(FORTUNE) – The owner of McJak Candy, known as the “Willy Wonka of Medina, Ohio,” isn’t feeling so sweet this month. Thanks to rising labor and supply costs, he’s had to increase the average price of his candies by about 12%.
“We always put out a price list and say, ‘Here's our 2022 price list.’ That's always how we've done it,” Larry Johns tells Fortune. “For the first time this year, we're saying, ‘This is our current pricing effective this date, subject to change,’ because I can't lock things in for a whole year. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
McJak Candy, which has been manufacturing sweets in Northeast Ohio for 40 years, is one of countless small businesses in the U.S. that have had to make some big changes because of sky-high inflation over the last six months.The price of consumer goods and services continues to rise – hitting 7.0% in December, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the Bureau of Labor Services released Wednesday.
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