Rising food prices, has become a global concern. In the UK, in the last year we have seen a major increase in grains (wheat, soya, rice, corn and maize) and dairy. Meat and fish has had the lowest increase, but this is due to rise as grain farmers will cash in on the boom, increasing the cost of raising cattle therefore forcing cattle farmers to increase their meat prices.

With the US Ethanol production increasing, due to rising oil prices and fears over climate change. There are concerns that agricultural land is being used to produce biofuels despite a shortage of food production. which is a major contributing factor to an increase of food prices. Oxfam's Phil Bloomer states that biofuels pushed up food prices and led to "land grabs" from the poor.

In the UK, Gordon Brown has pledged to examine the impact of bio-fuels on world prices and ensure we are more selective in our support.

It has been forecast that prices will continue to increase as we approach a food crisis, due to population increase and emerging economies like China and India, and of course climate change.

So how will this effect the restaurant industry?

With the UK economy over the past years booming and people earning high wages, spending and loaning, enjoying many luxuries. We are now seeing that the credit crunch is hitting, people are going to be tightening their purse strings and luxuries will be the first hit.

Their will be a high number of business casualties, but with all the above factors, the smoking ban, rising energy prices, it looks like the restaurant industry will be hit hard.

Many pubs due to the smoking ban has relied on selling food than drink, putting them in competition with restaurants, increasing the mid- market sector.

The UK's eating out sector consists of 263,000 outlets making competition very high and we will see the less successful, forced out of business.