The owner of a café in Co Armagh has spoken out after the electricity bill at one of his outlets increased to over £9,000 for one month.
Kris Fletcher is the co-owner of Number Seven at Rushmere Shopping Centre in Craigavon, where he employs 35 members of staff and has been operating from since 2005. He also runs a restaurant of the same name in Warrenpoint.
Taking to social media on Saturday, the Rushmere outlet shared a photo of their monthly electricity bill for August 2022. For July, they paid £7,066.78 for the utility, which increased to £9,362.62 for August.
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Describing the price rise as "scary", Kris told Belfast Live they're worried about what will happen in the winter months when their energy bills typically double.
"We're worried about what's going to happen come October or November, which are predominately quiet months for the shopping centre. If we're getting hit with an electric bill of £18,000 we're just not going to be able to pay that, what are we going to do?," he added.
"Our electric bill in the summer is normally around £3,500, but to see it jumping to over £9,000 is wild. I thought it would be around £6,000 to £7,000 as the July one had just hit £7,000, so to see an extra £2,600 on top of it and the talk of prices going up again in October, it's just scary.
"Most of our cooking uses gas, and the bill for that comes quarterly so I'm dreading that coming through."
Kris said that more needs to be done to help businesses and individuals through the cost of living crisis.
He said: "The post was put up out of frustration. We have always said we'll get through it because we always do, but opening that bill was the first time we said 'what are we going to do if this keeps going?'
"If we do have to put prices up, we hope it can let customers know why we're doing it, it would be out of necessity not greed. Customers are being hit in the pocket as well, it's like a vicious circle.
"I think there needs to be some sort of intervention, it needs to come from the government to help. There are so many places closing, or closed, or that have said they're closing and if that happens, where could stay open?
"The government have let us all down. I've seen people saying it's a worse situation than Covid because there's no support. At least with Covid there was a framework for opening and closing, but now there's no real end game, there's no plan or support.
"We've got through the last few years thinking we were going to have a nice bounce and a nice comeback, then this has been a dirty dig after it all.
"Enough is enough, something has to be done or else every small business is going to end up closing."
Kris said they're doing all they can at Number Seven to keep costs down, from changing old bulbs to LEDs and using one freezer instead of two. However, he said it's a worrying situation as lots of businesses across different sectors find themselves in the same position.
"It's a difficult position, and a lot of people I've spoken to are in the same boat as us which is worrying more than anything, that it's across every sector. Everybody in the shopping centre works together to get people coming in," he added.
"We're coming into a quieter period of a few months for us where running costs are higher anyway. We would take things week by week before, but now it's almost day by day.
"We changed all our lighting to LEDs, we're on a meter that's read every 30 minutes, we shopped around when we were getting our energy pricing, we've done everything people have said to do.
"We're looking on a daily basis how we can save; looking at maybe only using one freezer for the next few months rather than our two. Every penny is going to count at the minute.
"Not to sound too apocalyptic, but we're trying to do all we can to survive this."
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