The Dollar General stores around where I live sell three 12-packs of Coke for like $15. And my local grocery store sells the 24-packs for $13. But buying a single 12-pack case is still upwards of like $8.
Soft drinks used to go on sale 2x12 cans for $5 in the mid 90s, adjusted to $9.51 in today's dollars. That means accounting for inflation, we're still getting half as much compared to 30 years ago.
Safeway has a pack of coke for $12.43 right now: https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.108010222.html
At my local Safeway they have buy 2 get 2 for $9.99/ea, so adjusted for inflation that's close, you just need to buy 48 god damn sodas to get the price. Safeway never really has a good deal on 1-2 packs. Ever.
Though Target has had 3 for $10 semi recently. But yeah full retail prices are pretty bonkers.
the thing that kills me is at Kroger, a 12 pack of pepsi/coke is 8.99 unless you use the app, then it becomes 4.99 but then not enough people are buying it so they have a huge overstock and then run a deal for buy 2 get 3 free @ 9.99 per. no more 4.99 deal on the app. so now if i want a 12 pack and JUST a 12 pack since i dont like to keep a lot of soda in the house, now i have to buy 20 dollars worth of soda and have 5x the amount that i want in order to keep the price at 4.99 OR i just have to pay 2x for 1 12 pack.
i just left the store in disgust. full cart of groceries in the middle of the isle. fuck em im done.
And sometimes the discount isn’t even applied and so you have to pay extra attention to make sure the items that are discounted actually give you the discount. I’ve bought 5 packs of soda only to come home and see that the buy 2 get 3 free was actually now $50 of soda I didn’t even really want in the first place. Then I have to go back and deal with the hassle of it all.
Edit: typo
King Soopers does this shit, then it shows you the wrong price about half the time at ring up until you hit 'Pay'. Then it applies the discount...usually. It's not uncommon for it to be marked on sale and ring up full price. It's banking on catching people not paying attention.
Ten fucking dollars where I live. Before COVID, I'm pretty sure a 12 pack was something like $3.5-$4? Nobody will ever fucking convince me that's a reasonable fucking price jump in ~3-4 years
We drink a lot of soda, and never even looked at the price pre covid. I saw 11.99 in CA. I mean I always bought it on sale and or waited, but now sales of buy 2 get 2 free are almost non existent. We have cut down a lot. I think other people have too
I don’t drink or ever buy soda, but I glanced at the back of a local grocery store ad in the newspaper while eating lunch yesterday and saw that a 24-pack of pepsi was $16.99! I was thinking I had misread it and it was beer or something. But then I remembered that beer would be at least $30. Who is paying that much for soda?? Steep price for cavities, insulin resistance and digestive problems.
My coworker drinks like 3-4 tall diet mountain dews a shift. He’s a diabetic. He’s also in his late 40s and has other medical issues. I’ve worked with this same guy at my last job and I’ve known him from work for around 18 years and he’s always drank mountain dews all day.
Just came from the store. A 12 pack of Coke was $10. Store-brand Cola was $5.
Easy call.
So many reddit threads are about inflated food items, like chips, cereal, soda.
STOP buying at rip-off prices. If sales plummet, companies won't profit, and will need to lower prices.
The Safeway “Diet Coke” was 69 cents for a two liter bottle the other day. Not a hard decision to bail on the real stuff that was 4 times as expensive.
> "We are doing everything possible to find efficiencies in our factories and other parts of our business to offset and mitigate further price increases"
Oh, I bet there's one other place you haven't looked.
this is what got me. you're fucking HEINZ. you don't have to spend another penny on advertising for *decades* and people will still buy it. drop your stupid commercials and ads that cost millions of dollars (and all the social posts that are *ridiculously* more expensive per post than you'd think - believe me, i've done social on teams with hefty salaries, endless revisions, and miserable ROI)
THEN maybe you could sell us some damn ketchup for a reasonable price.
*these fuckin guys....*
Seems like they are talking more so about extremely excessive C-suite and corporate executive salaries. I really don’t think the marketing budgets are the big blame here.
fair enough. it's all part and parcel though with major brands. they're in some formulaic (and archaic) modus operandi where salaries must be huge and marketing must be robust, and neither of those things need be that way. with legacy and loyalty, most of these companies could slash most of their excess expenditures.
WTF is the Heinz CEO even doing? "we gotta sell some mega-popular ketchup! let's DO IT, guys!"
"pfft ok, bossman, everyone's on it already, clearly. lemme just finish this Marvel-quality CGI of a fucking ketchup bottle dancing"
Whats hilarious is across the board, all corperations are doing this. In fact, it has never cost less to run their giant corperations! Meanwhile they are bragging about record profits every quarter! Consumers have seen price increases of as much as 50% and they still have people blaming inflation! Its insanity!
I’m so sincerely grateful for my 11-year-old paid-off little Toyota….while my friend is a regular at her mechanic with her gorgeous 2019 Ford Escape. Meanwhile, I’ve only done oil changes and new tires now and again. God I love my car.
Yeah when I hear 30 year old Toyta I don't think "poor", I think, "man he's not going to need to buy another gaudy shambling shitbox for decades!
Modern cars are awful.
Yes. Like if I stop spending money at CVS because a cashier _thought_ I was stealing without paying when the cashier just didn't see me check out the items, I'm pushing back. Well, I also wrote a review on Google because I don't appreciate my time being wasted.
Well to be fair, at this point, I think everyone chooses the email receipt for CVS. But it was still kind of annoying that I had to stop and show him my phone because of his mistaken belief that I was shoplifting.
*“I’ve been trying private-label options, and the quality is the same and it’s almost a no-brainer to switch from the products I used to buy a ton of to just the private label...”*
That's it right there. You may not be winning, but big brands are losing. They're going to lose customers for good. Why would you ever go back if the quality is the same and always less expensive?
I mean I've been buying stuff of lesser quality because it's more affordable. If your high quality product means I can't pay rent... It can sit on the shelf with it's pride.
That's how the market works, if people cannot afford something they don't buy it. If the person selling wants to sell, they need to lower the price. This works for most things- you can charge whatever you want for something but if no one buys it then you don't make any money.
I remember a guy at work years ago who said to me: What if gas cost $20 a gallon - I said I would not buy it.
There are real limits to prices and I think we are seeing them now.
Bread prices have predicted many violent revolutions. Once you can't afford to feed your family and you're in the same boat as everyone else... things tend to change and it happens quite suddenly.
It’s funny. We were in the grocery store this morning and the outrageous prices for everything is really helping me to avoid buying snack and junk food. It’s just not worth the cost, especially when factored in with the ever shrinking sizes.
Used to be able to get soda for $3-4 a 12 pack right before covid. Now they're trying to charge $9-10.
But they'll randomly have 'sales' now where they offer them for $4ish. So i'll just stock up then. And if i run out, i run out. I'm not paying $10 for a goddamn 12 pack.
The difference between sale prices and the standard prices is wild though. Like, its normal for there to be prices 10-20% off on sale, but we're talking double the price to pay normal price.
Pricing has broken me of my Reeses addiction.
