Ask anyone in Saudi Arabia the price of tamees — the flatbread on almost every weekend breakfast table — and the answer is one riyal ($0.27). Or, at least, it was.
Friday afternoons for many Saudis often mean queuing for the cheap, calorie-rich, clay-oven bread. Lines spill down the block after prayer, with laborers and millionaires alike waiting to pair it with two-riyal fava beans from the fawal, or cafeteria, beside the bakery. Bakers spent years holding the symbolic one-riyal line for tamees, but rising costs have finally outrun them: Most now charge up to two riyals, Al-Eqtisadiah found.
Until now, bakers have used premium cheese, za’atar, and ghee versions of the bread to subsidize the price of the plain ones. But even that workaround no longer holds. The state gas company raised cylinder prices 41% this month, and a bakery can burn through five cylinders a day. An old folk verse prices a simple life at two riyals for beans and one for bread — only half of that tune still rings true.