We're all feeling the pinch of our slowed down economy these days and thinking twice about where we spend our cash, even for a Mothers Day dinner. That, combined with rising food costs, is eating into local restaurants' profits.
"Happy Birthday to you!" sings a Stateline family inside Rockford's Altamore Ristorante.
These days it takes something special, like a 90th birthday, combined with Mothers Day, to get many of us to cough up the cash for a night out to dinner.
"We don't go out half as much as we used to. We've learned to pack our lunches and we are very careful about where we do go," says one diner, Lorrie Peters.
And that extra caution is taking a toll on the restaurant industry.
Alberto Altamore, owner of Altamore Ristorante, says, "When the economy is down, of course, people eat out less and I think they'll order, rather than ordering things on the menu that are higher priced, they'll order a little bit less."
That translates to further consequences, like waitresses walking away with smaller tips.
"The restaurant industry employs a ton of people. I think when things slow down, you have to tell your employees that they have to leave a little bit earlier, maybe not come in that day," says Altamore.
Add to the economic slow down, the rising cost of food and fuel and the restaurant industry is facing its own perfect storm.
Altamore says, "Whether its in the wheat that as tripled, literally in the last three to four months. Fuel prices, we get charged now for folks bringing us the food."
Altamore adds it now costs him at least twenty five percent more to place a meal on the table, while menu prices have not gone up.
But even though we're all scraping the bottom of the piggy bank, some meals are still too important to pass up.
"I wanted to take my mom out on Mother's Day because I love her a lot," says Ethan Lentz.
Altamore says the food crunch is harder on restaurants than grocery stores, because while grocers pass their increased prices on to the consumer, restaurants generally do not change their prices.
Altamore tells 23 News less than a year ago it cost him eight to ten dollars for a fifty pound bag of flour. Now the same bag costs more than forty. The same is true for produce and other foods. Altamore wants the government to step in and regulate the prices, to make sure they're fair for everyone.
A "google" search of Rockford restaurants show more than 600 pop up, so it's clearly an important industry here.