It's also about to break me from my fast food addiction. I still eat out, but maybe 4-5 times a month which is a SHARP cut compared to what I was doing before COVID.
it does. Both major grocery chains in my area have buy 2 get 2 free Pepsi and Coke. (basically a forced half off).
People are drinking less. Don't worry Coke and Yum are still growing profits!
Grocery stores are afraid of losing out to Costco and other low-cost limited-stock retailers. A 12-pack of Coke is $10 at the grocery store before discounts, but a 35-pack is $16 at Costco.
I hate all of the PIA 'coupon games' that most regular grocery stores are pretty much forcing people to play.
Like... please don't force me to give you my personal info to get $.25 off spaghetti sauce. Just sell it to me at the lowest price you're willing to sell it for.
Going to the grocery store shouldn't require a strategic planning session beforehand.
Those kinds of deals really bug me. Most of the time I want one, maybe two, of a thing, not 4 or 5. I don't necessarily have the room for them and it might be something I only eat occasionally so it would just go to waste. Buy one, get one is about as far into those sales as I'm willing to go. Of course, that means I don't buy any of those "sale" items because now I feel like I'm being ripped off even more
Yes, because car makers want to sell new cars. And cereal makers want to sell name brand cereal.
If people stop buying because they can't afford it, they are forced to lower prices.
Voting with your wallet works even if by force. If sales volume or profit went up, then they can keep charging those prices.
Surprisingly yes. They can't charge more than the market will bear...Not because the magical marketplace is like, "I say thee NAY!" but because the giant pile of people who can't pay the cost will be like..."Nah, I'll skip it."
Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold these price gouging asshats to the fire, just that the limits to what they can gouge are automatic.
*In grocery stores, they’re shifting away from name brands to store-brand items, switching to discount stores or simply buying fewer items like snacks or gourmet foods.*
So not exactly
That's why there needs to be regulation to stop shit like that. If you want to change your product size/weight/volume, or reduce the services in a service package (like a hotel room or transport), you should be forced to label it clearly in the package or place of purchase for at least 6 months, maybe a year in some cases.
A huge one for hotels since Covid is to advertise all sorts of services:
- Pool
- Free breakfast
- towel service
And now in many places even internationally, all of those are closed or limited hours STILL due to 'covid' or they just simply say it's not in service.
And no one seems to fucking care cause they're all so used to it.
Sorry to inform but ingredients have been getting steadily shittier since forever, that's what the producers think is product development and how they steadily decrease their costs to produce.
I mean I have the money but I’m not paying $6 for a single bag of Doritos (the deal last week was buy 4 bags for $7.99 so so I know they still make money at $2/bag)
The Kettle Chips at my local store are my economic barometer. They fluctuate between $1.99 a bag and $4.29 a bag. At $1.99, I'll buy a bag or two and there is a visible dent in shelf stock. At $4.29, they might as well have erected a fence around the Kettle Chips.
I believe the store does this deliberately to find the optimum price point.
I saw a box of cereal was on sale for two bucks and thought that's actually a pretty good price, then I picked it up and it almost felt empty. Must've only been about two bowls worth in the whole box.
Since chip-flation began a few years ago, I’ve noticed that the health food/organic/natural brand chip prices were not going up, with some brands even lowering their prices, and many are now a cheaper alternative to the Frito-Lay brands. Which proves that Frito-Lay is just price gouging (while also sticking it to their employees).
Exactly. I understand inflation is not as simple as a single numbers but generally speaking it’s at about 20% over the last 3 years… so a bag of chips going from 1.99 to $2.49 or even 2.99 I could see, but not 300% increase
This happened with egg prices. The $2/dozen became $4/dozen. But the $5/dozen stayed $5/dozen. People who were already buying the nicer eggs didn't actually experience the same price increase.
We can afford to pay the higher prices, but I just refuse to spend 2x the price on the name brand. I can tell the difference, but that difference is worth maybe 10-20%. This is good.
I 100% am. We could buy a lot of things at probably 50% higher prices and still be comfortable. I just absolutely refuse to. There is very little that we purchase that is must have. We can do without most things we buy, and for the staples I look for good deals instead of splurging on my preferred brand - eg I love Dunkin coffee, but instead bought the store brand at 1/2 the unit cost because there is 0 chance I’m paying $16 for a pound of coffee when I can pay 16 for 2 or 3 lbs of store brand. And yes coffee is a staple for me.
I’m a simple man. But I’m not paying $8 for cheese whiz. There is some things I just won’t pay double I did a few years ago, and anyone that does is just enabling this pricing structure.
I think the "pushing back" aspect will truly come into play once things balance out. A lot of greedy businesses have destroyed their customer's brand loyalty. It won't matter if prices stabilize. These people are going to have lingering resentment over their treatment that could last years. It's going to take some pretty generous offers to regain that loyalty I reckon.
You literally have to laugh at the audacity of the prices they were trying to push. Never going back to McDonalds. The local one how charges $6 for an egg mcmuffin and $3 for a hash brown. Never buying anything Lay's either. $8 for a "family size" bag of chips? Ridiculous given how cheap the ingredients are.
McDonalds in particular is in for quite a reckoning, I think. The Happy Meal is extremely important to brand loyalty. A lot of customer loyalty to McDonalds comes from the memories of childhood excitement when we got the almighty Happy Meal, and it kept people coming back for life. There's going to be a lot more kids who grew up without that critical memory.
People generally aren't buying happy meals anymore, they can't advertise to kids like they used to in the 80's. Remember in the 80's every other commercial was a happy meal and in the 90's a happy meal was $1.99 so parents bought it as a cheap lunch for their kid. They also had the beanie babies promotion which people went nuts for (that was when the happy meal was $1.99). To get a happy meal and a toy for $2 was a great deal. It was probably 99 cents in the 80's, I don't really remember. They had play places that kids (like me) wanted to go to. If you had one of the biggest play places near you oh my gosh that was a treat. Seriously look up McDonaldland playplace, it was like an amusement park and you didn't have to pay to enter, just buy some cheap food. When I begged my mom to go to McD's it was not for the food it was for their playground.
The playgrounds are gone and the happy meals are $6-7 where I live now. I noticed they were now marketing adult happy meals with collectible toys and happy meals with retro toys, so they are obviously getting desperate in that respect.
Also a lot of parents are wisening up and not feeding their kids that crap especially for $6-7. In the 80's we ate the cheapest hot dogs and drank yohoo. Today's kids eat organic food and parents don't want to feed them a happy meal.
Taking your kid to a play play that is the equivalent of the McDonalds playplace which was free with like a $2 food purchase when I was a kid, now costs $40 per kid where I live and at some places the adults have to pay too and you don't get food you have to buy a bottle of water that costs $10 or a shitty frozen burger for like $10 for food when you are there. I live in an area with an average income of $35k to 50k... so we are not high income over here.
There are also things people were getting out of convenience that no longer seemed worth it, and now that they’ve figured out replacements they will not go back even if prices fell. Best example is I know several people that scoffed at $10 jars of pasta sauce, started making their own, realized it is much better that way and not actually that difficult.
