The rising costs on small business

It's been a tough week for everyone out there in Australia. The recent rise in RBA rates, the increasing inflation rates, rising costs of everyday living in food, energy and resources.

For us here at the Backyard Beekeeper - A couple of important points moving forward

Like all small businesses at present these rising costs are very difficult to absorb, I think we would all agree small business is the last to adjust pricing as they truly value each and everyone of their customers.

Two big impacts to us right now is the price of vehicle costs and the effective RBA changes to surcharges 1/10/26.

We have decisions to make regarding these impacts -

Effective immediately we have decided to switch off the ability to pay by card and only accept Cash or Bank Tranfer payments.

Why? All businesses continue to pay a surcharge regardless of what has been communicated by the decision makers. Our fee has been offered to reduce as per RBA expectations - our provider has agreed to reduce it from 1.8% to 1.7% not what the RBA has communicated, so we unfortunately have chosen to delete the option instead of raising costs and hoping our customers will understand our reasoning and support us.

As for vehicle costs we have seen a exorbitant increase in diesel prices, insurances, tolls and registration costs. All of us here at The Backyard Beekeeper are doing our very best to shield any extra costs to our clients hoping these would not last, but it continues to this day.

In order to combat these costs (which we hope to be shorter term) without permanently increasing our pricing we need to introduce a fuel levy on every invoice. This will be a flat $10 per invoice or just over 3ltr of fuel to keep us on the road to get out to everyone.

This will be effective 1/11/26.

Once again thanks for your support, everyone is doing it tough and especially the bees,

What has already been a very difficult year I do apologise for this news and hope everyone will understand or can make a change for the future that will support small business, farmers and the everyday Australian that is doing it tough.

Kind regards

Rick and Team