A young business owner has urged people to shop local to help small business owners weather the cost of living crisis after some of her costs more than TRIPLED over the last few months.
Isabel Maidens, 23, opened up the Isabakes shop in Ormerod Street, Rawtenstall, in March last year, after baking out of her dad’s kitchen for several months. The Instagram star, who built up a large following over lockdown by sharing pictures of the gorgeous treats she had for sale, has had a lot of success over the last year-and-a-half, but the rising cost of living has caused a lot of stress for the young business owner.
Over the last few months, the cost of some ingredients have more than tripled, with significant rises on other products boosting costs even higher, whilst fewer people head into the shop as the cost of living leaves people with less money to spend on the treat items at Isabakes. The difficult situation led to Miss Maidens uploading a video to her social media pages, telling her customers about the rising costs she was facing to encourage people to shop local and support other business owners who were also feeling the pinch.
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In the video, Miss Maidens said the cost of cocoa powder has risen from £78 a bag to a whopping £237 - over three times the price. Sticks of butter have also risen in price by £1 a stick, which due to its position as one of the bakery’s main ingredients has a huge knock-on effect on operating costs. However, the team at Isabakes don’t want to increase their prices as they know customers are also feeling the effects of rising costs - and don’t want to drive customers away to cheaper stores like local supermarkets.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News , Miss Maidens said: “I noticed prices going up a few months ago, it started really slowly with everything increasing but then they spiralled out from there. Every time I go in I’m looking at the receipts and it's hundreds of pounds more.
"That’s really hard for a small business, it’s not like we can just eat the costs elsewhere and the cost of everything is going up, ingredients, packaging, bills. The shop quietened off a little bit too, we’re normally quite busy but it’s obviously a luxury item so people are going to cut down on the things they’re doing for a treat.
"We don’t want to increase our prices, yeah we’d love to be making profits but I’ve made the decision that we can’t because we’ve had people coming into the shop and say ‘it’s cheaper at Tesco’ and walked out. It’s only been literally two people, people probably do say things when they leave but the majority don’t.”
Although she’s keen to see more customers visiting her own store to help the bakery thrive, Miss Maidens knows that she’s not the only person struggling with the rising cost of living, and asked her customers to consider spending their money at other small local businesses to help ease the worries.
Since putting the video out on her social media pages, dozens of customers have come into the shop to give the young business owner their support, leaving kind messages with her or letting her know they’ll be looking to spend more money in local small businesses to help out other owners going through similar heartache.
Miss Maidens added: “We’ve had some really kind people say they’re never going to Tesco because they want to support us. It’s so lovely, we’ve had so many nice people say the video really made them think and they’re going to shop small. If you don’t say anything and your business closes people will think ‘oh I wish they’d said I would have gone to support them’.
“Small businesses might not be there in the new year so where you can, shop with them. I know shopping at small businesses is more expensive but if you’re going to spend £15 on flowers at M&S you might as well spend that £15 at a small business and help them out. Where we are we’re so close to the main street and there’s a variety of shops that we’re close friends with and we like to support them whenever we can and that impacts everybody. Rawtenstall being busy with people shopping at small businesses helps everyone.”
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