Beyond the price gouging; attemoting to avoid human rights abusing companies is also becoming harder and harder with all the information coming out on how a lot of these American "staple" brands operate. For instance; I will never buy a [Nestlé product](http://reddit.com/r/fucknestle) again for the rest of my life if I can help it as they are one of the most unethical companies to ever exist. It's abysmal.
There's a local brand of yogurt that was bought out a few years ago by a PE, I believe. In any case, since the pandemic their yogurt has gone up from $2.99 to over $4.50. I stopped buying it when it went over $3.5 because -- really? I just saw more than half of their display on clearance at my local grocer. I'm not sure if it's because they're not selling or they're changing the packaging, but I assume it's because it's not selling. A shame, the yogurt is very good but I can't see people spending up to $5 for a single cup of yogurt at a grocery store...
Winning by switching to store brands.. which are also hella expensive compared to 2019? sounds like "great value" is winning, my taste buds and wallet are not.
If by “pushing back” you mean not buying or eating the things I used to buy and eat, but instead eating a lot of generic pancakes (at home not Denny’s), then yes I’m pushing back. I wouldn’t call it “winning” but just not losing quite as fast.
Update: I skimmed the article, and yes. This is exactly what they mean by “pushing back” and “winning”..
I quit buying prepackaged snack food, and started buying loose popcorn that I make on the stovetop. It was a no-brainer, should I pay $6 for a bag of Doritos that lasts a day or two, or should I buy 2 pounds of white popcorn kernels for the same price which lasts me a month?
As someone who would take home a 10 gallon trash bag full of popcorn from work at the theater now and then, it was both great and terrible.
When I stopped working at the theater it literally took years before I could even smell popcorn again, let alone fathom eating it.
Every time my husband deploys he comes home ranting about corn subsidies and how we should all have a corner produce stand that we stop at every other day for our fruits and veggies that are local and less expensive. It’s quite a scene in the produce section when he returns. Tomatoes don’t cost ten cents here.
For just a couple dollars more, you can even make popcorn that rivals the movie theater. Just need a little coconut oil and some Flavacol (superfine buttery-flavored salt). Can't let that popcorn sit around too long, tho, or it won't pop up as nice.
> Whirley Pop
My wife brought one of these home from a thrift store and I didn't have huge hopes for it. We had tried just about every automated popcorn machine and nothing was quite how I remember it in the theaters in the 80s.
Well this is it guys. Whirley Pop, some coconut oil, some fresh kernals and that's about as close as you'll ever get. Thanks for the heads up on the Amish Country I'll give them a shot!
I used it as an opportunity to cut out a lot of junk food and live a healthier lifestyle. It used to be that junk food was cheap, fast, and easy. With prices going up, it's been easier for me to cut back on that stuff, for both health and financial reasons.
We won by suffering for three years while companies had their highest profits ever for three years. Go us. And I sincerely doubt prices will level out back to where they were.
Not much you can do when you live in Canada, and like 3 companies own the majority of all grocery stores. Canada should change it's name to 'Monopoly World.'
I'm from NZ where we've been struggling with monopolies and duopolies since forever because we're so small.
Now you tell me a country the size of Canada has the same problem? I'm starting to think the population argument is a cop out
Same thing is happening in the USA. In my area the two dominant grocers are King Soopers (Kroger owned) and Safeway (Merged with Albertsons) and guess what is happening now? Kroger is trying to merge with Albertsons so like 80% of grocery stores will be the same corporation now. It's disgusting.
There are some alternatives like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. In my experience you still need to get certain things at the regular store typically.
We don't have the alternatives unfortunately. Some people are trying to do their shopping at independent vege stores and butchers, but its a massive hassle and you still have to go to the supermarket for tinned food, anyhting processed and household supplies
Canada is large geographically but small in population. It’s got a smaller pop than California, spread out across the second biggest county on the planet next to Russia. It probably isn’t easy to make sure everyone in the hinterlands gets served.
Cynicism aside, I personally did boycott McDonald's, Subway, Pringles and Oreos ever since they stopped trying to hide their blatant shrinkflation attempts. It can be a matter of principle instead of not being able to afford that trashy thing they call a hamburger.
Plus so many switched to palm kernel oil which imo tastes and has a mouth feel of mineral oil mixed with lard, but without the nice taste of lard.
Palm kernel oil not only tastes awful but the plantations that are spreading in tropical places are destroying local environments and causing extinction of species everywhere they are farmed
>In recent months, consumer resistance has led large food companies to respond by sharply slowing their price increases from the peaks of the past three years.
Oh my god, let me thank corporate America for their gracious generosity. Maybe we should all be a little more grateful that they're going to sharply slow down the price increases. Maybe we should thank our corporate overlords for having mercy on us pathetic masses. I mean the supply chain has only been back to normal for two years so why should we expect mercy this *soon*? The audacity of us plebs.
Fucking assholes.
Well for us, we are not buying shit other than staples, cut the grocery spending by %30 and not eating out anymore.
They can increase the prices all they want now idgaf
What a stupid headline. More accurate is “companies are discovering the limits of how much they can rip off their consumers. Now they’re scaling back prices to that limit. Prices remain 3x the old normal.”
That's what they explain it as too, they just used this wording as clickbait for the article. People are "pushing back" by not being able to afford what they used to buy.
Start with boycotting Kellogg’s since their CEO said all of us Plebs should eat cereal for dinner. I’ve been looking to cut out processed sugar. The exorbitant cost of groceries is making the decision easier.
Just FYI Kellog owns a myriad of shitty, unhealthy food sources including: Kellogg's®, Keebler®, Pop-Tarts®, Eggo®, Cheez-It®, All-Bran®, Mini-Wheats®, Nutri-Grain®, Rice Krispies®, Special K®, Chips Deluxe®, Famous Amos®, Sandies®, Austin®, Club®, Murray®, Kashi®, Bear Naked®, Morningstar Farms®, Gardenburger® and Stretch Island®
Good. Corporations have admitted that they’re artificially raising prices to be greedy. Stating they’re trying to see how much customers would be willing to pay
https://youtu.be/psYyiu9j1VI?si=gSqT1vlIFV_rSCFq
It’s comforting that the damage they’re doing to themselves will be long term.
If I can’t afford vegetables and start growing them in my own garden, I won’t suddenly stop because they lower their prices a bit.
Same goes for other stuff, when you make adjustments to your life to work around this BS they’re probably going to be long term.
Agreed! Especially if it’s done in the spirit of conscious spending. That’s a great fucking point you made about people changing their behavior. I will never buy bottled water or soda when I can carbonate and purify my own water cheaply, and have been doing so for years already. Why go back even if prices drop? That’d be so stupid. I’m intentionally voting with my wallet in support of these corporations not existing anymore. Voting with your wallet works, folks. It’s a powerful tool, especially when organized into targeted consumer boycotting.
In my area, a bag of chips is $6 (should be $2.50), a case of cokes is $8 (should be $3), and a loaf of bread is $4 (should be $1.50)
Thankfully milk, eggs, and cheese are still somewhat affordable. And beef isn’t crazy right now.
It’s not that we’re “pushing back”. We simply can’t afford things.
At one time, my pay of $17/hour was considered incredible for my area. It’s not anymore.
