GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Across Trinidad and To­ba­go, the ris­ing tide of in­fla­tion is hit­ting hard­est at the din­ner ta­ble. For food es­tab­lish­ments, the chal­lenge is even steep­er: ab­sorb­ing re­lent­less cost in­creas­es while keep­ing meals af­ford­able for cus­tomers who re­ly on them.

Now, many out­lets have reached a break­ing point. With op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es climb­ing, they are com­pelled to raise prices sim­ply to stay afloat.

In the Eco­nom­ic Dat­a­Pack re­leased in De­cem­ber 2025 by the Cen­tral Bank, the lat­est Con­sumer Price In­dex (CPI) fig­ures con­firm what busi­ness­es have long sus­pect­ed: in­fla­tion is not eas­ing.

An analy­sis of the da­ta showed food prices gen­er­al­ly trend­ed down­ward from Ju­ly to Oc­to­ber 2025, but No­vem­ber marked a clear turn­around, with sev­er­al food items record­ing no­tice­able price in­creas­es.

From Ju­ly to Au­gust 2025, the food in­dex fell from 154.6 to 153.6, with a fur­ther eas­ing oc­curred be­tween Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber, as the food in­dex de­clined from 153.6 to 152.4. On­ly a small change was record­ed be­tween Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, when the food in­dex edged down from 152.4 to 152.2. The down­ward trend re­versed in Oc­to­ber to No­vem­ber, with the food in­dex ris­ing from 152.2 to 152.8.

Last week, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) re­leased its CPI for De­cem­ber 2025, not­ing that with­in the in­dex, the food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages cat­e­go­ry record­ed a slight in­crease, ris­ing from 152.8 in No­vem­ber 2025 to 152.9 in De­cem­ber 2025, an in­crease of 0.1 per cent.

This up­ward move­ment was large­ly dri­ven by high­er prices for sev­er­al com­mon­ly pur­chased food items, in­clud­ing fresh whole chick­en, par­boiled rice, toma­toes, fresh carite, plan­tains, eggs, onions, green sweet pep­pers, chilled or frozen turkey parts and oth­er chilled or frozen pork prod­ucts.

It is against this back­drop that food out­lets such as Pan­da House, a pop­u­lar restau­rant based in Dabadie, an­nounced an ad­just­ment to its menu prices ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

“At Pan­da House, our com­mit­ment to serv­ing you the high­est qual­i­ty in­gre­di­ents and ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice re­mains our top pri­or­i­ty. To nav­i­gate the cur­rent eco­nom­ic chal­lenges while en­sur­ing we nev­er com­pro­mise on the stan­dards you’ve come to ex­pect, we will be im­ple­ment­ing a slight ad­just­ment to our menu pric­ing,” the restau­rant ex­plained in a state­ment.

Just days be­fore Christ­mas, Hak­ka Ex­press al­so raised prices by $4, in­creas­ing the cost of a “Lite box” for in­stance from $44 to $48.

These moves mir­ror the strug­gles faced by oth­er es­tab­lish­ments in­clud­ing El Pecos, a long-stand­ing fix­ture in the food land­scape.

Un­der the new pric­ing, in­tro­duced at the be­gin­ning of 2026, buf­fet items would now be of­fered at $48 per pound, plus VAT. On-the-go meals have al­so been ad­just­ed, with chick­en and veg­e­tar­i­an op­tions priced at $50, while all oth­er meal op­tions would cost $55.

Sat­ur­day spe­cials have been up­dat­ed as well, with large por­tions of pig­foot souse priced at $35 and beef soup avail­able for $50.

Burg­er prices have al­so changed, with a burg­er-on­ly op­tion cost­ing $35 and a com­bo meal, in­clud­ing fries and a drink, priced at $48.

El Pecos own­er Richard Ca­ma­cho de­scribed how in­fla­tion has re­shaped the in­dus­try, not­ing that while gro­ceries and high-end restau­rants could ad­just prices dai­ly, food op­er­a­tors must com­mit to menu boards and print­ed prices, mak­ing changes slow­er and more dif­fi­cult.

“Pig tail, ribs, fries, but­ter, every­thing even oil. I used to do ox­tail on my counter then I had to stop. Ox­tail is close to $40 a pound whole­sale...Then you have the shrink­age. You have a lot of shrink­age when you cook meat. When you cook any­thing, you have a lot of shrink­age. You’re fight­ing that bat­tle all the time... A case of chick­en costs us $450 to $460 a case. We use three pound birds and we get that for about $14.25 a pound.

“For Christ­mas, chadon beni, was $65 a bag.It’s nor­mal­ly $15 and $20. Some days, we couldn’t get our vol­ume,” Ca­ma­cho ex­plained.

He al­so point­ed to the ris­ing cost of eco-friend­ly con­tain­ers, near­ly $4 each, as well as surg­ing util­i­ty bills and rent, all of which have erod­ed mar­gins.

Labour short­ages and ab­sen­teeism have added fur­ther strain.

