Pepsi is often on sale for $5 for an 18-can case (down from 20 cans pre-pandemic, same price.) For some reason sales on Coke products are much less frequent.
I drink way too much soda, and I stock up on it when the price is decent.
It isn’t uncommon in Canada for six 710mL bottles of Coke (equivalent to twelve cans) to be on sale for three Canadian dollars. I can buy eighteen cans at regular price for as little as eight Canadian dollars. Some things here have surprising prices but soda has not changed much in grocery stores.
But it sometimes has in fast food restaurants. Many have reduced the savings from a combo where the drink used to be essentially free and is now a couple bucks. Sometimes soda is the same price as something more nutritive, like milk. My preferred burger joint is Harvey’s. In addition to better food and toppings, they have “free pickles”, great coupons and lots of reasonable upgrades: a milkshake instead of pop for another dollar, an extra patty for a buck forty, good salads or not much more to get poutine or a double size mix of rings and fries. But my point is the difference in cost between pop and a milkshake has been much reduced.
But why soft drinks in some places? Inflation is true everywhere and there’s no specific pop panic.
This has long been a ploy in fast food. They attract you with deals on food, and make money off the drink.
True, but it used to be a sandwich, side and pop for six bucks. If you bought the sandwich and side you would only save fifty cents, so the combo makes sense.
Now at a lot of places, the sandwich is six bucks and the side and pop another five, saving essentially nothing on a combo. Suits me fine. I am thrifty enough to generally carry a Nalgene bottle. Some ice and a couple cans of pop, I can get a sandwich or two, skip the often unhealthy side and drink my preferred brands. And in a Nalgene bottle everything could be water.
I don’t do this at mom-and-pop places or nicer restaurants or other laces that need my support, but certainly at some fast food type places.
Seeing how much y’all are spending on Coke, I feel like a smart consumer sitting here drinking my beer.
Today’s prices in the UK:
Large free-range eggs - £5.00 a dozen. ($6.02)
Coca Cola 1.25 Litre - £2.00 ($2.41}
Cold Water Prawns 250G (caught in the North East Atlantic ) £3.50 ($4.21)
Cauliflower - £0.95 ($1.14}
Tesco Finest Sirloin Steak 454G £10.50 (12.64) (That’s $25 per Lb)
Bought a lb. of ground beef for 6 41
You appear to be acknowledging that part of the reason for grocery price increases may well be profiteering, which was the original claim, but that you don’t care. That’s fine, but the point remains that there’s evidence suggesting that it’s happening, like Loblaw’s recent profits, and the general principle suggested by several experts that inflation could be used as cover for excessive grocery profiteering. Sure, they have other businesses, but why would those suddenly become remarkably more profitable?
As for collusion among the major grocery retailers being illegal, sure, but who’s gonna stop them? It took the Competition Bureau over 14 freaking years to stop Loblaws price-fixing on bread. As noted before, there are only a handful of major grocery chains in Canada, though they operate under many different names. “Collusion” can be a very easy thing to do informally and a very hard case to prove.
I’m not sure what this means. Are you regarding Loblaws as some sort of “premium” grocery experience? I sure wouldn’t. I think of them and their various other branded stores as just standard grocery stores. If there’s somewhere I can go to get the same groceries at significantly lower prices, I don’t know what or where it is. Maybe someplace like Food Basics?
In the general area where you and I both live, I’d regard Longos as being perhaps a notch or two higher than Loblaws, and Pusateris as the real upscale place. I haven’t been to Pusateris in probably more than a year. It’s a fun place to browse and pick up a few special things once in a while, but it’s quite a drive from where I am now, and definitely not a place to do your general grocery shopping. But Loblaws – meh, just an everyday grocery store.
No I am not. I have said several times, using that very word, that this isn’t “profiteering.” MAKING A PROFIT is not profiteering. Those are different things.
Well, yeah. That’s obvious, isn’t it? That is literally what Food Basics is; it’s the cheap version of Metro. The Loblaws version is No Frills, and Freshco is the Sobeys equivalent.
It’s easy to claim companies are making an outrageous profit but evidence of that is rarely forthcoming. In many cases companies have been eating inflation for years until it finally got high enough that prices had to increase for their products to be profitable. It’s a complex subject, prices are often affected by sales volume and not just direct costs, making inflation appear to be punctuated by particular recent events, but in reality it’s just the nature of business to avoid price hikes as long as they are still making a profit.
Sigh, I don’t have a receipt for some things because I left them on the shelf.
Went to a “normal” grocery store after another errand instead of Aldi. Now I think I know prices from Aldi but may be out of date.
Eggs were 5.49 to 7.80 per dozen. Decided to wait. Limes were .79 EACH-nty
Bought a very small cauliflower -around 3.00 Tomatoes were 3.00 in a box. Sad tomatoes-seasonal problem.
A large lasagnia was 17.00 Nope from me.
I bought bratwurst for 6/4.99 Lettuce mix seemed normal at 3.99 and cucumbers at .69 each. Half&Half was 2.99 quart. eta Northern Virginia
I’m gobsmacked that my 32-count boxes of Pop-Tarts just jumped $1.50 (from basically $8.50 to $10.00). I had just been bragging about the fact that the price had not increased in three or four years. Totally stable throughout the pandemic.
At Aldi the other day, eggs were $2.33/dozen for large. I’m guessing we’re past the chicken flu crisis?
Wow. I’ve eaten a pop tart or two in my day (though not recently) and I don’t think my lifetime consumption is anywheres near 32.
Are you feeding a family, or do you just love pop tarts?!
I live in an area with tons of Publixes, one half a mile away.
They have frequent buy-one-get-one free sales, along with X dollars off for other items.
I make sure to stock up on staples whenever they go on sale like that, as almost all of them do at least once a month.
I doubt if very many people use my strategy, else Publix would likely stop doing it. I saw a guy grab a single loaf of bread off the shelf last month, apparently not knowing that it had been BOGO 2 days earlier. So I have gotten the following items for (effectively) half price for the past several years:
Bread
Cereal (Great Grains)
Spaghetti Sauce and seashell pasta
Frozen veggies (always a Bird’s Eye BOGO sale once a month)
Mayo
Chunky soup
Shredded cheese (parmesan for Italian dishes, 4 cheese Mexican for burrito bowls)
Other staples like yogurt go BOGO maybe once every 2 months, often enough to give me plenty of savings there too.
No family. I just eat a couple Pop-Tarts every morning the way some people eat a muffin or bagel. The package I buy has two boxes of 16 Pop-Tarts each.
I mentioned this in another thread, but I’m always careful of BOGO offers. Sure, I take advantage of them, but in the case of my local Kroger, the ones on meat (somewhat less so on dry goods) are extremely deceptive.
For example, a recent BOGO on london broil and/or top round. Normally sells for 6.99/lb or so. The week it goes on BOGO, it is marked at 8.99 per pound. So yeah, you’re still getting a deal (if you need 6+ pounds of a tough cut!) but not the 50% savings that you would normally assume.
So the net savings is more like 25% off, which is a lot more sustainable to the store, especially as a leader that gets you in the store. And, again, as mentioned in other threads, sometimes the go for the two-fer, as they did for me last week. I went in for some frozen shrimp that were on sale at a net of $5.99 a pound (down from 9.99) and low and behold, the whole section was sold out. On three separate trips (it’s on the way home).
Sure, some of it is consumer hoarding, but since most stores have long since given up on rainchecks, it’s a low consequence grocery version of black friday doorbusters. Except with a grocery store, you normally expect them to restock during a week long sale.
$2.35/doz large, Aldi, Chicago suburb on Sunday. Milk was $2.65/gal.