This week, a Reddit post in r/smallbusiness pulled 351 comments and a 96% upvote rate after a cafe owner posted the letter from his landlord. Rent up 40%. Eight weeks to decide whether to stay. Four years in that space, built out from an empty shell with his own hands, three months of eighteen-hour days before the doors even opened.
The replies turned into a pile-on of shared panic. Materials up. Insurance up. Distributors charging more for the same order. Everybody nodding along because everybody is living some version of it.
Here’s what that thread is actually about, once you get past the rent. It’s about business owners who have spent years quietly absorbing higher costs instead of doing the one thing that would help fix it.
The Costs Are Real. Nobody’s Arguing That.
Groceries, gas, building materials, insurance. All of it costs more than it did a few years ago, and if you run a business, you’re paying that increase twice: once as a person, once as a company. This isn’t a “some sectors” problem. It’s everywhere, and it isn’t slowing down.
Rent is its own animal. There’s no law capping how much a commercial landlord can raise your rent, in almost any city in the country. In parts of Queens, storefront rents jumped 20 to 33 percent in a two-year stretch. Landlords can do that because nothing stops them, and lease renewals don’t care how good business was last year.
So yes. Costs are up. That part isn’t up for debate.
You’ve Been Trained Not to Touch Your Prices
Here’s where most owners talk themselves into a corner. They assume every customer they have is buying purely on price, so raising it feels like handing them a reason to leave.
Some customers are price shoppers. Fine. But most people who come back to your business, again and again, aren’t doing the math on every visit. They come back because it’s convenient, because they trust you, because they like walking in and having you know their name. Americans pay a real premium for not having to think about a decision twice.
You’d have to mess things up pretty badly to lose a customer like that over a ten percent price increase. Most owners never test that, because they’ve convinced themselves the answer is obvious. It isn’t.
Raise It Anyway
My actual take: most small businesses can raise prices five to fifteen percent right now without losing anywhere close to the number of customers they’re bracing for.
One landscaper in that same thread raised rates 30 percent this year. Nearly nobody left. That’s not luck. That’s someone whose customers were never just buying “lawn care” in the first place. They were buying reliability from a person they trusted to show up.
You are probably that person to more of your customers than you think. Test it before you assume otherwise.
The Number That Should Change Your Mind
You are not the only one thinking about this. According to NFIB’s small business survey, 38 percent of small business owners raised their prices in June, the highest share since January 2023, and the fourth month in a row that number has climbed. Another 32 percent say they plan to raise prices again in the next three months.
A third of small business owners already made the move. They are not going out of business because of it. If you’re still holding off, you’re not being cautious. You’re behind.
The One Good Thing About All This
Here’s my honest opinion, and I know some people will push back on it: this wave of costs is forcing something that needed to happen anyway. It’s making owners look hard at how they actually run their business, instead of running it the same way they have for six years just because that’s what “normal” feels like.
I’ve watched this pattern in dozens of businesses. The owner who’s closest to the operation is usually the last person who can see what’s wasteful about it. Not because they’re bad at their job. Because they’re too deep in it, every single day, to notice what’s become routine that never should have been.
That’s not a knock on you. It happened to me too, running my own businesses. You get so far into the weeds you stop questioning the basics.
Get a Third Eye on This Week
You don’t need a twelve-week engagement or a binder full of slides. You need one outside person, this month, looking at two things: your prices, and one place you’re spending money out of habit rather than need.
A consultant. A friend who runs a business and doesn’t have anything invested in yours. A mastermind group, if you’re in one. Someone with zero stake in the outcome, who can say the thing you can’t see because you’re standing too close to it.
Most owners skip this step entirely, and it’s rarely because they don’t want the input. It’s because they’ve told themselves they don’t have the time or the money for it. That excuse gets more expensive every year you use it.
Look for one place in your business you haven’t raised a price or questioned a cost in over a year. That is the place where a change likely should happen.