“The ab­sen­teeism out there is ridicu­lous. It’s just un­con­trol­lable. The care­less­ness with these new, young work­ers. Their work eth­ic is not as good as as yours or mine,” Ca­ma­cho added.

De­spite these pres­sures, El Pecos tried to hold prices steady, rais­ing them in­cre­men­tal­ly in the last three years.

“From 2023, we went from $43 to $45 plus VAT a pound and then we stayed there for 2024 and for 2025 and now we have gone to $48. That move should have been done at the end of 2024, so for 2025, I should have been at $48. if I want to stay with the trend,” Ca­ma­cho fur­ther ex­plained, adding that all his pro­duce ia lo­cal­ly sourced as well as oth­er items like chick­ens.

“We im­port the beef and the pork. Lamb, I think, comes from out­side. I don’t buy for­eign, un­less we can get it lo­cal,” he said.

Glob­al cri­sis hits home

The strug­gles of these food op­er­a­tors are the lo­calised man­i­fes­ta­tion of glob­al chal­lenges, Patrick An­toine, CEO and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO), told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

He said the re­gion is fac­ing a sus­tained pe­ri­od of ris­ing costs with “no end in sight” for 2026, not­ing that the new­ly formed Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (PSOTT) is al­so a mem­ber of CP­SO.

An­toine not­ed that for years, large dis­trib­u­tors and im­porters tried to buffer the im­pact of ris­ing costs from the Unit­ed States—the re­gion’s pri­ma­ry source of food im­ports.

He said CP­SO re­search shows that un­til re­cent­ly, im­porters ab­sorbed near­ly 75 per cent of these in­creas­es. How­ev­er, that buffer has now col­lapsed, and as of ear­ly 2026, those costs are be­ing passed di­rect­ly to the con­sumer.

The cri­sis is com­pound­ed by a “knock-on” ef­fect from oth­er ex­port­ing na­tions in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca which are al­so rais­ing prices to main­tain their own mar­gins.

Even though some ex­emp­tions were grant­ed for agri­cul­ture in the US, An­toine ex­plained these have not been sig­nif­i­cant enough to halt the up­ward tra­jec­to­ry of prices.

The pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gap and fal­low land

A crit­i­cal fac­tor in this in­fla­tion­ary cy­cle is the state of do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion. The cost of agri­cul­tur­al in­puts, such as fer­tilis­ers and urea, has risen sharply be­cause, most­ly, these items must al­so be im­port­ed.

“We have this cy­cle of cost in­creas­es tak­ing place, which is es­sen­tial­ly the knock-on ef­fects of this sort of tar­iff and mea­sures from the Unit­ed States and even though they tried to buffer it by giv­ing some ex­emp­tions, the ex­emp­tions for agri­cul­ture have not been sig­nif­i­cant. Those costs will re­main and those costs al­so feed through in­to the do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion sec­tor in agri­cul­ture,” An­toine said.

For lo­cal farm­ers, stay­ing afloat means pass­ing these costs on to cus­tomers.

The most sig­nif­i­cant hur­dle to low­er­ing prices lo­cal­ly is a scale prob­lem, as An­toine stat­ed, es­ti­mates sug­gest that on­ly one-third of T&T’s arable agri­cul­tur­al land is cur­rent­ly be­ing utilised, while two-thirds sits fal­low.

This lack of pro­duc­tion cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where less food is chas­ing high­er de­mand, nat­u­ral­ly dri­ving prices up.

An­toine urged the on­ly way to fight this in­fla­tion is to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty—pro­duc­ing more per acre and bring­ing more land in­to ac­tive pro­duc­tion.

Re­gion­al call to ac­tion

The is­sue ex­tends be­yond this coun­try’s bor­ders to the wider Cari­com re­gion.

Pro­duc­tion, An­toine out­lined, has fall­en dras­ti­cal­ly in coun­tries that tra­di­tion­al­ly ex­port­ed to T&T, such as St Vin­cent, Grena­da, and Do­mini­ca.

This re­gion­al sup­ply fail­ure, com­bined with ris­ing US costs, has trans­formed food se­cu­ri­ty in­to a “food ac­cess” is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the most vul­ner­a­ble seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion who can­not com­pete with emerg­ing price lev­els.

The CP­SO called on gov­ern­ments and min­istries to think strate­gi­cal­ly about “de-risk­ing” im­ports. This in­cludes iden­ti­fy­ing al­ter­na­tive coun­tries that of­fer bet­ter pric­ing than the US and cre­at­ing more ro­bust sup­ply link­ages with­in the Cari­com mar­ket.

For T&T, An­toine out­lined the path for­ward would re­quire a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach: boost­ing lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, di­ver­si­fy­ing im­port sources, and sup­port­ing busi­ness­es that are strug­gling to main­tain af­ford­abil­i­ty.

With­out these mea­sures, the CPI fig­ures may be just the be­gin­ning of a longer, more painful climb.