Food Costs, Freight and the Strait of Hormuz: How We're Keeping Dubai Supplied

We usually use this space to talk about ingredients and recipes. This one is different. If you run a kitchen — or you just care about good food — you've felt prices move this year, and you've probably heard the reason: the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow stretch of water that nearly all of the Gulf's sea freight passes through, has been badly disrupted since early 2026. We think it's worth being straight with you about what's happening, what it's doing to the cost of food, and how we've been handling it on your behalf.

A straight look at what's happening at sea

Almost everything that reaches this region by sea comes through one chokepoint, and for long stretches of this year that chokepoint hasn't worked normally. Regional tension has stalled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, held ships up, forced reroutes, and pushed war-risk insurance premiums to levels the shipping industry hasn't seen in decades. When a container costs far more to insure and takes far longer to arrive, that extra cost doesn't vanish — it lands on the invoice. The container ships that normally carry much of the Gulf's food have been caught right in the middle of it.

What that does to the price of food

Here's the part people outside the trade don't always see. The price of a dish isn't just the ingredient — it's the ingredient plus freight, insurance, storage, wastage and time. Restaurants already run on thin margins, so when the landed cost of almost everything imported climbs at once, it bites hard. A few extra dirhams on a case of oil or a sack of rice, multiplied across a full menu and a full month, is the difference between a good month and a bad one. That's the squeeze kitchens across the city are feeling right now, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.

How we've been navigating it

We can't reopen a shipping lane. What we can do — and have been doing — is take as much of the shock as we reasonably can, so it doesn't all hit your kitchen at once. In practice that has meant holding deeper buffer stock, so a delayed shipment doesn't turn into an empty shelf. Fuel prices also climbed substantially this year, and we chose to absorb most of that rise ourselves rather than pass it straight through. And it has meant being honest with you when something genuinely has to move on price, instead of quietly letting it creep. Consistent supply at a fair price — especially when it's harder for us to deliver — is the whole point of being a supplier worth keeping.

Credit where it's due: the UAE kept cargo moving

We also owe a genuine thank-you to the UAE. Through a difficult and unpredictable period, the country's ports and logistics teams have done an outstanding job keeping cargo moving quickly — clearing and routing shipments with a speed not many places could match. That effort is a big part of why out-of-stock situations have stayed limited and why kitchens across the Emirates have kept running. We don't take it for granted, and we're grateful to be operating somewhere that takes its supply chain this seriously.

A hard year that made us stronger

Relying on a single route was never going to hold up this year, so we widened the net. We've brought on new suppliers across Vietnam, Thailand, China, Spain and Canada, and opened up alternative routes — moving fast so we're not left at the mercy of one chokepoint. Lead times have stretched considerably along the way, and we've planned around that with earlier ordering and deeper stock rather than letting it reach your shelf. It has been a lot of unglamorous work, but it's left us with a more resilient supply chain than we had a year ago, and more ways to keep the staples and the specialist ranges you rely on actually flowing. A crisis has a way of forcing the kind of change you'd never get around to in a calm year.

We're in this for the long run

We've been doing this for over 22 years, and we intend to be doing it for the next 22. That ties our success to yours: if the restaurants and cafés we supply can't get through a year like this one, neither can we. So we'd rather take a slightly smaller margin and keep a kitchen cooking than protect a number and watch good businesses struggle. That isn't charity — it's simply how you build something that lasts in food. We're fully invested in this industry, in the good years and the hard ones, and we'll keep doing whatever we reasonably can to hold the line on supply and price for the people who count on us.

Here when it matters

For over 22 years, GGFT (Golden Grains, Dubai) has supplied the UAE's restaurants, cafés and hotels — from sushi counters to pizzerias to five-star kitchens. Through addtocart.ae, the UAE's leading platform for foodservice products, both home and business customers can buy direct from an A-grade hotel supplier, with free UAE delivery over AED 150. Restaurants and caterers can set up trade pricing through fnb.addtocart.ae. If this year has taught us anything, it's that the right supplier is a partner, not just a price — and that's exactly what we intend to keep being.