APPLETON, Wis. — Flour is in just about everything at Simple Simon Bakery in Appleton.

It’s a staple ingredient co-owner Scott Simon said he’s been paying more for over the past month.

“Where a typical 50-pound bag of flour would cost me $17 to $18, now it’s $24,” Simon said. “In the grand scheme of things, that’s a huge jump.”

Increases are due in part to higher fuel costs, but also the future markets reacting to the war in Ukraine.

Both Ukraine and Russia and major exporters of grains and other agricultural products around the globe.

What happens there can ripple to Main Street, Wisconsin.

Simon said it may take months for the full impact of the war to be seen in commodity and eventually ingredient prices.

“I’ve been told by my sales reps that we can expect the price of wheat to rise extremely high,” he said while making cakes.

From the pandemic, to inflation and supply chain issues, the war is the latest challenge faced by the food industry in the past two years.

For Simon, the increased cost of doing business means they’ve had to raise prices.

That hasn’t stopped Steve Johnson of Neenah from dropping in once a week to buy the foods he and his wife like.

“There’s nowhere else in the valley I’d rather go to get a donut or cookie,” he said while displaying an open box of baked goods.

After all, there’s only so much he can do about what happens to global wheat or gas prices.

“We can’t control the prices so you just have to go with the flow,” Johnson said.

It’s not too far off from Simon’s approach when asked about navigating the latest hurdle of the 2020s.

“You wake up, come to work with a smile on your face and don’t worry about the things you can’t control,” he said.