DURHAM, N.C. — With the cost of everyday essentials continuously increasing, it may be a cause for people to skip the stop for a morning coffee or eat at home instead of dining out. 

In North Carolina, inflation is a top concern for 65% of registered voters, according to a recent Spectrum News/ IPSOS poll.

For Early Bird Night Owl, a boutique hotel and restaurant management company that operates four establishments in the Triangle, easing the burden on consumers while maintaining a profitable business has been a challenge. 

"We are trying to be really sensitive to that, as our costs are going up we are trying to attract people to come back out. The last thing we want to do is make it cost prohibitive for people to come and enjoy," said Craig Spitzer, the founder and CEO of Early Bird Night Owl. 

Spitzer has been working in the hospitality industry for 24 years. Before moving to North Carolina in 2006, he managed a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which was impacted by the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the recession. 

"In both cases, with 9/11 and the recession, once the recovery started, it seemed to stay steady until we got back to something approaching normal. In the case of COVID, it's been a fits and starts. We thought we were out of the woods to seeing business levels return, only to take three steps back for every one step forward each time along the way," Spitzer said. 

In March 2022, inflation rates reached a 40-year high, with the consumer price index capping 8.5%. Spitzer says they've been seeing costs increasing even before inflation rates spiked.

"Our chicken breast costs are triple than what they were last year. We could either increase our price by triple, which our customers wouldn't appreciate or respond to, or shrink our portions, neither of which are options to us, so what we are doing is maintaining our quality and maintaining our portion size and incremental increasing our costs and portion size in order to be a profitable enterprise," Spitzer said. 

In addition to inflation, the labor shortage is adding more hurdles for restaurant and hotel operators like Spitzer. 

"With the labor market being so difficult, labor wages have gone up 20-25%, which I think was a correction that was needed. But when we increase prices to account for our cost of goods going up, we are really not able to, we think, effectively increase our prices to account for labor going up without potentially creating sticker shock for our guest and customers. It's a fine line of where we can go," Spitzer said. 

Spitzer's company operates two boutique hotels, The Durham Hotel and The Mayton in Cary. While boutique hotels typically cost more than hotel chains, Spitzer says guests who choose to stay at their property are getting a unique experience.

"What I have found is that people are more willing to pay a little bit more for a more unique experience. We are finding that guests are more receptive that it does cost more to stay at our hotel, but what they are getting is a more unique and personalized experience than another place," Spitzer said. 

Spitzer says in the last six to eight weeks, business travel has increased. However, they are mainly seeing people traveling for leisure, or family events like weddings and graduations.