[tonyb]

Prices had come back down to pre-pandemic levels up until about a month ago. Nationwide easing of restrictions has increased demand faster than the supply chain has been able to keep up.

That is an excellent idea (having more than just a transactional relationship with you food vendor is a good idea in general) but my volume is way too low to have that type of leverage. The best I can do (and fortunately what I did when I saw the prices increasing) is pre-buy and freeze as much as I can to lock in the then-current pricing. Right now food supplies aren't even able to fill many wholesale orders because they don't have enough supply so I'm not sure pre-paying would help if they can't even get the product. For example one major vendor has changed their order cutoff time from 11PM to 5PM so they can spend that extra time allocating their available stock across all the orders because they don't have enough for everyone.

BBQ is my side hustle so I'll be ok either way - but if I was paying my mortgage via food service I would be alot more concerned.

[wenc]

Yes, a supply crunch does make it difficult to execute on these types of strategies. And you're certainly right that having a relationship with your suppliers is often advantageous -- very often, including upstream parties in one's system boundaries increases one's surface area for cost optimization.

Also, just thinking aloud, during normal times, if you happen to know other hobbyist BBQ folks, I'm wondering if there might be opportunities to enter into an informal group-buying situation where you pool your collective brisket demand and bulk buy at a discount. That wouldn't work right now but perhaps it might during normal times. There are websites based around this idea. Best of luck.