Some U.S. restaurants and retailers are already passing along the costs of tariffs to customers and have warned that future price increases on their products may occur should higher tariffs go into effect, such as proposed 46 percent tariffs on products like shrimp from Vietnam and 50 percent duties on E.U. imports.
Today’s Crab House in Oxon Hill, Maryland, U.S.A., is one such restaurant that recently raised prices on shrimp and crabs.
“We hate to do it, and we have a few options: Decrease the portion of meat size or raise the price, and we don’t want to decrease the portion because customers are used to good portion sizes. So, the only way to combat this is raise the price,” Today’s Crab Owner John Lee told DC News Now.
Today’s Crab House shrimp prices rose 20 percent – from USD 4.80 (EUR 4.20) to USD 5.60 (EUR 4.90) per pound – while crab prices now stand at USD 30 (EUR 26) per pound.
“With inflation in the past few years, the prices have already gone up, and lots of the shrimp you get in restaurants come from Ecuador. You see the impact from the tariffs on that has gone up a couple of dollars, and when you sell lots of shrimp, that adds up,” Lee said.
Meanwhile, restaurant owners across the country, including in New York City, the greater Boston, Massachusetts, metropolitan area, and Santa Cruz, California, are all being hit with higher costs when sourcing products and are weighing whether to make the same decision Today’s Crab House made or seek other solutions like changing their menus.
"We're going to change the menu around trying to make it better for us and make it better for everyone coming in as well," Kyle Greene, the general manager of Hindquarter Bar and Grille in Santa Cruz, told KSBW 8 News.
On the retail side, Rochester, New York, U.S.A.-based Wegmans and Williamsville, New York-based Tops placed signs warning of price increases due to tariffs in their produce departments, according to Supermarket News.
“We believe in being transparent in our communication with our customers, so we communicated the information at the point of sale,” a Tops spokesperson said.
Retail giant Walmart has not posted signs about price hikes, but its executives have warned about upcoming price increases.
“We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb. It’s more than any supplier can absorb. So, I’m concerned that consumers are going to start seeing higher prices,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey said, per CNBC, adding that price hikes will start at the end of May and “much more” will come in June.
Citing the tariffs’ impact on retailers, Zak Stambor, an analyst at New York City-based market research firm eMarketer, told SeafoodSource that the latest threats of a 25 percent tariff on imported Apple products and the 50 percent tariff on E.U. imports would “drive up companies’ costs across the board, creating fresh challenges for companies already operating on tight margins.”
“Those costs are almost certain to trickle down to consumers,” he said.
Complicating the matter further, all companies are having difficulty planning in the medium term and long term due to the “Trump administration’s ever-shifting trade policies,” Stambor said.
Even before the “latest round of uncertainty,” eMarketer lowered its U.S. retail sales growth forecast to 1.5 percent for the full year of 2025 – a steep drop from its original 2.9 percent projection prior to the first wave of tariffs, Stambor said.
“If E.U. tariffs go into effect, we expect that number to fall even further,” he said.
This follows weeks’ worth of warnings from U.S. restaurant associations on the impact of tariffs. Many restaurants rely on China for key inputs, including food ingredients, plastic packaging and utensils, and equipment, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) said.
Therefore, the tariffs will lead to increased costs and supply chain disruptions, Advanced Economic Solutions President Bill Lapp told the NRA.
Lapp is advising restaurant operators to mitigate the impacts of higher pricing and possible shortages by closely managing supply chains, finding alternative sourcing options, and re-engineering menus to include more affordable ingredients.
“Dynamic changes at restaurants and retail operations still remain, and business operators will have to be even more creative and innovative to deal with those challenges,” Lapp said.