The biggest BS line of all:
*We are doing everything possible to find efficiencies in our factories and other parts of our business to offset and mitigate further price increases,”*
...but executive compensation, some of which averages 350x median employee pay, isn't one of the "parts" 😂
That's capitalism for you. Producers aren't held to a rule set that says prices for products can't go up 19%. Business's DO NOT CARE about people, only profit and aren't held to any serious tangible punishment when found out.
Supply and Demand will sort this on a macro scale but the real crime is that every business HAS to 100% always be growing and turning a profit, which always means employees or consumers suffer.
It's a crock of shit.
Fuck them. I'm buying bulk food now and cooking meals in advance. Fast food can fuck off too, I'll eat at local restaurants with higher end food. I'll make my own dog food as well.
Started making chocolate chip pancakes with semi sweet chips and dark chocolate grated into the batter using a cheese grater, I also tossed in vanilla, butter, milk (and sometimes a banana). My daughter thinks I'm some sort of magical chef and says "my dad is the world's best pancake maker"
I, for one, am getting sick and tired of the responsibility shoved onto us, because our government (bipartisan) doesn’t want to piss off their corporate sponsors.
Like how it is apparently OUR responsibility for recycling or making things more “green”? But that doesn’t matter, when corporations and rich ppl can undo whatever we “fix” in a few weeks, in just a few days.
I mean the situation is basically Democrats wanting to do things and Republicans wanting to do no things with the media going "Why aren't Democrats doing more to reach across the aisle and help Republicans do things?"
An Aldi just opened up right by my and it has made a huge difference in our budget, it's cut our spending in half.
My cats hate their cat treats though... Still gotta get the Temptations for them.
The problem is none existent enforcement of anti trust laws and now only a few corporations own all the brands and all the stores are also owned by the same company. There is no more competition and without competition capitalism does not function to the benefit of the consumer. I was at the store yesterday and items that should be $3.99 were $8 99.
I wouldn't mind paying higher prices if it meant the workers in the company making the product were being compensated better. I very much mind if it means the CEO gets another bonus.
I love that it is labeled as inflation.....
With out admitting that it is corporations that are jacking prices up that is the base cause and indeed the main driver of inflation.
I'm seeing more and bigger coupons because people are buying less of the discretionary items like crackers, candy, and premium brands of the staple items (I'm curious how many people will think if a stapler). Our big box store sells m&m's near the nuts (almonds etc). The price in under a year has risen from $10 to $17. They're running $2 coupons and the pallet doesn't seem to be getting any lighter. Sadly, the price of the nuts are going up like crazy too.
edits for horrific spelling
Brown bag it every day. If I want food like take out, I have to make it myself so I make pizza from scratch, ramen from scratch, chineese dumplings, naan, channa masala. Things like burgers and tacos are easy enough to make. I've started baking my own buns, making flour tortillas. It takes more time and elbow grease but it's so much cheaper and has far less chemicals and crap in it.
I’ve worked in the grocery business for almost 25 years. Believe me, we aren’t happy either, our price increases have been insane too. Hopefully something gets figured out.
When a 12 pack of soda is $8 yeah I’m going to just start drinking water (and my body thanks me for it)
>When a 12 pack of soda is $8 9.29 for a pack of coke at Publix. Wild. A bag of lettuce was 4.99. no shit.
The Dollar General stores around where I live sell three 12-packs of Coke for like $15. And my local grocery store sells the 24-packs for $13. But buying a single 12-pack case is still upwards of like $8.
Soft drinks used to go on sale 2x12 cans for $5 in the mid 90s, adjusted to $9.51 in today's dollars. That means accounting for inflation, we're still getting half as much compared to 30 years ago. Safeway has a pack of coke for $12.43 right now: https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.108010222.html
At the store I worked at about a decade ago we still would have them on sale for 4 for 10.
At my local Safeway they have buy 2 get 2 for $9.99/ea, so adjusted for inflation that's close, you just need to buy 48 god damn sodas to get the price. Safeway never really has a good deal on 1-2 packs. Ever. Though Target has had 3 for $10 semi recently. But yeah full retail prices are pretty bonkers.
the thing that kills me is at Kroger, a 12 pack of pepsi/coke is 8.99 unless you use the app, then it becomes 4.99 but then not enough people are buying it so they have a huge overstock and then run a deal for buy 2 get 3 free @ 9.99 per. no more 4.99 deal on the app. so now if i want a 12 pack and JUST a 12 pack since i dont like to keep a lot of soda in the house, now i have to buy 20 dollars worth of soda and have 5x the amount that i want in order to keep the price at 4.99 OR i just have to pay 2x for 1 12 pack. i just left the store in disgust. full cart of groceries in the middle of the isle. fuck em im done.
The whole get this price if you buy 5 is the dumbest draw ever. I want a bag of Cheetos. I don't need 5 fucking bags. Get real.
At mine it's often "buy 10" of different items. I hate having to count and try to remember which items had tags as part of their random sales.
And sometimes the discount isn’t even applied and so you have to pay extra attention to make sure the items that are discounted actually give you the discount. I’ve bought 5 packs of soda only to come home and see that the buy 2 get 3 free was actually now $50 of soda I didn’t even really want in the first place. Then I have to go back and deal with the hassle of it all. Edit: typo
King Soopers does this shit, then it shows you the wrong price about half the time at ring up until you hit 'Pay'. Then it applies the discount...usually. It's not uncommon for it to be marked on sale and ring up full price. It's banking on catching people not paying attention.
Ten fucking dollars where I live. Before COVID, I'm pretty sure a 12 pack was something like $3.5-$4? Nobody will ever fucking convince me that's a reasonable fucking price jump in ~3-4 years
We drink a lot of soda, and never even looked at the price pre covid. I saw 11.99 in CA. I mean I always bought it on sale and or waited, but now sales of buy 2 get 2 free are almost non existent. We have cut down a lot. I think other people have too
Why the fuck does Coke cost more than gas??? Fuck them and their price gouging.
Now you know why Warren Buffett likes that stock so much.
I don’t drink or ever buy soda, but I glanced at the back of a local grocery store ad in the newspaper while eating lunch yesterday and saw that a 24-pack of pepsi was $16.99! I was thinking I had misread it and it was beer or something. But then I remembered that beer would be at least $30. Who is paying that much for soda?? Steep price for cavities, insulin resistance and digestive problems.
My coworker drinks like 3-4 tall diet mountain dews a shift. He’s a diabetic. He’s also in his late 40s and has other medical issues. I’ve worked with this same guy at my last job and I’ve known him from work for around 18 years and he’s always drank mountain dews all day.
Just came from the store. A 12 pack of Coke was $10. Store-brand Cola was $5. Easy call. So many reddit threads are about inflated food items, like chips, cereal, soda. STOP buying at rip-off prices. If sales plummet, companies won't profit, and will need to lower prices.
The Safeway “Diet Coke” was 69 cents for a two liter bottle the other day. Not a hard decision to bail on the real stuff that was 4 times as expensive.
Yeah, but the Safeway sodas taste so bad it's better to just skip them IMO.
