Just went to Starbucks for first time in months. Their smallest grande size cups have really shrank. I still see drive thru lines still as long as ever!
Went to my Walmart: items missing: Chicken in a Biscuit crackers, Milanos, entire shelves empty, Lime Gatorade.
And my next discovery, I really loved getting the 3 breadstick deal at the PizzaHuts inside Target. Some Targets removed their delis. The PizzaHut/Target I finally got to, they now no longer sell the breadsticks. At Regular PizzaHuts you can only get the 5 breadstick set which is too much more me.
The products over here that suffer most from shrinkage are mostly confectionary. Mars bars, wagon wheels and double-deckers have all shrunk.
I would be surprised to see coffee cups shrinking - I suspect that coffee drinkers would be seriously upset, and the savings would be minimal as the coffee in the cup costs very little.
Since the OP mentioned coffee cups didn’t the coffee tins they sold in grocery stores used to be a full 16 ounces instead being 10 to 12 ounces they are now?
More often than not, when manufacturers decrease package size, it’s because they’ve been challenged with some kind of cost increase on their side.
This gives them two options- keep the package size the same and raise prices to accommodate the cost increase, or keep the price the same, and decrease the package size accordingly to accommodate the cost increase.
For example, let’s say a package of coffee is 16 oz, is priced at $6, but costs $4.50. Then something goes down in Brazil and the cost of their coffee beans goes up $0.50 per 16 oz. So now the cost is $5, and the price is still $6, which means the coffee is no longer profitable. The manufacturer presumably expects to make some amount of profit per package, so they have to make a choice. Do they make it a $6.50 package of coffee, or do they keep the price at $6, but drop the package size to 12 oz?
I suspect that studies have shown that decreasing package size (within limits) and keeping price points steady works better than raising prices and keeping the package the same size. So that’s what they do.
I would not be surprised if we’re seeing a round of that sort of thing happening with the various shortages and price increases happening around the world.
In general all those canned good cans that are now 4 3/4 or 5 or 6 ounces used to be 8 ounces (half a pound) and all the ones that are now 10 or 12 or 14 ounces used to be 16 ounces (a full pound.) But that isn’t due to current shortages, or to any shortages. It’s been a gradual change occuring bit by bit over decades, and has to do with getting people to pay the same money for less product.
It will be interesting to see how long this can progress. Like, ice cream for example was traditionally sold in both pints (generally fancier higher-end ice cream) and half-gallons (and other bigger sizes sometimes). The pints, as far as I can tell, are generally still a pint, but the “half-gallon” size first went to 1.75 quarts and now to 1.5 (though not all at once). Presumably it could drop to 1.25 or even a quart, but presumably it’s not going to shrink all the way to a pint without a larger size being available.
I assume we’re not eventually going to be buying beans in those little 4 oz cans that green chiles come in. How small can those cans shrink before it becomes just silly?
Thirty years ago, when I was working at one of the big U.S. haircare product companies, the standard size for a bottle of shampoo or conditioner was 16 ounces; at some point in the '90s, the industry very quietly downsized those to 15 ounces.
Then, some years later, most of the major U.S. manufacturers shifted to a metric size of 375 ml (12.6 ounces), ostensibly in the name of standardizing a size across countries.
Haven’t there been complaints for a long time that American portion sizes have become ridiculously big and that this is responsible for the overweight of the majority of Americans? Maybe something good in a medical sense can come out of the Covid crisis.
It’s shrinkflation and it makes me sad. Costco used to sell food in BULK…now it’s selling food in just slightly better but not by much. Hot dogs and Lunch meat and Potato chips, and cereal all get slightly smaller over time…I suspect Keureg K-cups are putting less coffee in each cup…I’ve actually started buying coffee in beans, in bulk, because the quality is better and there’s less waste (and the time it takes to boil the water for the french press in the morning is enough to do the dishes and start the day with a clean sink.
I don’t see it turning around. One of the parents in our Scout troop worked in the bulk commodity foods industry and let on that, yeah, while sizes are getting smaller, and the excuse is ‘things are more expensive’…there’s a degree of ‘we’re making money hand over fist and that’s just an excuse to make more profit’.
A “one pound” can of coffee has been 13 ounces for probably thirty years.
It can be a challenge when trying to make a recipe written in 1960 work with today’s smaller size packages. Do you hope less condensed milk won’t make a difference, or do you crack open a second can and wind up with most of it left over?
Tell me about it. My wife has a ton of beloved recipes, which she got from her grandmother; the recipes were likely originally written down in the 1960s or 1970s. Many of them rely on packaged goods (frozen or canned vegetables, etc.), and were built on the standard package sizes for those products from decades ago.
As the person who winds up doing most of the grocery shopping, I have to regularly remind her that, when she gives me a shopping list based on making one of those recipes, she needs to tell me how many ounces she needs, as well, because the packages have completely changed.
This is it, exactly. Which will piss off consumers less, paying a higher price or getting a smaller package? A smaller package is less likely to be noticed. A higher price will cause the consumer to buy a cheaper brand.
It’s hard to be annoyed by the shrinkflation, because I’ve had to deal with idiot customers calling up angry when prices get raised. Like people don’t realize everything costs more over time - gasoline, raw materials, wages, etc.
