Just me.
Yep, before the lockdown, etc., Walmart’s eggs were $0.68 a dozen in NE MN.
In Little Rock, Arkansas, they’re high, especially organic produce. But the things that have nothing to do w/ supply side issues and such are high as well. Fish is crazy high, especially salmon. I’ve had to change my diet in order to keep from blowing so much money on food. That $5 organic bell pepper I saw in Tucson still sticks in my mind.
Community gardens and window growing could save people some money, especially on the small stuff like spices. But I do think that community gardens are the future and the only real hope.
Take the matter away from the corporate farms, which are often subsidized w/ tax paper money, and just do it yourself. Most of the subsidized farming goes towards feed for animals. If that wasn’t there, the price of that dead animal on our plates would go up. The system seems to be pretty broken in terms of consumer prices.
Not quite that low, but my range before lockdown was generally $0.79-$1.99/dozen here in Chicago. I know that’s a wide range, but eggs would fluctuate quite a bit. My mental price for eggs is that they should be a bout a buck to buck fifty a dozen. Right now, my local store was advertising $4.99/dozen on the outdoor sign. As recently as two weeks ago, one place near me had a sale of $2.89/dozen.
Yeah, it was like that around here too. 79¢ maybe for small eggs, but I could count $1.10 to $1.30 year round for large white eggs, maybe and 10¢ to 20¢ more for brown. We had plenty of local eggs available so price of major brands would go up sometimes but you’d hadda have a lot of brand loyalty to pay more for those. Maybe in
Isn’t NE MN in Canada? 
I really can’t think back to when I’ve seen a dozen eggs available that low. It wasn’t in this century.
I was talking large eggs in my pricing. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything smaller than medium being sold. I’m reasonably certain I’ve seen 69 cents for medium within the last five or six years.
As I mentioned, we have a lot of local eggs. You don’t see smalls all that often but sometimes there are deals like 12 dozen smalls for $1.50. I got that once but it was annoying to crack open so many eggs. Smalls aren’t supposed to weigh that much less than larges but it seemed like it took 2 smalls to equal 1 large. Jumbos are never quite right either. Some portion of the egg prices and short supply around here were because of new regulations for chicken farming. I don’t know if that happened nationwide or just some states.
I was just at Aldi and spotted large eggs for $3/doz. Milk gallons were $2.65 but I got a half gal for coffee at work for $1.54.
Actually, a lot of the electorate shot itself in the foot when it let certain elements convince it that the price subsidies that the USDA had since the 30s to keep most food cheap was communist bastardtry and vote them down or elect those who would …
The 68 cent eggs were large white eggs.
And yea NE MN is pretty close to Canada - about 3 hours to the nearest Canadian city (Fort Frances) from where I live. 
Meijers dozen eggs were 2.29.
Here’s more circumstantial evidence of the same phenomenon in the US:
When food producers started raising prices a few years ago, they blamed their own costs, including higher ingredient prices. But ingredient prices have actually been on a downswing for months, and individuals are still paying more for food.
In part, it’s because food producers have other expenses that remain pricey, like labor and transportation, compared to a few years ago.
But critics and industry experts say the cost increases gave food makers cover to hike prices above what those increases called for, boosting profits and correcting what they saw as too-low prices in previous years.
And now that they’ve seen that people would pay more, they’re not rushing to give up profits by charging less.
“When costs change, especially when costs change in a very publicized way,” it’s not unusual for companies to use the moment to raise prices, said Jean-Pierre Dubé, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Companies view these as occasional opportunities, and they don’t want to miss out.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/economy/food-prices-inflation/index.html
The head grocers in Canada claim that their margins remain small and profits often come from non-food items.