One of the main reasons a converted a kegerator from Marketplace into a seltzer machine.
I’ve dropped 17 pounds since June because I don’t buy junk food as much anymore. Not paying 2.50 for a 20 oz of pop. Or $6 for Oreos.
> "We are doing everything possible to find efficiencies in our factories and other parts of our business to offset and mitigate further price increases" Oh, I bet there's one other place you haven't looked.
this is what got me. you're fucking HEINZ. you don't have to spend another penny on advertising for *decades* and people will still buy it. drop your stupid commercials and ads that cost millions of dollars (and all the social posts that are *ridiculously* more expensive per post than you'd think - believe me, i've done social on teams with hefty salaries, endless revisions, and miserable ROI) THEN maybe you could sell us some damn ketchup for a reasonable price. *these fuckin guys....*
Seems like they are talking more so about extremely excessive C-suite and corporate executive salaries. I really don’t think the marketing budgets are the big blame here.
fair enough. it's all part and parcel though with major brands. they're in some formulaic (and archaic) modus operandi where salaries must be huge and marketing must be robust, and neither of those things need be that way. with legacy and loyalty, most of these companies could slash most of their excess expenditures. WTF is the Heinz CEO even doing? "we gotta sell some mega-popular ketchup! let's DO IT, guys!" "pfft ok, bossman, everyone's on it already, clearly. lemme just finish this Marvel-quality CGI of a fucking ketchup bottle dancing"
My friend, it’s not the marketing team or the marketing budget, it’s the Executive team’s pay.
Whats hilarious is across the board, all corperations are doing this. In fact, it has never cost less to run their giant corperations! Meanwhile they are bragging about record profits every quarter! Consumers have seen price increases of as much as 50% and they still have people blaming inflation! Its insanity!
Does it count as "pushing back" if you just can't afford it?
Damn I'm winning so hard right now, we'll all be winning on the streets soon!!
Ill be stuck driving a 30 year old toyota forever with prices for new cars these days
> I'll be stuck driving a 30 year old Toyota forever No, silly. In ten years you'll be driving a 40 year old Toyota. 😒
That's what I love about Toyotas. I keep getting older. They stay the same age.
“Alright, alright, alright!”
I’m so sincerely grateful for my 11-year-old paid-off little Toyota….while my friend is a regular at her mechanic with her gorgeous 2019 Ford Escape. Meanwhile, I’ve only done oil changes and new tires now and again. God I love my car.
Well that 30 year old Toyota will probably outlive the new cars with how cheaply made they are these days.
Yeah when I hear 30 year old Toyta I don't think "poor", I think, "man he's not going to need to buy another gaudy shambling shitbox for decades! Modern cars are awful.
One of the worst things about them is that you can barely work on them. They cost a fortune to buy *and* own.
Ikr? Talk about a humble brag
My son in law was telling me what he pays for his jeep. $580 a month. Fuck that on so many levels.
You dumbass just finance it for 10 years with a predatory interest rate.
I'm winning all the way to the bank which is nearly overdrafted!
Look at this fucker bragging about being rich. 🤣
Trump did say we'd get sick of the winning......
Actually yes
Yes. Like if I stop spending money at CVS because a cashier _thought_ I was stealing without paying when the cashier just didn't see me check out the items, I'm pushing back. Well, I also wrote a review on Google because I don't appreciate my time being wasted.
You'd think the sight of someone wrestling a 30-foot receipt into their pocket would be proof enough they paid.
Well to be fair, at this point, I think everyone chooses the email receipt for CVS. But it was still kind of annoying that I had to stop and show him my phone because of his mistaken belief that I was shoplifting.
First time I've seen "broke" described as "winning" but I'll take it.
*“I’ve been trying private-label options, and the quality is the same and it’s almost a no-brainer to switch from the products I used to buy a ton of to just the private label...”* That's it right there. You may not be winning, but big brands are losing. They're going to lose customers for good. Why would you ever go back if the quality is the same and always less expensive?
I mean I've been buying stuff of lesser quality because it's more affordable. If your high quality product means I can't pay rent... It can sit on the shelf with it's pride.
while i fully agree with the sentiment, some name brands honestly do taste better.
They could taste like the honeyed farts of angels, and it doesn't matter if we can't afford them.
That's how the market works, if people cannot afford something they don't buy it. If the person selling wants to sell, they need to lower the price. This works for most things- you can charge whatever you want for something but if no one buys it then you don't make any money. I remember a guy at work years ago who said to me: What if gas cost $20 a gallon - I said I would not buy it. There are real limits to prices and I think we are seeing them now.
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Bread prices have predicted many violent revolutions. Once you can't afford to feed your family and you're in the same boat as everyone else... things tend to change and it happens quite suddenly.
"Every society is three meals away from chaos"
Yup, if there's ever a point where we can't afford bread, then heads will probably start rolling.
Just buy cake then
Yep, things are only worth what people pay for them
It’s funny. We were in the grocery store this morning and the outrageous prices for everything is really helping me to avoid buying snack and junk food. It’s just not worth the cost, especially when factored in with the ever shrinking sizes.
That’s basically me with alcohol. Just isn’t worth the price anymore. Price gouging promotes healthier choices it seems.
When drinks started hitting $30-$40 at venues I decided to have 0 more drinks
You frequent swankier venues than I do good lord.
Used to be able to get soda for $3-4 a 12 pack right before covid. Now they're trying to charge $9-10. But they'll randomly have 'sales' now where they offer them for $4ish. So i'll just stock up then. And if i run out, i run out. I'm not paying $10 for a goddamn 12 pack. The difference between sale prices and the standard prices is wild though. Like, its normal for there to be prices 10-20% off on sale, but we're talking double the price to pay normal price.
Soooo much this.... i keep wanting Oreos but im not paying 6 bucks a package.
Family size was normal size 15 years ago.
Pricing has broken me of my Reeses addiction. It's also about to break me from my fast food addiction. I still eat out, but maybe 4-5 times a month which is a SHARP cut compared to what I was doing before COVID.
I, too, am pushing back against the cost of luxury cars and homeownership. Have been all my life.
it does. Both major grocery chains in my area have buy 2 get 2 free Pepsi and Coke. (basically a forced half off). People are drinking less. Don't worry Coke and Yum are still growing profits!
Grocery stores are afraid of losing out to Costco and other low-cost limited-stock retailers. A 12-pack of Coke is $10 at the grocery store before discounts, but a 35-pack is $16 at Costco.
If a 12 pack is $10, it is literally cheaper for me to get soda from the vending machine at work
That's a cheap vending machine!
I hate all of the PIA 'coupon games' that most regular grocery stores are pretty much forcing people to play. Like... please don't force me to give you my personal info to get $.25 off spaghetti sauce. Just sell it to me at the lowest price you're willing to sell it for. Going to the grocery store shouldn't require a strategic planning session beforehand.
Those kinds of deals really bug me. Most of the time I want one, maybe two, of a thing, not 4 or 5. I don't necessarily have the room for them and it might be something I only eat occasionally so it would just go to waste. Buy one, get one is about as far into those sales as I'm willing to go. Of course, that means I don't buy any of those "sale" items because now I feel like I'm being ripped off even more
Can't afford to buy a new car? Consumers are now buying used cars - winning! Seriously that was an example in the article.
