William D. Baker

William D. Baker, Dunderbak's Market Cafe

William D. Baker, Baker Management

Bill Baker of Dunderbak's Market Café was late getting his Valentine's Day banner ad posted on Region Online's Web site.The ad, which featured gift baskets, went up only a week before the holiday.

Nevertheless, Baker sold 23 Valentine baskets - at $35 each - to customers across the country.Most went to customers on the East Coast, but "one or two went out West," he says.

That's more than Baker expected he would sell from the 468-by-60-pixel banner Web ad.And, he assumes, they all were new customers because none lived near his retail store on the lower level of the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall.

William Baker, Owner, Dunderbak's, Allentown, Pennsylvania
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Baker, W., "For health and economics, go smoke-free," Morning Call, March 14, 2003.

But recently they have risen because wholesalers are passing on the higher prices driven by the higher cost of transportation, said Bill Baker, owner of Dunderbak's Market Cafe in the Lehigh Valley Mall and a board member of the National Restaurant Association.

"More and more of my suppliers are tacking onto the bottom of their bills, 'fuel surcharge,"' Baker said.

The price of eating out constitutes a relatively large 6 percent of the consumer price index, Afshar said.

"That's a huge weighting, because people constantly eat out," he said.