Where I live in Far North Queensland (Aus) we have a choice between two major supermarket chains who pretty much price match. When I lived down south, we at least had Aldi stores to pick up staples and the odd weird thing from the centre aisle…scuba equipment, snow shoes and other miscellany. But the prices between Coles and Woolworths are comparable and ridiculous. Eggs are around $6AUD a dozen. Milk is $3.60 for 2litres. Fruit and veg are astronomical, considering that the hinterlands up here grow pretty much everything. Even 500gm of crappy sausages costs around $6 and they are more sawdust than meat! Sliced ham starts at $20kg for the processed shit and up to $35 for decent leg ham. Chicken is generally cheap (and our main protein staple) but is still $14kg for thigh fillets. Steak is a very rare luxury at around $50kg and don’t get me started on fish. Living in the tropics, you’d think fish would be cheap and plentiful. Well it bloody-well ain’t.
Is his name Bob?
Apparently their profit margins are at 3.78% and it’s almost certainly true that’s pushed up by non-grocery sales.
This entire witch hunt is ridiculous. Grocery prices are up largely because of things the federal government did, and the reason they’re making noise about this is to distract you from that fact. Most of the increase is due to inflation, a federal government and Bank of Canada issue. Much of the rest of it is due to carbon taxes, which hits food supply multiple times, a federal government issue. If the feds wanted to do something right now to help reduce grocery prices they could end supply management, but of course they don’t have the guts.
I am still waiting for someone to explain, if this profit margin is wrong, what the “right” profit is, and why.
And yet, soaring grocery prices appear to be a worldwide problem, far beyond the areas where the Bank of Canada, or the Trudeau government that you dislike so much, have any influence. Greed, OTOH, is a universal vice. To repeat a quote from my previous link (bolding mine):
“When costs change, especially when costs change in a very publicized way,” it’s not unusual for companies to use the moment to raise prices, said Jean-Pierre Dubé, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Companies view these as occasional opportunities, and they don’t want to miss out.”
Fighting climate change is an enormous challenge requiring a multifaceted approach on many different fronts. Carbon taxes are an attempt to have fossil fuel prices at least partly reflect the externalities of carbon emissions and what they cost us in environmental impact. Externalities are one of the most important reasons for governments to intervene in economic policy. Do you have a better idea for how fossil fuel prices should reflect their true cost?
That’s not something that can be answered without knowing exactly what food-related profit margins were pre-pandemic, and exactly what they are now. I don’t know the answer because I haven’t seen food profits broken out from overall profits. But even so, going by what we know, here are some numbers for overall profits.
I see that in the quarter ending December 31, 2019 (picking that as arbitrary “pre-pandemic” date) the Loblaw profit margin was 2.22%. At the end of March, 2020, it was 2.06%. (If you’d like to go back to December 31, 2018, it was 2.00%). At the end of the last reported quarter, it was 3.80%. Just eyeballing the 20 prior years pre-pandemic, profit margins were averaging in the vicinity of 2%, or about half of current profit margins.
Based on those numbers, draw your own conclusions.
It’s the economic theory of wheat and bread. Wheat goes up, bread goes up. Wheat goes down, bread stays up.
Same thing is observed in the relationship of crude oil prices and gasoline prices. When crude prices rise, gas prices rise instantly, as if the stuff already in the station’s tanks, refined and purchased long ago, or in distribution center storage tanks, was all suddenly more precious. But when crude prices fall, watch how slowly prices move at the retail level. The oil industry even has a cynical term for that. They call it “rockets and feathers”.
As I said, greed is a universal vice.
While, yes, companies like profits, (just like employees like raises), they get a lot of negative pushback every time prices are raised, or so it seems to me. So, it your profit margin (or inflation-adjusted total profit) has been shrinking slowly for five years, and now you have an opportunity to “reset” it, you jump on it. Then yes, prices do go back down to below what they were six months ago when you last raised prices…but they may not be back down below what they were when you set the prices five years and six months ago, when the previous price was set. Better to have them pissed off at your once every five years than every year when prices go up (and of course, this time all your competitors are raising their prices, too, so your customers don’t flee to them).
And yes, some just suck out whatever profit they can. But seriously - how many of us would accept a lower wage from our employers if we knew we could get a higher one? I do think there is a double standard where if a company or employer or shareholder wants more money (above the amount of inflation), they are evil/greedy and if a employee wants more money (above the amount of inflation), they’re just showing common sense.