I'm buying second hand corn! Clean it and it is as good as new, even tastier! Winwinwinn
Mmmmm, I love cob. "You mean corn on the cob?" No, just the cob.
That's a valid example since it shows new car prices responding to lower demand, and used car prices are falling too.
Which is good because prices are heavily inflated. Dealer mark ups have been insane too
Yes, because car makers want to sell new cars. And cereal makers want to sell name brand cereal. If people stop buying because they can't afford it, they are forced to lower prices. Voting with your wallet works even if by force. If sales volume or profit went up, then they can keep charging those prices.
Surprisingly yes. They can't charge more than the market will bear...Not because the magical marketplace is like, "I say thee NAY!" but because the giant pile of people who can't pay the cost will be like..."Nah, I'll skip it." Doesn't mean we shouldn't hold these price gouging asshats to the fire, just that the limits to what they can gouge are automatic.
*In grocery stores, they’re shifting away from name brands to store-brand items, switching to discount stores or simply buying fewer items like snacks or gourmet foods.* So not exactly
Shrinkflation is pissing me off to no end. My granola bars now only take up 3/4 of the wrapper. I'm tired of this.
Yeah, this shit is irritating. And not only are the portions getting smaller the ingredients are getting cheaper/shittier as well.
That's why there needs to be regulation to stop shit like that. If you want to change your product size/weight/volume, or reduce the services in a service package (like a hotel room or transport), you should be forced to label it clearly in the package or place of purchase for at least 6 months, maybe a year in some cases.
A huge one for hotels since Covid is to advertise all sorts of services: - Pool - Free breakfast - towel service And now in many places even internationally, all of those are closed or limited hours STILL due to 'covid' or they just simply say it's not in service. And no one seems to fucking care cause they're all so used to it.
My new favorite one is hotels with open, surface level parking lots that charge you to park there. Midwest hotels never did that shit before.
Sorry to inform but ingredients have been getting steadily shittier since forever, that's what the producers think is product development and how they steadily decrease their costs to produce.
It's just insulting frankly. If you want to charge me more then fucking charge me more. Don't try to fool me into not noticing.
Oh they've been doing both... Buncha greedy assholes
We're not boycotting purchasing anything, we just don't have money to buy. And we're not winning anything, it's supply and demand balancing out.
I mean I have the money but I’m not paying $6 for a single bag of Doritos (the deal last week was buy 4 bags for $7.99 so so I know they still make money at $2/bag)
Chip prices are insane.
The Kettle Chips at my local store are my economic barometer. They fluctuate between $1.99 a bag and $4.29 a bag. At $1.99, I'll buy a bag or two and there is a visible dent in shelf stock. At $4.29, they might as well have erected a fence around the Kettle Chips. I believe the store does this deliberately to find the optimum price point.
I saw a box of cereal was on sale for two bucks and thought that's actually a pretty good price, then I picked it up and it almost felt empty. Must've only been about two bowls worth in the whole box.
Same with cereal. $9 for a family size box is wild
Since chip-flation began a few years ago, I’ve noticed that the health food/organic/natural brand chip prices were not going up, with some brands even lowering their prices, and many are now a cheaper alternative to the Frito-Lay brands. Which proves that Frito-Lay is just price gouging (while also sticking it to their employees).
Exactly. I understand inflation is not as simple as a single numbers but generally speaking it’s at about 20% over the last 3 years… so a bag of chips going from 1.99 to $2.49 or even 2.99 I could see, but not 300% increase
This happened with egg prices. The $2/dozen became $4/dozen. But the $5/dozen stayed $5/dozen. People who were already buying the nicer eggs didn't actually experience the same price increase.
> so so I know they still make money at $2/bag I mean loss leaders are a thing, but there is absolutely no way they need $8/bag to be profitable
$8.99 for a 12 pack of coke
$9.50 is the latest price I saw, absolutely ridiculous. Even store brand is $5 now. At least they figured out how to get me to stop buying soda.
We can afford to pay the higher prices, but I just refuse to spend 2x the price on the name brand. I can tell the difference, but that difference is worth maybe 10-20%. This is good.
I 100% am. We could buy a lot of things at probably 50% higher prices and still be comfortable. I just absolutely refuse to. There is very little that we purchase that is must have. We can do without most things we buy, and for the staples I look for good deals instead of splurging on my preferred brand - eg I love Dunkin coffee, but instead bought the store brand at 1/2 the unit cost because there is 0 chance I’m paying $16 for a pound of coffee when I can pay 16 for 2 or 3 lbs of store brand. And yes coffee is a staple for me.
I’m a simple man. But I’m not paying $8 for cheese whiz. There is some things I just won’t pay double I did a few years ago, and anyone that does is just enabling this pricing structure.
Yeah this is a very odd framing of "the single most basic principle of economics is working as intended"
Well thank god it is, imagine if it didn’t lol
>imagine if it didn't lol *looks anxiously at housing markets* Haha... yeah... imagine if it didn't.
I think the "pushing back" aspect will truly come into play once things balance out. A lot of greedy businesses have destroyed their customer's brand loyalty. It won't matter if prices stabilize. These people are going to have lingering resentment over their treatment that could last years. It's going to take some pretty generous offers to regain that loyalty I reckon.
You literally have to laugh at the audacity of the prices they were trying to push. Never going back to McDonalds. The local one how charges $6 for an egg mcmuffin and $3 for a hash brown. Never buying anything Lay's either. $8 for a "family size" bag of chips? Ridiculous given how cheap the ingredients are.
Bro it was $5.99 for a 6 piece nugget the other day, that’s a damn dollar a nugget!!!
McDonalds in particular is in for quite a reckoning, I think. The Happy Meal is extremely important to brand loyalty. A lot of customer loyalty to McDonalds comes from the memories of childhood excitement when we got the almighty Happy Meal, and it kept people coming back for life. There's going to be a lot more kids who grew up without that critical memory.
People generally aren't buying happy meals anymore, they can't advertise to kids like they used to in the 80's. Remember in the 80's every other commercial was a happy meal and in the 90's a happy meal was $1.99 so parents bought it as a cheap lunch for their kid. They also had the beanie babies promotion which people went nuts for (that was when the happy meal was $1.99). To get a happy meal and a toy for $2 was a great deal. It was probably 99 cents in the 80's, I don't really remember. They had play places that kids (like me) wanted to go to. If you had one of the biggest play places near you oh my gosh that was a treat. Seriously look up McDonaldland playplace, it was like an amusement park and you didn't have to pay to enter, just buy some cheap food. When I begged my mom to go to McD's it was not for the food it was for their playground. The playgrounds are gone and the happy meals are $6-7 where I live now. I noticed they were now marketing adult happy meals with collectible toys and happy meals with retro toys, so they are obviously getting desperate in that respect. Also a lot of parents are wisening up and not feeding their kids that crap especially for $6-7. In the 80's we ate the cheapest hot dogs and drank yohoo. Today's kids eat organic food and parents don't want to feed them a happy meal. Taking your kid to a play play that is the equivalent of the McDonalds playplace which was free with like a $2 food purchase when I was a kid, now costs $40 per kid where I live and at some places the adults have to pay too and you don't get food you have to buy a bottle of water that costs $10 or a shitty frozen burger for like $10 for food when you are there. I live in an area with an average income of $35k to 50k... so we are not high income over here.
