LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — The rising price of oil linked to the war in Iran is impacting consumers across the country — including in Louisville, where businesses and shoppers are already feeling higher fuel and grocery costs.

Higher oil costs are driving up transportation and fertilizer prices, which increases the cost of producing food and forces grocery stores to raise prices. 

"Eventually like everybody else we have to pass the cost onto the consumer," said Mike Whitaker, store manager for ValuMarket's Highlands location. 

Whitaker said they've seen a 5% increase in freight charges since the first of the year.

"In the past we tried to eat as much of that as we could but being a small local family owned business, we cannot absorb that anymore," he said.

The store was forced to increase some prices already since the price of fuel has gone up. This includes produce they get from Indianapolis.

"Nothing is cheap, but we just hope and pray that one day it will come back down," Whitaker said.

Eric Schansberg, an economics professor at Indiana University Southeast, said the exact impact is difficult to measure because rising oil prices affect many everyday products, but he expects the effects to be temporary.

"In this context your choices are pretty much to consume or not because everything is going to be higher costs," Schansberg said.

As the prices increase, shoppers like Cecilia Brandy said they continue to cut costs elsewhere and are riding the surge out,.

"I shop day to day now," Brandy said. "I don't do the big grocery shopping that I used to do. It doesn't look like they're going down any time soon. Like I said, I'm taking it day by day."

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