marylsommers: Cost of Christmas dinner up by 7.5%

Monday, December 26, 2011

Cost of Christmas dinner up by 7.5%

Big rises in cost of coffee, red wine and gammon, while cost of cream crackers has soared by 51% in a year

As families sit down to tuck into their traditional turkey Christmas dinner on Sunday, some may wish they had been a little more Scrooge-like this year. The cost of a traditional Christmas lunch ? turkey with all the trimmings, washed down with a nice white and rounded off with cheese, crackers and a full bodied red ? has roared ahead of inflation.

While the official figures show the cost of living is now 4.8% up on 2010 levels, the average cost of a Christmas dinner has risen by 7.5% in Britain during the last 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics. There have been big rises in the cost of coffee, red wine and gammon, but the biggest jump is in the cost of the humble cream cracker ? up 51% since December last year from 55p to 83p.

An after-dinner cup of coffee is now 21% more expensive, a glass of red is up 14%, while the bacon to dress the turkey breast or wrap round chipolatas is up more than 6%. Diners planning to tackle Nigel Slater's port-soaked venison will find themselves paying 75p more for the boozy component of the dish.

The ONS identified all the individual items needed to make the perfect Christmas dinner from the basket of goods it uses to calculate inflation throughout the year ? although it had to make some adjustments for seasonal goods, replacing Christmas pud with a Victoria sponge, for example.

But shoppers tempted to make a similar switch for their Christmas meal might want to think again: according to the ONS the price of a sponge cake has soared 18.2% since last Christmas, driven by a rise in the cost of the individual ingredients.

"A sponge cake is made up of equal parts sugar, butter, egg and flour and the cost of all these have risen since last Christmas," said Mark Joll, director of online cake retailer Sponge.co.uk.

Joll said his company is paying around �24 for a 25kg bag of sugar this Christmas, compared with �16 last year. "Butter is about 15% to 20% more," he added. "And the cost of eggs has gone up in the last few weeks due to increased costs associated with the transportation from mainland Europe to the UK."

The British Coffee Association put the 50p increase in a jar of coffee down to "supply and demand issues", bad weather and rocketing production costs.

"Whilst coffee consumption has continued to increase globally, poor climatic conditions in several coffee growing regions has yielded significantly smaller coffee bean crops this year compared with previous years," said Dr Euan Paul, executive director of the British Coffee Association. Big rises in energy prices and the cost of distribution had added to price pressures, he said.

The ONS basket does not include that most crucial of Christmas dinner components ? a turkey ? but does include the budget alternative, turkey steaks. The price of these has risen from an average of �7.85 per kg last November to �8.15 this winter ? a below inflation increase of 3.8%. The cost of hard cheese, broccoli and frozen garden peas also rose below inflation and carrots and potatoes are cheaper than 2010.

Some food manufacturers blame the big supermarkets for the higher price tags. A spokeswoman for United Biscuits, which owns the Jacob's cream cracker brand, said it had not seen any major rises in the price of base ingredients that could have led to such a huge rise. "We did raise the recommended retail price, but not by anything like as much as 50% and it is retailers that set the price anyway," she said. The price of wheat ? one of the main ingredients in cream crackers ? has fallen since reaching a high of almost $9 a bushel in early 2011.

Alun Griffiths of wine merchant Berry, Bros & Rudd said there was nothing on the supply side that could have led to a 14.2% increase in European red wine. "The government's VAT increase added 2.5% and increased duty on wine has added around 7%, but not as much as 14% to 15%. Wine producers know how tough the environment is and they have kept prices remarkably stable during the last year."

A spokesman for Waitrose disputed the ONS findings: "Waitrose has made every effort to keep prices as low as possible this Christmas and has even reduced the price of some products ? for example, the essential Waitrose cream crackers cost 10% less than last year."

Philip Gooding of the Office for National Statistics said: "Our methodology means we collect prices from all over the country, from the supermarket chains to small retailers and tiny independents, so prices vary. It's very difficult for us to get a total cost for a Christmas meal because that depends on quantity and how much people eat. You wouldn't eat a kilo of back bacon, for example, or a bottle of red wine, white wine, fortified wine, and champagne. Well, I wouldn't."

Mark King

Lisa Bachelor