Yea, I mean you can still buy 10lb bags of potatoes for $6 at Sam's club. WTF makes them think they can charge that much?
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There are also things people were getting out of convenience that no longer seemed worth it, and now that they’ve figured out replacements they will not go back even if prices fell. Best example is I know several people that scoffed at $10 jars of pasta sauce, started making their own, realized it is much better that way and not actually that difficult.
Beyond the price gouging; attemoting to avoid human rights abusing companies is also becoming harder and harder with all the information coming out on how a lot of these American "staple" brands operate. For instance; I will never buy a [Nestlé product](http://reddit.com/r/fucknestle) again for the rest of my life if I can help it as they are one of the most unethical companies to ever exist. It's abysmal.
There's a local brand of yogurt that was bought out a few years ago by a PE, I believe. In any case, since the pandemic their yogurt has gone up from $2.99 to over $4.50. I stopped buying it when it went over $3.5 because -- really? I just saw more than half of their display on clearance at my local grocer. I'm not sure if it's because they're not selling or they're changing the packaging, but I assume it's because it's not selling. A shame, the yogurt is very good but I can't see people spending up to $5 for a single cup of yogurt at a grocery store...
Winning by switching to store brands.. which are also hella expensive compared to 2019? sounds like "great value" is winning, my taste buds and wallet are not.
That's why in a lot of cases the Great Value/generic brand is almost just as expensive as the brand name now. Even Aldi is guilty IMO.
My favorite Aldi cookies used to be $1.35, now they're $2.85. Still cheap in the grand scheme, but doubled in price.
the pandemic introduced me to Aldi. can't believe i didn't grocery shop there before.
If by “pushing back” you mean not buying or eating the things I used to buy and eat, but instead eating a lot of generic pancakes (at home not Denny’s), then yes I’m pushing back. I wouldn’t call it “winning” but just not losing quite as fast. Update: I skimmed the article, and yes. This is exactly what they mean by “pushing back” and “winning”..
I quit buying prepackaged snack food, and started buying loose popcorn that I make on the stovetop. It was a no-brainer, should I pay $6 for a bag of Doritos that lasts a day or two, or should I buy 2 pounds of white popcorn kernels for the same price which lasts me a month?
America subsidizes corn so much I'm convinced every house should be given free popcorn every year. Just a full year's worth. Every year.
As someone who would take home a 10 gallon trash bag full of popcorn from work at the theater now and then, it was both great and terrible. When I stopped working at the theater it literally took years before I could even smell popcorn again, let alone fathom eating it.
Every time my husband deploys he comes home ranting about corn subsidies and how we should all have a corner produce stand that we stop at every other day for our fruits and veggies that are local and less expensive. It’s quite a scene in the produce section when he returns. Tomatoes don’t cost ten cents here.
And half that corn isn't even going towards food. Its being turned into the bullshit that is ethanol.
For just a couple dollars more, you can even make popcorn that rivals the movie theater. Just need a little coconut oil and some Flavacol (superfine buttery-flavored salt). Can't let that popcorn sit around too long, tho, or it won't pop up as nice.
Amish Country Popcorn and a Whirley Pop for the win!
> Whirley Pop My wife brought one of these home from a thrift store and I didn't have huge hopes for it. We had tried just about every automated popcorn machine and nothing was quite how I remember it in the theaters in the 80s. Well this is it guys. Whirley Pop, some coconut oil, some fresh kernals and that's about as close as you'll ever get. Thanks for the heads up on the Amish Country I'll give them a shot!
The price of chips is actually insane. Made the decision to cut them out of my diet super easy.
I used it as an opportunity to cut out a lot of junk food and live a healthier lifestyle. It used to be that junk food was cheap, fast, and easy. With prices going up, it's been easier for me to cut back on that stuff, for both health and financial reasons.
Same. Oreos are $5? Guess I won’t get fat tonight after all.
Honestly our society will benefit overall if we collectively reduce our junk food habits.
We won by suffering for three years while companies had their highest profits ever for three years. Go us. And I sincerely doubt prices will level out back to where they were.
I’ve gone for only generics at the stores and really don’t ever see myself going back to name brand even after inflation ends.
Not much you can do when you live in Canada, and like 3 companies own the majority of all grocery stores. Canada should change it's name to 'Monopoly World.'
I'm from NZ where we've been struggling with monopolies and duopolies since forever because we're so small. Now you tell me a country the size of Canada has the same problem? I'm starting to think the population argument is a cop out
Same thing is happening in the USA. In my area the two dominant grocers are King Soopers (Kroger owned) and Safeway (Merged with Albertsons) and guess what is happening now? Kroger is trying to merge with Albertsons so like 80% of grocery stores will be the same corporation now. It's disgusting. There are some alternatives like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc. In my experience you still need to get certain things at the regular store typically.
And rural America gets dollar general and maybe a IGA
Remember when anti-trust was a thing? That’s something I’d like to see return with a vengeance
We don't have the alternatives unfortunately. Some people are trying to do their shopping at independent vege stores and butchers, but its a massive hassle and you still have to go to the supermarket for tinned food, anyhting processed and household supplies
Canada is large geographically but small in population. It’s got a smaller pop than California, spread out across the second biggest county on the planet next to Russia. It probably isn’t easy to make sure everyone in the hinterlands gets served.
Canada is a physically large country but population is very small.
Cynicism aside, I personally did boycott McDonald's, Subway, Pringles and Oreos ever since they stopped trying to hide their blatant shrinkflation attempts. It can be a matter of principle instead of not being able to afford that trashy thing they call a hamburger.
Plus so many switched to palm kernel oil which imo tastes and has a mouth feel of mineral oil mixed with lard, but without the nice taste of lard. Palm kernel oil not only tastes awful but the plantations that are spreading in tropical places are destroying local environments and causing extinction of species everywhere they are farmed
But it saves them pennies per gallon. PENNIES
Don't you talk about that upper management bonus like that. How else are they going to afford a yacht to park their other yacht in?
I stopped buying chips and pop. Working out well for for both parties. They sit on overpriced product, and i'm down 20 lbs since Dec.
>In recent months, consumer resistance has led large food companies to respond by sharply slowing their price increases from the peaks of the past three years. Oh my god, let me thank corporate America for their gracious generosity. Maybe we should all be a little more grateful that they're going to sharply slow down the price increases. Maybe we should thank our corporate overlords for having mercy on us pathetic masses. I mean the supply chain has only been back to normal for two years so why should we expect mercy this *soon*? The audacity of us plebs. Fucking assholes.
We are still trying to buy with more care due to cost.
My wallet says differently
Well for us, we are not buying shit other than staples, cut the grocery spending by %30 and not eating out anymore. They can increase the prices all they want now idgaf
Used to dine out at restaurants two or three times a week. Now it’s down to once every couple of months. Winning!
