Indulging a penchant for sweet, flaky pastries could cost us more soon, as the global butter crisis hits home.
Internationally, butter prices have been soaring, with less butter being produced in many key countries, and shifts in demand. And Australia is feeling the pinch too.
Pastry prices
Baker Nick Tabet of in Sydney's Kirrawee fears the global butter crisis is going to have a huge impact on his business.
Tabet, who supplies cafes such as Brewtown and Harry's Bondi with his baked goods, says he's faced with the tough decision of passing the price hike of butter-based products onto the customer or reducing the number of buttery treats he produces.
"The global butter crisis is really scary for us because we are so heavily dependent on imported butter," says Tabet. "I have been buying bulk butter for a long time for products such as brioche and, in the past 12 months, bulk butter pricing for the New Zealand butter we were using has almost doubled in price."
"With regards to our pastries, what this means from a baker's perspective is that we've had to change from using a premium butter product from Belgium with 99 per cent fat content to a less premium product with just 82 per cent fat, which is less than ideal," he says.
In the past 12 months, as the global demand for butter and cream continues to outstrip supply, Tabet says a 25kg block of butter has gone from $125 to $225.
He says he won't be able to absorb the shrinking profit margins for much longer and will either tweak his recipes to include less butter or try and source the fatty substance locally.
"If people stop ordering pastries and croissants, we will make less. Alternatively, we are looking at using a locally sourced butter, such as Pepe Saya's butter, for pastries. But when it comes to buying butter in bulk, I don't know what we're going to do because the locally sourced butter in bulk is still more expensive than the already prohibitive prices," says Tabet.
"I'm sure there will be some companies out there that will try and shift people's perceptions to buy butter alternatives but I've never made pastry with margarine and I'd rather stop making pastry than make it with an inferior product," he says.
Johnny Pisanelli, owner and patissier at in Adelaide, believes he has no choice but to raise the price of his premium pastry products as the price of butter skyrockets. Each day, Pisanelli sells about 150 croissants.
"We can only absorb the price rise for so long but eventually we will have no choice but to pass the price rise onto customers. What do you do? We can't not use butter. Thirty per cent of our pastries are made with butter, not to mention products like puff pastry and brioche and the prices are going to have to be passed on," says Pisanelli.
"The price rise is definitely due to the demand in emerging economies such as China. The bigger butter companies are now sending butter to China and demand we pay the same price. Why would they want to supply a population of 25 million when they can go for a country with a population of one billion?" he asks.
The effect of the butter shortage is , including the Melbourne arm of artisanal French bakery chain .
Not all bad news
But not everyone is lamenting a shift in the global population's desire to eat more butter. Pierre Issa, of butter, says he hopes to capitalise on the increase in consumption and convince more Australian bakers to use his product.
"Did you know that 98 per cent of Australian bakeries use imported butters to make butter croissants?" Issa asks.
"Butter stockpiles overseas have been decimated and we'd be crazy not to capitalise on that because one thing we have been trying to do for a very long time is to get the bakers who are using European butter to make pastries with a local butter," he says.
Issa says the butter crisis comes down to 'classic supply and demand elasticity' and once a product is in short supply it becomes more expensive. He says Pepe Saya is fielding more enquiries than ever - both domestically and internationally - and is gearing up to increase production of butter sheets from 6000 to 10,000 a week.
"In the past three months, the price of cream in Australia has increased by 33 per cent. Over the weekend, Le Monde newspaper announced that stockpiles in Europe have been depleted. I hope to make headway with the butter issue by convincing the Australian bakers to switch from using European butter to make their pastries and use ours, which is a long-term gain for us and great for the Australian economy," he says.
Issa believes the butter price for commodity butter delivered to a patisserie at $10.50 a kilogram is more of a sustainable price for the industry. He says he's "not talking about socialism, he's talking about sustainability".
"This has to be a good thing for the industry if this has a flow-on effect to the dairy farmer."
DIY butter
Cultured unsalted butter
