Friday, January 04, 2008
If you have recently purchased a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk (or taken out a second mortgage to buy chocolate milk), you are painfully aware that the cost of food is indeed rising. This is just another uncontrollable expense for child care providers. You must provide a balanced diet to the children in your care. So how do you handle the extra cost? Do you charge the parents a "food surcharge"? Or is this just one more thing to cut into your income (profit)? Read the following report about:
What are your thoughts? At least those of us who are family child care providers don't have to pay for gas to get to work...Rising Food Prices Affect Daycares
by Kelli Stegeman
A recent report by the US Department of Agriculture showed food prices are on the rise again for next year.The pricing increase will affect many people including daycares.Many home daycare providers as well as daycare businesses feed the children they watch.
A staple in lots of kids diets is bread and that is one of the products targeted to have the largest rise in price.The report says food products for the consumer will increase 1% more from 3.5% in 2007 to 4.5% next year.
Director of Mini Masters Learning Academy Robin Leininger said these pricing increases will affect many aspects of her daycare.
“It will affect just exactly how we plan our menus,” Leininger said. “How we feed the kids. Obviously we've got a very specific set of types of foods that we do have to feed the children, but also how is this going to affect the way we charge the parents the families.”
The president of the Kansas Farm Bureau had this to say:
“The largest increased demand for food is coming from the developing world,” Steve Baccus said. “That is a demand that is not going to slow down or go away anytime soon.”Baccus says it is also unusual for so many areas of the world to have big problems with weather, cutting the supply of food at the same time increasing the demand. More big pricing increases will happen for dairy products and eggs among others.
