Alaska is 1/3 the land mass of the U.S. and yet its lack of roads forces rural businesses to rely on water and air-based transportation to receive necessary inputs. Bush Alaskans rely on subsidies for access to basic federal and state services, like mail and medical services. Sudden rate hikes, like the recent 9.39% rate increase for bypass mail, can cause significant disruption in bush services.
In 1994, Esther Donhauser founded the Hound House in Aniak, AK. She and her husband Dave Diehl co-own the pizza joint, which is the only official restaurant in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta outside of Bethel, a land area the size of Oregon. Besides serving Aniak’s residents and the people willing to travel a couple hours for a hot pizza, Hound House also flies half-baked pizzas out to the bush.
Despite providing mouth-watering pizzas and one of the only cozy places for people to gather in Aniak, Hound House faces extreme difficulty staying in business. Hound House has managed to stay in business for nearly 30 years, even with the small customer base and high-priced operational necessities like electricity and stove oil. Recently, the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission added another steep challenge: a 9.39% rate increase on bypass mail.
The rate increase makes getting supplies like flour, cheese, and sauce shipped in from Anchorage wildly expensive. A Hound House extra-large special costs customers $42, and a large pepperoni pizza costs $32. Higher prices will certainly lower demand, but keeping prices the same in the face of the increased bypass mail rates threatens the business’s ability to stay in the green.
Donhauser voices her discouragement at the news: “I mean, it’s just so hard to keep going. It’s like, every time you turn around, something else goes up. And you just get tired of fighting.”
Although Diehl indicates that it might be time to retire soon, for now, the Hound House furthers its pizza-producing legacy, maintaining hours all week long.
Hound House’s plight is only one example of many restaurants and businesses across Alaska suffering from the increased price of inputs. It is no secret that Alaskans living in both rural and urban areas have seen a significant increase in the price of goods and services. The bypass mail rate increase will drive prices higher across the state, and it may even eliminate the last existing restaurant serving the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
If you don’t love what you do any more, then it is time to get out of business, move on or retire. Life’s too short to stay in the every day grind if you don’t love the restaurant business or what you do for work.
Prices are going up everywhere in Alaska (not just the Bush) for groceries, takeout food, etc. Large and small businesses regularly raise prices and pass the cost on to the consumer. Any business that doesn’t raise prices of products for sale despite cost of shipping, inventory/ingredients increases won’t last long. Example, a certain ice cream dessert someone likes was $5.99 a bag last year and now it is $9.49 for the same bag at the local grocery. OUCH!!
I’ve seen alot of items straight double in price. It’s getting out of hand. Thank people wanting minimum pay increases and the anchorage assembly increasing the port container tax and tonnage tax. Fast food isn’t cheap anymore I got a fish o lay sandwich meal and it’s $13 once $4.69
Yeah, I buy frozen raspberries at FM all the time. A couple days ago I went to buy some more and they had a tag that said new lower price and the price actually went up! Another item I buy a lot was usually just over $7 and this time it was over $9. Needles to say I didn’t buy it…I thought $7 was high.
Is this all you got for a read and comment? Postage stamps?
Why should taxpayers be forced to subsidize people who want to live somewhere where it is expensive to live? If you can’t afford to live in the bush, move somewhere else that you can afford to live. This is what people have always done, you can too.
agree. Its their life choice. Its like work, you often must move to where there is work.
Welp gotta closer then.
Oh no!
The eternal plight of beleaguered natives who deserve cheap pizza irrespective of their choice to remain way the f off of the road system rears its head once again and surely the rest of us must hang our collective heads in shame for being so selfish with our hard-earned tax dollars, right, Nat?
Eventually the $42 pizza will be $84. One foot forward, two steps back
Well, pizza isn’t that good for you anyway…
The USPS loses BILLIONS annually. Has for a decade. Bypass mail is part of the problem.
Taxpayer money out the door.
We pay the same prices for pizza here in Juneau.
Just a price check here. Apparently pizza is cheaper in Aniak than in Seattle. A large special is $49 and a large pepperoni is $42.
order somthing on line, free shipping, everywhere execpt Alaska where they sock it to ya. go figure…………
Perhaps in retirement they should buy a price of property at the end of the Anchorage Airport runway. Then complain about the noise. Don’t live where it’s difficult and expect me, the beleaguered taxpayer, to help pay your expenses. Enough is enough.
I’m not sympathetic. Living in rural Alaska is a choice. Prices always have been higher there. The bypass mail system means I pay for your lower shipping costs yet I get no benefit from it at all.
And these are the same people who drove the wooly mammoth to the brink of extinction.
Well said John Hancock, well said.
This is what happens when L48ers and carpetbaggers who have no stake in Alaska, control what we do on and with our lands. We become too dependent on entities, (or should that be ‘enemies’?) we can’t fully trust.
I agree with a lot of the comments on here but in reality Alaska is stagnating. It’s time to throw off the oppressive mandates and lock downs that originated in the 70’s and 80’s and start to open this state up. That would include building roads and opening up more access to land for development and habitation. You can only stagnate for so long before everything just implodes. It feels like we are right on the brink of that. Hopefully with President Trump opening up more land to development Alaska will be able to recover and move forward into a better future for all Alaskans.
At Uncle Joe’s Pizza in Anchorage their large chicken pesto pizza is 37 bucks.
Forty two bucks in the middle of nowhere is a smoking deal.
No one’s going to subsidize your preference for living in a backwater and requiring the benefits of a metropolitan culture. Suck it up, buttercup.
By- Pass mail and SNAP benefits both enable the poisoning of rural Alaskans by making unhealthy junk foods available.
Afterwards, the real subsidy kicks in, so called Healthcare, ostensibly to treat the diabetes and obesity.
Why does your government sustain this vortex of insanity?
True that. Less By-pass groceries, less junk food (pop/chips/candy/frozen pizza)
Healthier people.
So rural Alaskans are too dumb to make their own choices?
What about those of us that don’t require bypass mail or SNAP but still need to be saved from ourselves by someone capable of making healthy choices for us? I’ve read a few of your prior posts and of them all the idea that someone else should make food choices for those that live in the boonies is the worst. Accept personal responsibility. It is the way.
That, or big city white’s should get special consideration too, no?
Scrumptious, I don’t care what you eat, smoke or drink if you pay for it, in full, with your own money. See how that works?
Not mentioned (at all ever in AK I notice) is NO prop taxes, NO rent cost, NO vehicle insurance, NO mortgages in village Alaska. There are savings out there that big city businesses can only dream of.
You get what you elect, Congress is responsible for regulating the Post Office. Somebody has to pay for the $Billionaire tax breaks
Frank… Billionaire tax holidays?
Really?
What has happened to MRA? Why in the world would this site be lamenting a reduction in subsidy by WE TAXPAYERS directed to people who choose to live in an unaffordable region? So much for “conservative” news