gas prices

Toronto gelato company pausing summer deliveries due to rising gas prices

Right now, most Toronto gelato spots are gearing up for the summer and expanding operations, but one is cutting off deliveries for the season due to rising gas prices.

Nani's Gelato officially announced the suspension of their delivery service publicly on social media after making the decision at the end of March to pause them.

In two years of running deliveries they've never done something like this before, and have found the delivery system is crucial in helping them reach customers who might not be able to visit them physically, and in growing the brand.

For deliveries, they typically outsource to companies that transport frozen goods, or use their food truck. And with gas prices reaching astronomical heights and diesel prices touching $2 per litre, things got tricky.

"Our third transportation company that we use has had to significantly increase the per drop price of each delivery and include a fuel surcharge," Nani's owner Parry Sohi tells blogTO.

In addition, they need to use their internal truck more during summer for daily product runs and events, and scheduling would make it difficult to keep up with deliveries.

"We were left with a difficult decision between significantly increasing our pint prices or temporarily discontinuing deliveries," says Sohi. "We chose the latter."

They realized they would have had to increase prices by 30 per cent, and simply didn't want to do that.

"We just went through a 12 per cent increase in dairy prices, altogether, we've seen a 40 to 50 per cent increase in the operating costs pertaining to deliveries," says Sohi.

Missing out on summer deliveries is going to impact Nani's in a major way, not only financially but in terms of their connection to the greater community.

"Previous to the increase in diesel prices, revenue from deliveries over the summer was a major profit centre for the business," says Sohi.

"More upsetting is that a large percentage of delivery orders we receive over the summer are for family BBQs, parties, private dinners, etc. and not being able to get our product easily in the hands of these customers is disappointing. I know so many of them look forward to our weekly deliveries."

While the plan right now is to bring back deliveries starting in September, gas prices will need to decrease by a good 20 to 30 per cent for them to become viable again.

Lead photo by

Hector Vasquez


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