Editorial: Big hikes in mince prices won’t shut our pie holes

John van den Berk of John's Bakery & Café in Hastings deserves a knighthood for services to pies. Photo / Jack Riddell

Who ate all the pies?

Inflation did.

Or more specifically, mince inflation.

ASB Wealth senior economist and occasional ground-meat commentator Chris Tennent-Brown last week said meat prices were up across the board and rises were as much as 30% to 40% higher than a year ago.

He claimed beef, like dairy prices, was tied to the global market price. “It reflects a bit of scarcity of products at a time when demand is pretty high, both here and abroad ... when we’re seeing strong demand for Kiwi meat and dairy coming from offshore, it tends to flow through.”

In Hastings, a mince pie from John’s Bakery & Cafe cost $7.30. Owner John van den Berk, still its master baker, opened the eatery 34 years ago.

He had put prices up, but said “a lot of the cost we’re actually sucking up”. The enduring businessman was now dipping heavily into his KiwiSaver just to keep his business “afloat”.

A baker who cuts his own cloth to keep people pastry-fed is surely on the radar for a knighthood.

Pies have become an economic bellwether.

While they’re not as official as the NZSE40, they’re a barometer of how we’re faring.

It’s no small wonder the Bakels NZ Supreme Pie awards is staged in winter; the craft of piemaking and our savoury cost-of-living index align for maximum exposure.

Many of us don’t understand the nuances of the NZSE40, so it’s much better to use a common pastry to gauge which economic headwinds blow on the pie.

Blue-collar indicators resonate much better with Kiwis.

Similarly, this year’s awards’ supreme winner was a luxury number, described as “a swirled potato-top pie with a centre core of fondant-style cooked potatoes finished in au gratin layers”. While that’s all well and good, let’s not forget it was also, albeit with a twist — just a shepherd’s pie.

Interesting how rising mince prices we typically shrug off — but when it manifests itself by threatening our pie consumption, there’s fireworks.

What stings, though, is we simply won’t give them up. Or, as a hungry Bono put it: “I can’t live, with or without you.”

The same way many of us don’t hesitate to pay more for a latte when holiday surcharges apply, we don’t stop eating pies just because they’re more expensive.

In economics parlance, that’s called “elasticity of demand”.

In common speak, it just means that hikes in mince prices will never shut our pie holes.