After all of our costs from jugs, to fuel and all other costs that go into maple syrup, I found it necessary to raise the prices of my maple syrup, effective immediately. I tried to hold the increase to as little as possible, but each size did go up $.50 or $1.00 depending on size of the jug. In these hyper inflationary times I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold these prices.
Empty jugs have become very difficult to get, if not impossible at any price except a few places who bought a stock ahead so they could price gouge the buyer, in many cases those have just about doubled the price, jugs I could buy for $1.95 or $2.90 last fall depending on size are now upwards of $3.75 and $4.50 for my 2 larger sizes and I saw one vendor who had $4.25 and 5.59 on those same 2 sizes, all by full case lots.
These times are hard to keep up with. The only reason I was able to keep my price increases this low is because I bought enough jugs in all of the sizes I use last September to last me until about Spring of 2023, in fact I bought more than I had storage for, and I still have a few cases, all paid for at my dealer, in storage, with my name on them. Somehow I could see some shortages coming 7 months ago and bought what I could at that time. I’ll finally have room for them in my storage after my recovery from surgery this May. I just spoke with the dealer 2 days ago, he’s OK with that.
That dealer is truly a good friend, I first met him when I was tapping on a steep hillside one January a few years ago, when he stopped his tractor along side the county highway and walked across an open field about 200′, thru about 18″ of snow and up the steep hill to introduce himself, letting me know he also makes syrup and is also a dealer. My dealers before that were 35 minutes drive in one direction or 25 minutes in another direction from my sugarhouse. Here I had a dealer just 10-12 minutes away. In fact, as I cut back on how many taps I put in, he bought one of my leases, tubing system and all except my big sap tank (He put in a 1000 gal SS tank, where I’d had a 850 gal SS tank.)
I just have to hope the jug shortage is over before I need more jugs, and that fuel prices come back down, for all of our sake. If they remain where they are today my next price increase will be considerably larger than this current price increase, if they actually climb even higher, nobody will be able to buy pure maple syrup except the very rich.