Will UK Sugar Inflation Affect How GBBO Contestants Pay For Their Ingredients?

Ready, set, bake — "The Great British Bake Off" is set to begin filming in April. A new set of contestants has auditioned and been chosen, and they'll be arriving at the white tent soon. And while fans are accustomed to watching the amateur bakers battle through the summer heat and rainy days of spring in the tent, there may be something else affecting their bakes this season: the rising cost of ingredients.

Although aspiring contestants aren't get reimbursed for their audition expenses, once in the tent, bakers get an ingredient allowance for each week they compete, according to 2017 contestant Sophie Faldo (via SurreyLive). As bakers develop their Signature and Showstopper bakes, they give a list of ingredients to the show's team of home economists. 

But unless bakers are getting bigger allowances this year, inflation could potentially spell tighter budgets and less room for them to get creative with special ingredients or fewer chances for a re-do if their bakes go awry.

Grocery inflation in the U.K. has reached 8.9% over 2022, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC)-NielsenIQ index (via ITV News). And some of the strongest culprits read like a recipe ingredients list: sugar, chocolate, butter, eggs, fruit. In fact, the prices of fresh food are up 17% over last March, setting an all-time record. 

The BRC blames both the increasing cost of raw materials and the energy used in processing and manufacturing items such as sugar and chocolate (via The Guardian). A drought in Spain and North Africa has impacted the availability of fresh fruit harvests, poor harvests in Brazil and India account for the jump in sugar prices, and the spread of bird flu has driven the cost of eggs up.

Although the show has not yet commented on how inflation may affect bakers' budgets in 2023, it's not a given that they'll be increasing bakers' budgets to keep up with the higher cost of ingredients. "GBBO" didn't exactly have a banner year in 2022; viewership of the Season 13 finale was down from 7.2 million in 2021 to 5.2 million. 

One of the biggest downfalls fans see in the tent is when contestants haven't practiced their bakes at home. Their timing is off, and something about how they've envisioned the tweaks to a standard recipe just doesn't work quite right. A camera aside with the baker and one of the show's hosts (perhaps new "GBBO" host Allison Hammond) reveals that they haven't practiced. Or, worse yet, there's a direct question from Paul Hollywood, and the whole world grimaces in concern. With the steep cost of ingredients, it's easy to imagine that fans could see more of this in Season 14 than before.

If there's a squeeze on budgets in the tent, viewers may see fewer elaborate Showstoppers. "People normally have 12-20 ingredients, but it varies — Frances Quinn has 124 for her cake in the final," "GBBO" chief home economist Faenia Moore told ITV News in 2021. 

Helen Dickinson, chief executive officer of the British Retail Consortium, expects prices to continue to rise for a few more months before easing, in part due to global trends and in part with the local British harvest season beginning. Fans could see a higher reliance on local ingredients in the tent as the growing season takes off, potentially producing more berry-forward deserts than tropical and citrus-focused flavors. With the secrecy surrounding "GBBO," we may not know until the show premieres this fall. But it could be a week-by-week retrospective of the U.K.'s economy when it airs.