Assuming you’re in the US, translating that into Canadian dollars, that’s CAD $10.89 for a dozen eggs. Do those chickens have their own private jet?
Sheesh. For that kind of money, I can get a dozen local free-range organic eggs (they run $6.75 - $7/dozen around here).
This is Hawaii. Grocery prices are always bad.
My wife is kind enough to do virtually all of our shopping, though I do take responsibility for getting all of our dog food/treats and the little luxuries we enjoy. She has come home the last few times without any lettuce at all. We’ve started eating salads that are 100% peppers, cucumbers, carrots, and the like (though these aren’t cheap, either). We are in North Carolina.
However…the cost of my Pop-Tarts has not changed at all in the last three years. YMMV, but I pay exactly the same for a box of 32 as I did in 2019. I have no idea why this is the case.
Man, it’s bonkers here (Chicago). The spread is just nuts. I can’t find cheap eggs (now it’s like $3.99/dozen at Aldi, which is usually the cheapest), but I can find chicken tenderloins and ground chuck at 99 cents a pound at a meat packing place. Normally, those are like $4/lb each in a normal place. And they’re good. I’ve bought food there and eaten it, and it’s all been not just good, but really good. I got jumbo chicken wings at $1.19/lb. Crazy cheap. And 5 pounds of sausage at $1. Yes. $0.20 a pound. Eggs at the average supermarket at like $6/dozen. Not free range. Not cage free. Not GMO free. These are the same eggs that about four years ago would be under a buck a dozen.
Here’s the place I go to for deals. You’d think something is wrong, but it’s not.
But normal grocery prices? I would say 2x what it was pre-COVID. It’s nuts.
I just went to the grocery store (Kroger) yesterday. Eggs were $5.89 for 18. International Delight Creamer is now $3.49. It used to be $2.49 just a year ago. I should check the package size. Flour and sugar was high. Pot roast was on sale. I paid $1.99/lb and got a huge one. I cut it in half since it’s just the two of us. I’ll make pot roast with one, and stew meat with the other.
For funsies I found a grocery from Apr 29, 2020 and added all my items to the cart again to see how the prices worked out. The original order was for $84.91 and the new order for $74.61, which puzzled me at first until I realized that the “new order” is only 20 items and the original was 33 items, so 13 aren’t in stock. So if I subtract the out-of-stock items from the original order I’m down to a total of only $48.26.
So, 54.6% more than 33 months ago, not whatever BS low teen % the inflation report has claimed for each of the past 2 years.
Oh, and eggs were not part of the order, for the record. A dozen large will cost me another $5.
You’re up 54.6% over three years or so. If it was exactly 13% a year for three years that would be 44.3%. The math kind of works out.
No one was claiming inflation was anything like 13% in 2020.
(Haven’t read the entire thread) The grocery stores in my area, Hy-Vee being the main chain, are doing loss leaders galore. It’s definitely a good way to stock up on things that can be stored.
As for perishables, Fareway, a smaller Midwestern chain, is great about marking down short-dated things, and I get some astonishing bargains that way (and post them on my Facebook page; IDK if they know I’m doing this, although I’m sure they wouldn’t object if they did). I got 25 cent cartons of yogurt yesterday, and an aged T-bone steak for $6.99 a pound.
Regarding shrinkflation:
There’s a guy who has made a crusade of documenting the shrinkflation phenomenon in the US, and he’s got a web site:
He’s also detected a new thing he’s calling skimpflation - products that have less of an active ingredient than they used to (like cough medicine and mouthwash with flouride), while maintaining the same prices.
Eggs were my go-to low cost protein source. Not that long ago 88 cents per dozen, now $3.88 for the same discount big supermarket generic. And from what I’ve read that was the low end. Unfortunately, I work an hourly labor-intensive job that requires many calories and I care about my health/digestion. Right now I pretty much work OT just so I can afford to eat to fuel my work the rest of the time so I can keep my heat on and water running and so on. Except OT is not guaranteed. So for example this weekend I’m home not eating much. I guess I could say I’m cutting bodyfat between that and the anxiety.
