These two words elicit a strange emotion in me. Going back to BT Programme Management days we regularly did a price increase (Price Change AKA). The programme of work would take 12 months but would happen every 9 months and it was an exhausting process. Each price had to be extracted from the database, increased manually in Excel and then uploaded back into the database.
Alongside this we'd also offer customers "sweeteners". Get something free if you accept the cost, or get a better deal for the same money. You know the story.... And I did two of them whilst working at BT and they really were very stressful but the stress was from a workload perspective - the impact to the end customer was always a couple of steps away from the BT Tower we worked in.
This time around the price increase is a little closer to home and the impact to the customer a lot closer to see. When I took the pub on Hall & Woodhouse said there was some room to put the prices up, but as a small establishment our costs should be lower than most which means prices should also be lower. But looking at the GP% of the drinks I conceded to put the prices up ~10p per pint on 1st Oct. Not much, didn't have a massive impact on the GP but "every little helps".
I then get a notification that H&W had put their prices up by 5% on 31st Oct. I heard about this after the fact which was a bit annoying although I've been assured it was advertised two weeks prior. 5% doesn't seem much does it? A pint of Fosters costs £4.30 here, and to keep the GP% level I'd need to put the price £0.26 taking the price of Fosters to £4.56. This on top of the budget news yesterday isn't sitting too well.
Sadly putting the prices up will be inevitable but I'm loathed to do it before this weekend with a full day of Rugby on Saturday and the start of the world cup Sunday. So, a sad but necessary job for Monday. All I hope is that the prices that I need don't push the customers away. Not only do I quite like them all, they keep my pretty little business ticking along!