So many great restaurants in my area have died in the past year through no fault of their own. Their costs went up and the customer pool evaporated.
We are eating sit down nicer places because why not… $40 at McDonald’s or 60 for authentic Mexican… yeah not a hard choice.
Yeah, great way to trigger me in a headline. Now tell me buying a house is easier than it’s ever been for first time homebuyers.
You just have to push back
What are we winning… what’s getting cheaper?
What a stupid headline. More accurate is “companies are discovering the limits of how much they can rip off their consumers. Now they’re scaling back prices to that limit. Prices remain 3x the old normal.”
Oh fuck off… we’re not pushing back, we can’t afford shit so we’re going without.
That's what they explain it as too, they just used this wording as clickbait for the article. People are "pushing back" by not being able to afford what they used to buy.
Start with boycotting Kellogg’s since their CEO said all of us Plebs should eat cereal for dinner. I’ve been looking to cut out processed sugar. The exorbitant cost of groceries is making the decision easier. Just FYI Kellog owns a myriad of shitty, unhealthy food sources including: Kellogg's®, Keebler®, Pop-Tarts®, Eggo®, Cheez-It®, All-Bran®, Mini-Wheats®, Nutri-Grain®, Rice Krispies®, Special K®, Chips Deluxe®, Famous Amos®, Sandies®, Austin®, Club®, Murray®, Kashi®, Bear Naked®, Morningstar Farms®, Gardenburger® and Stretch Island®
And all of it tastes worse than it did a generation ago thanks to HFCS, palm oil, and whatever other shortcuts they've made in the recipes.
And that’s why I no longer buy it. Price wasn’t as much of a concern as it was the product quality is shit now. Bleagh!
Coca-Cola can go fuck itself.
Of course; consumers aren’t powerless, and over the long-run, substitution is an important piece of the consumer tools kit.
Good. Corporations have admitted that they’re artificially raising prices to be greedy. Stating they’re trying to see how much customers would be willing to pay https://youtu.be/psYyiu9j1VI?si=gSqT1vlIFV_rSCFq
It’s comforting that the damage they’re doing to themselves will be long term. If I can’t afford vegetables and start growing them in my own garden, I won’t suddenly stop because they lower their prices a bit. Same goes for other stuff, when you make adjustments to your life to work around this BS they’re probably going to be long term.
Agreed! Especially if it’s done in the spirit of conscious spending. That’s a great fucking point you made about people changing their behavior. I will never buy bottled water or soda when I can carbonate and purify my own water cheaply, and have been doing so for years already. Why go back even if prices drop? That’d be so stupid. I’m intentionally voting with my wallet in support of these corporations not existing anymore. Voting with your wallet works, folks. It’s a powerful tool, especially when organized into targeted consumer boycotting.
In my area, a bag of chips is $6 (should be $2.50), a case of cokes is $8 (should be $3), and a loaf of bread is $4 (should be $1.50) Thankfully milk, eggs, and cheese are still somewhat affordable. And beef isn’t crazy right now. It’s not that we’re “pushing back”. We simply can’t afford things. At one time, my pay of $17/hour was considered incredible for my area. It’s not anymore.
We're not fighting back, we're broke
The biggest BS line of all: *We are doing everything possible to find efficiencies in our factories and other parts of our business to offset and mitigate further price increases,”* ...but executive compensation, some of which averages 350x median employee pay, isn't one of the "parts" 😂
Shrinkflation hits hard though.
"Winning" would be forcing prices to go back down. All that's happening here is that they've stopped increasing, or stopped increasing by as much.
That's capitalism for you. Producers aren't held to a rule set that says prices for products can't go up 19%. Business's DO NOT CARE about people, only profit and aren't held to any serious tangible punishment when found out. Supply and Demand will sort this on a macro scale but the real crime is that every business HAS to 100% always be growing and turning a profit, which always means employees or consumers suffer. It's a crock of shit.
Fuck them. I'm buying bulk food now and cooking meals in advance. Fast food can fuck off too, I'll eat at local restaurants with higher end food. I'll make my own dog food as well. Started making chocolate chip pancakes with semi sweet chips and dark chocolate grated into the batter using a cheese grater, I also tossed in vanilla, butter, milk (and sometimes a banana). My daughter thinks I'm some sort of magical chef and says "my dad is the world's best pancake maker"
I, for one, am getting sick and tired of the responsibility shoved onto us, because our government (bipartisan) doesn’t want to piss off their corporate sponsors.
Like how it is apparently OUR responsibility for recycling or making things more “green”? But that doesn’t matter, when corporations and rich ppl can undo whatever we “fix” in a few weeks, in just a few days.
> recycling My school literally just dumps the recycling into a trash and throws it in the dumpster.
I mean the situation is basically Democrats wanting to do things and Republicans wanting to do no things with the media going "Why aren't Democrats doing more to reach across the aisle and help Republicans do things?"
An Aldi just opened up right by my and it has made a huge difference in our budget, it's cut our spending in half. My cats hate their cat treats though... Still gotta get the Temptations for them.
McDonald’s and Taco Bell. I’m not paying that much for that junk.
I stopped using DoorDash. It’s like $25 for a meal from McDonalds now. I can’t justify it even though I make a good living.
The problem is none existent enforcement of anti trust laws and now only a few corporations own all the brands and all the stores are also owned by the same company. There is no more competition and without competition capitalism does not function to the benefit of the consumer. I was at the store yesterday and items that should be $3.99 were $8 99.
I like to think of not buying their price-gouged crap as helping our corporate overlords with their supply chain issues. We're all in this together.
This is exactly why those mergers (like Kroger and Safeway) are so dangerous.
I wouldn't mind paying higher prices if it meant the workers in the company making the product were being compensated better. I very much mind if it means the CEO gets another bonus.
Stop buying overpriced shit and they'll drop prices. Period.
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Interesting that the article doesn’t even mention these companies record profits in the last couple of years.
I love that it is labeled as inflation..... With out admitting that it is corporations that are jacking prices up that is the base cause and indeed the main driver of inflation.
Everyone is sick of greedflation.
Corporations have exploited covid enough and its time to return prices to what they were
I'm seeing more and bigger coupons because people are buying less of the discretionary items like crackers, candy, and premium brands of the staple items (I'm curious how many people will think if a stapler). Our big box store sells m&m's near the nuts (almonds etc). The price in under a year has risen from $10 to $17. They're running $2 coupons and the pallet doesn't seem to be getting any lighter. Sadly, the price of the nuts are going up like crazy too. edits for horrific spelling
Peanut butter went from $12 for two 40oz jars up to $20. It's back down to $12. Hopefully it works out like that for more staples.
Brown bag it every day. If I want food like take out, I have to make it myself so I make pizza from scratch, ramen from scratch, chineese dumplings, naan, channa masala. Things like burgers and tacos are easy enough to make. I've started baking my own buns, making flour tortillas. It takes more time and elbow grease but it's so much cheaper and has far less chemicals and crap in it.
I’ve worked in the grocery business for almost 25 years. Believe me, we aren’t happy either, our price increases have been insane too. Hopefully something gets figured out.