Here’s a pertinent story from CBC about Loblaw, a large Canadian grocery chain. Bottom line: while inflation is legitimately affecting the costs of producing many goods, there is also a good deal of price-gouging going on. While consumers struggle with rising food prices, Loblaw is raking in record profits …
Loblaw, those are the jerks who post on Twitter about how their profit margin is only 4% (1% to 3% is considered normal for a grocery store).
Even the thumbnail summary notes the profits are boosted by results from Shoppers Drug Mart.
I admit I don’t grasp the “price gouging” accusation. Price gouging is something a seller does when the customer is left with no option but to buy because of supply shock or demand spike beyond their ability to avoid; it would have been price gouging to hoard hand sanitizer and sell it for $40 a bottle during the early days of the pandemic (and some assholes did.) There is… no increased demand for FOOD, no supply shock.
So if Loblaws is gouging… why are they only gouging now? Did this not occur to them last year? All these years and it just now crossed their mind?
There is a spectrum between deal and fair profit and profiteering and gouging. It’s not always an easy call. I try not to fill up the car tank on weekends. If the same thing is five bucks at Place-Of-Minimal-Frills and ten dollars at PC Fancypants than I will try to buy it at the former.
Many prices are staying remarkably low. I got 2 dozen eggs for $8, down 25% since last week. Pork has stayed low, I get chops and tenderloins for under $5 as pound. I can always get hamburger for $5 a pound now but all other beef is extremely high in price. $25 a pound to get a couple of pieces of filet for Valentine’s dinner.
Just about all seafood is high in price. Mussels are a rare exception. Lobsters go on sale often enough because they aren’t moving. Sushi quality fish is outrageous and monopolized around here.
Shrinkflation is a big problem with packaged foods. Every time you turn around there’s a smaller package or less inside of one for the same or higher price.
Produce isn’t bad. Items fall into short supply and climb in price but basics like onions and potatoes haven’t climbed in price significantly since pre-Covid.
Compared to our electric bill and the price of non-food items grocery prices are pretty reasonable.
I have always tended to shop around with grocery prices. Some things are reasonable and some attainable at reasonable prices in some places. But some things are slightly shocking, for the first time in memory, at one store it was cheaper to buy butter imported from France than the usual Canadian stuff and Canada adds huge duties to foreign dairy.
Well, they’ve been engaged in bread price-fixing for over fourteen years, until the Competition Bureau finally caught them, so this isn’t entirely new.
But as the article notes, food retailing is concentrated in five major companies, of which Loblaw is a major player, so there is lack of competition. Lack of competition in the retailing of essential commodities can lead to bad outcomes for the consumer. Despite the Loblaw CFO’s claims to the contrary, critics charge that the pandemic and widespread post-pandemic inflation provides a smokescreen for raising prices beyond justified levels, a practice they call “greedflation”. An expert that the CBC consulted simply said that it was very difficult to pin down whether this was really happening, but did note the lack of robust competition.
The article also notes that “because of their unique position in the food system, grocery retailers actually have power over both suppliers and consumers”; increased profits may be due to their ability to squeeze both sides. Which (just pure speculation on my part) may be at least part of the reason for Nestle regrettably deciding to get out of the frozen food business altogether.
ETA: And, in support of your OP, I dropped in to the grocery store today on the way home from somewhere else just to pick up some sandwiches for lunch for today and tomorrow (they make really good ones). While there I also picked up a few odds and ends like mushrooms, tomatoes, a couple of pork chops, and a loaf of bread. The total came to $69. Now that I look at the receipt I see a few expensive cheeses that helped to boost the price, but still, it wasn’t so long ago that this would have bought an entire week’s worth of groceries, and all I have for it is a few snacks.
You have pork chops, bread, mushrooms, tomatoes, and at least two sandwiches. That is more than a few snacks. When exactly was your weekly grocery bill $69? How many meals a day was that for how many people?