This is news we never want to have to give but we have made the difficult decision to increase prices on certain products in The Hive Café from Monday 31 March.

We believe it’s important that we are up front and transparent about why we’ve had to increase prices and the decision-making process behind this.

National Insurance Contributions

Effective from April 2025, the government is increasing employer national insurance contributions from 13.8% to 15%. Alongside this, they are also lowering the threshold for when contributions are made from £9,500 to £5,000.

In simple terms, we’ll pay more national insurance per employee (the increase) across a larger number of staff (due to the lower threshold). This double whammy was unexpected and not pre-built into any of our forecasts or budgets.

Supplier Increases

Across the past year we’ve seen our suppliers edging their costs up (causing cost-push inflation) and recently received numerous advanced warning of further cost increases. These are impacting all product areas, from our sandwiches to the cost of our coffee beans.

Increase to National Living Wage

In April the National Living Wage will increase by 6.7% from £11.44 to £12.21. While we fully support this uplift, the additional cost needs to be funded from somewhere. Had the national insurance increase not occurred we would have been in a position to absorb this cost but as a collective it has become too much.

Value for Money

We have done all we can to mitigate price rises and internally benchmarked our prices against competitors and sought alternative suppliers that meet our high standards. That was the driving force behind introducing our Gaia coffee range in September which has allowed us to serve barista style coffee at a more affordable price point while we have sought to reduce waste through efficiency measures and improvements to our procedures.

Despite this work, there’s no more room for us to absorb costs and these increases are essential to ensure we can continue providing valuable employment opportunities for our students while remaining financially sustainable and upholding our ethical values regarding our product range.

Nevertheless, we remain steadfast in having your back and providing you with affordable options on campus. We will be keeping many of our deals, including our £5 meal deal (this includes a sandwich/salad bowl, snack, and a cold drink), ensuring our specialty cakes and pastries are competitively priced, while you can still get fantastic coffee for under £3.

It’s important to remember that the Students’ Union is a charity, and as a not-for-profit organisation, any surplus we do generate is reinvested into our services. To put simply, whenever you purchase a meal deal or buy a coffee, you’re contributing to the funding of services such as our Advice Service, training for Academic Reps, or grants to societies.