ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — With housing prices and rent going up, especially in St. Johns County, some business managers say their employees are getting priced-out of the market.
One industry especially seeing this happen is the restaurant business.
Beachside Diner in St. Augustine Beach encompasses the challenges in the industry. The family-owned business is the kind of place for locals love and that tourists tap into.
However, this last year has been hotter in the kitchen than normal there.
"Food costs have skyrocketed," Sarah Viola said. She helps manage the restaurant her parents own. "Things as simple as bacon and eggs have gone up. What we used to pay for a case of eggs has now doubled what it was a year ago."
On top of that, her family has had to raise wages by 20 to 25 percent in the last year. She said there are reasons why.
"It just seems to be a lack of people applying and also just to compete with other restaurants. It seemed like everybody had to increase wages to get people to say aboard."
She and other restaurant owners say the price of housing and rent is the underlying reason.
"The genuine middle class, restaurant workers, the blue collar workers are 100 percent being priced out," Viola noted.
The median sales price for a single-family house in St. Johns County was $567,927 in April, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors. And rent is jumping up too.
Viola estimated that half of the staff at the diner cannot afford to live in St. Augustine now. So many of them live 20-30 miles away in Hastings, Flagler Estates and Palatka.
"And now gas prices," Viola said. "So that’s a huge issue."
Viola said her parents made the tough decision to raise the prices on the menu.
"We can’t raise the menu enough to keep up with labor and food costs," she said. "We want people to keep coming in so that everybody has a job. And so we do have some sort of profit, so we can keep the restaurant running."
It's a challenge for this mom-and-pop business, where the chicken and waffles are stacked as high as the cost of housing in the area.