A kitchen store and tariffs: A case study
Rooster Brother co-owner, Pamela Elias, at her office in the Ellsworth kitchen store pondering price adjustments. Photo by John Epstein.
By John Epstein
Ellsworth — At her desk on the upper level of Rooster Brother, the popular Ellsworth kitchenware emporium and market for coffee, wine and cheese, co-owner Pamela Elias held up the sort of inventory sheet that she’s been marking up with felt-tip pens throughout August. The reason: ever-changing tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on her suppliers.
“It’s so exhausting,” she said. “You think you’re done with one and then there’s another one, and another, and it’s on and on.”
Elias said the majority of Rooster Brother merchandise, much of it manufactured or produced in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, has been affected by the tariffs. The store purchases items from some 700 vendors, many of whom are raising their prices, often without a clear explanation.
“Some companies aren’t being terribly transparent,” she said. “They raise prices but don’t tell you why.”
Other companies are quite definite, such as the Dutch firm, Patisse, a manufacturer of baking pans.
“We got an invoice from them listing the various costs, and at the bottom they wrote ‘Trump Tariffs’ to explain a 10% charge,” Elias said.
German-made knives, pots and pans; potato peelers from Switzerland; kitchen aprons from India, and cookie cutters from China are just some of the products that have, or soon will, become more expensive because of tariffs, Elias said.
“It’s the uncertainty that affects how we buy from our suppliers,” Elias said. “If we know a product is going to be going up, we may stock up ahead of time, but if it doesn’t go up in price we may end up being overstocked, and you don’t want that in the retail business.”
Elias noted that the summer months have been profitable, thus the overall impact on the business’s bottom line isn’t readily apparent, she said.
“Summer visitors aren’t as concerned about prices,” she said, adding that how things play out in the winter months, particularly during December which generates the highest sales volume, remains to be seen.
A coffee trade tutorial
Gene Pellerano serves as both the wine buyer and manager of the store’s busy coffee roasting business. Elias asked him to explain how the tariffs being imposed on coffee from Brazil, Indonesia, and Kenya could play out for the store.
“Coffee gets bought ahead of time by importers who buy it on the commodities market and store it in warehouses,” said Pellerano, who has been with Rooster Brother for 28 years. The store manager explained that the coffee being sold now in the store had been shipped out of the nations where it had been grown before the U.S. imposed tariffs on those countries. However, Pellerano said the importers may be raising prices anyway to offset the sales losses they will incur for future purchases on the coffee commodities market that are subjected to tariffs.
Gene Pellerano, a longtime employee at Rooster Brother, in front of an industrial-sized coffee grinder. He runs the coffee roasting department, buys the wine, and manages the specialty foods section. Photo by John Epstein.
Absorbing costs and pricing merchandise
Elias said that while some of the companies supplying her store may be getting hit with 20% tariffs, they absorb a portion of the costs rather than passing the full amount on to her business.
“We try to absorb some of the costs, too, if we can,” she said.
A frustrating aspect of retail life during these new tariffs is the time it takes away from expanding the business, Elias said.
“We have to re-tag items on our shelves each time they go up in price,” Elias said. “That adds a lot of labor costs and cuts into our ability to find new products to sell to expand our business.”
This is the 38th year Elias and her husband George have been operating Rooster Brother. The store’s name comes from the title of a children’s book that they read to their kids about a boy who saves his pet rooster from thieves.
The Elias’s wanted to sell Rooster Brother in 2023, but weren’t happy with the offers. When their daughter, Tamsin, moved back to the area with a willingness to join the business in any capacity, the Elias’s decided to keep running the store.
Despite this time of navigating tariffs, Rooster Brother’s staff and customers bustle with energy.
“And I still enjoy coming to work each day,” said Elias, as she headed back up the stairs to her office on a busy Thursday afternoon in late August.
The Rooster Brother kitchen and houseware department. Photo by John Epstein.
