Six Tips for Coping with higher Commodity prices

How a bread maker is coping with higher wheat and gas costs gives useful insights for all small business owners:

1. Are you doing your pricing right? Make sure you are pricing at what the customers are willing to pay (value based pricing) vs. pricing based on your cost (cost based pricing).
2. Find more ways to sell your products.
   
3. Achieve Operational Efficiency. Whether are not you sell premium products, continuously driving your costs down helps you overcome shocks.
   
4. Partner with other small business owners to share costs and to cross-sell to your customers.
   
5. Hold on to your trained employees, they are essential to keep your total costs down despite high labor costs.
   
6. Be not afraid to improve prices.