cur­rent sup­ply prob­lems be­cause it us­es im­port­ed chick­en. An­oth­er near­by out­let said it con­tin­ues to re­ceive an ad­e­quate sup­ply from Khan’s Poul­try.

But for a chain of In­di­an food out­lets, the squeeze is be­com­ing vis­i­ble to cus­tomers. An em­ploy­ee said de­liv­er­ies from Arawak have some­times fall­en short of what the busi­ness or­ders.

“When we or­der, some­times we are get­ting less,” the em­ploy­ee said. There were emp­ty trays on dis­play yes­ter­day as the out­let had to op­er­ate with­out at least six chick­en dish­es on its menu.

The dif­fer­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of­fer a snap­shot of a poul­try mar­ket un­der pres­sure, where the ef­fect on busi­ness­es ap­pears to de­pend heav­i­ly on their sup­pli­ers, pro­cure­ment arrange­ments and abil­i­ty to source al­ter­na­tives. Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that Roy­al Cas­tle has not ad­just­ed its of­fer­ings amid the cur­rent sup­ply con­cerns.

For pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion has not yet reached the point of wide­spread alarm.

“We have heard re­ports through the me­dia that there’s a de­creased sup­ply of chick­en and eggs in the coun­try. How­ev­er, the restau­rants haven’t yet start­ed to pan­ic or com­plain about it af­fect­ing their busi­ness just yet,” Singh said.

But he is look­ing be­yond the present sit­u­a­tion to Christ­mas.

San Fer­nan­do’s restau­rants and food out­lets will en­ter one of their busiest pe­ri­ods lat­er this year, and Singh said pro­longed sup­ply con­straints could force busi­ness­es to make ad­just­ments.

“If it con­tin­ues, and es­pe­cial­ly as we’re go­ing to ap­proach the busy Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son, some cor­rec­tive ac­tion will have to be tak­en.”

The pres­sure be­ing felt by some busi­ness­es is root­ed fur­ther up the sup­ply chain. A di­rec­tor of a ma­jor meat shop chain told Guardian Me­dia that the ex­pla­na­tions be­ing giv­en about heat, feed and poul­try pro­duc­tion are ac­cu­rate.

High tem­per­a­tures, he said, cre­ate heat stress among birds, re­sult­ing in high­er mor­tal­i­ty and caus­ing chick­ens to take longer to reach mar­ket weight.

“Be­cause of that, there is a de­lay in birds com­ing to mar­ket. That’s been an an­nu­al is­sue, but every year it has been get­ting worse. I start­ed to see it af­fect­ing busi­ness sig­nif­i­cant­ly about four years ago,” he said.

The prob­lem does not end with birds tak­ing longer to grow. The di­rec­tor said hatch­ery yields are al­so low, fur­ther re­duc­ing the num­ber of chick­ens en­ter­ing the pro­duc­tion cy­cle and ul­ti­mate­ly reach­ing the mar­ket.

For busi­ness­es down­stream, that means adapt­ing. Some re­tail­ers have in­creased their prices as sup­pli­er costs rise. Oth­ers are try­ing to steer cus­tomers to­wards what­ev­er pro­tein is avail­able.

“If we don’t have enough bone­less breast, we push some­thing else as a sub­sti­tute, like lamb.”

But even that op­tion has lim­its. Im­port­ing for­eign chick­en could help fill some gaps, but the di­rec­tor said it is not an op­tion for every re­tail­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly busi­ness­es that re­quire Darul Uloom cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

For now, Singh be­lieves the pres­sure could ease be­fore the sit­u­a­tion be­comes more se­ri­ous.

The re­turn of chil­dren to school could re­duce the amount of chick­en be­ing con­sumed through restau­rant meals af­ter the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, when fam­i­lies typ­i­cal­ly spend more time and mon­ey eat­ing out­side the home. He al­so ex­pects up­com­ing re­li­gious ob­ser­vances, in­clud­ing Ganesh Ut­sav, Pitri Pak­sha, and Di­vali, to re­duce de­mand among peo­ple ob­serv­ing pe­ri­ods of fast­ing.

Then there is the weath­er. Singh ex­pects cool­er con­di­tions in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber to im­prove the en­vi­ron­ment for poul­try pro­duc­tion, while the rel­a­tive­ly short pro­duc­tion cy­cle means new birds can reach the mar­ket in less than two months.

“We re­main op­ti­mistic that it will sta­bilise in the com­ing weeks.”

For now, there is no emp­ty-chick­en-shelves sto­ry un­fold­ing across San Fer­nan­do as there is stock in many su­per­mar­kets. In­stead, the warn­ing signs are more sub­tle.