Today’s livestream is all about food inflation. Tel me your food inflation anecdata! What has gone up for you? Is there anything you have stopped buying or having to budget for more around food?
Live today at 5PM Pacific/8PM Eastern
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Milk $2/gallon to $3/gallon. Also recently have been unable to find actual full gallons, and the half gallons are $2 each, bringing it to $4/gallon.
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Coffee. We buy the cheap stuff, always have, but now the 48 oz can (heresy, I know) has gone from $5.98 to $8.98.
But it’s everything. Still, the rate of inflation doesn’t compare to the oil embargo of the 70s - then, you never knew week to week how much bread (flour, cornmeal) would cost. Right now, at least it’s month to month uncertainty.
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OK, you got me curious, so I went back and checked some receipts from last March.
We used to get bacon at $4-6/lb (depending on sales, etc). Now it’s $7-$11/lb. We’ve cut back.
Oat milk: was $4/half gallon, now it’s $5.50.
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Keep in mind to a fair amount of the inflation is hidden right now, with changes to package sizing. “shrinkflation” and all that.
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Yeah, my 12 oz. pounds of turkey bacon cost more than they used to, too.
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I think almost everything I buy has gotten more expensive. I have a pretty strict food budget and basically have prices memorized at all of the stores where I shop. Every week I notice things getting higher and higher, with the exception of produce which fluctuates seasonally (although at Natural grocers this weekend I noticed a sudden hike in lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, etc…but sometimes prices depend on the produce source).
I noticed yesterday at Costco that the 6 pack of avocados had gone up from $5.99 to $8.99. The beef burgers I usually buy were $23.99 from $19.99 last year (this one has been going up for the past few months). The chicken deli meat I buy was $5.99 last year, and now is $7.49 a pound. I buy this one particular dip, and it used to be a 32oz tub for $6.99 and is now a 24oz tub for $8.99 (yay shrinkflation + inflation combined!). The frozen cherries were $7.99, and are now $10.99, same with the frozen blueberries…I would say almost every item in the store has gone up $2-$3 with the exception of some of the staple Kirkland brand items (organic ground beef, organic greek yogurt, etc which have been the same price now for a couple years)
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Yep this is my Costco experience too. Cottage cheese, sour cream, cheddar, butter, cucumbers, most everything I buy has gone up by like $0.20-$3 depending.
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Most of my shopping has got more expensive, I earn enough money that I havent ever super tracked my grocery spend, but I know I am spending a lot more now, to the point where I have been noticing it a lot, plus Western Australia has had lots of supply issues, which has made it worse with limited options
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one I just noticed right now at Fred Meyer. Storebrand pasta went from one dollar a pound to one dollar $.25 a pound.
(Weird formatting, voice to text)
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Oh and some of the items that are like, allllways on sale (like Kroger brand frozen veggies) haven’t been on sale for a while.
The coupons they send in the mail are getting worse. Used to be $1 off eggs, now it’s $0.50-0.75 off. That sort of thing. Used to be a $7 off $70 type coupon every month they sent the books out, now it’s an $8 off $80 once every few months.
Catalinas almost never print at the register anymore.
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Late, but: a particular brand of oats was 500g for $4.50. that’s $9/kg! It was $6/kg a couple of months ago!
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I’m insulated slightly by having access to pre-dumpster dumpster diving via working at a grocery store, but yeah. 100% noticed, and easier to see when I am sometimes the one putting the new price stickers up. O_O;;
Where I’ve personally noticed most is frozen vegetables, which used to be an easy thing to chuck into food to add veg content, is now more $$. Don’t have numbers, tho.
Annies mac and cheese sales went from $1 per box to a sale price of $1.25 per box. So still on sale when they go on sale, but the sale price is less good.
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This is a huge part of what I’m noticing. It’s mainly only luxury brands and luxury foods that are on sale, rather than way more basic Staples in store brands, and the sales aren’t as good as they used to be either.
I’m glad my notice on the frozen food seems right. Makes me and reasonably happy that I am still so cued into grocery prices 
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I’m gonna lose access to my free bin of damaged and lightly expired food for (3) months soon and it’s gonna hurt LOL.
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cough
And sometimes heavily expired food.
Sometimes Bad Things are found.
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I made a switch to buying groceries from a more expensive B Corp organization at the start of the year. That was an expensive change at the time but their prices haven’t moved much since. $48 to $52 for the mixed fruit and vegetable box we sometimes get. They have also been upfront that they have been altering the varieties they put in the box in order to avoid a large price increase which works for me.
So far milk, yogurt, bread prices haven’t seemed to increase through them. Meat has, maybe 10-20%, though we don’t eat much of it.
The business’s fuel spend is 2.77% of sales. Which apparently is really low and has helped in the recent increases? They seemed very proud of that number.
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I’ve had horrific sticker shock since moving on everything except produce; I expect that’s because more is in season here.
I’m not sure how much to attribute to prices generally being higher, being in a new city, or not being able to shop at Aldi. I feel like I’d be spending equally as much at the “regular” grocery stores in Chicago as I am here; I just never did that because Aldi was so much cheaper.
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Check out Sav-A-Lot; I don’t have an Aldi near home but do have Sav-A-Lot, and it was always as good or better prices than the Aldi near work. Google tells me there are three in NOLA.
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One of the most noticeable jumps in my cart:
The kroger english muffins used to be .99/half dozen. Then they jumped to 1.19 early in the pandemic (but were often on sale for .99-1.09. Then to 1.29. This week they were 1.49! Still cheaper than other brands, but a 50% jump over 2 years is a lot.
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