I feel like my electricity company keeps emailing me about how electricity prices are going up. That plus gas/heating oil are one of the few things that I pay a ton of attention to, because I buy them fairly rarely and the price is BIG and on the sign. Heating oil because no matter how cheap it is per gallon it’s always a big payment.
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They might be testing to see if it drops their business much. Also costs money to print new menus
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Construction materials and labor. But you know that 
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Haha, girl you know I’m just jelly. 
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Move to Oregon! We have so, so many farms and ranches here.
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@anomalily, do you know any economists (or other data nerds) who track inflation or relative cost of goods across countries by using selected Costco Kirkland brand products as the monitoring tool? Because as I understand it, the company policy on most Kirkland items (except the big loss leaders like the roast chicken and hot dogs, which they price below cost because they generate other sales) is a markup of around 15%. Seems like someone cleverer than me could figure out how to choose a few items across categories within this one retailer and get a pretty good proxy on general inflation.
I am not an economist, nor do I play one on the internet. I just woke up too early thinking about how it would have been interesting if I had saved my receipts from Costco over the past couple of years because the shit I buy there is pretty consistent.
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You can look up your receipts on the app, I’ll go check how far back!
ETA pshaw it only shows me back to last Jan.
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So the cottage cheese they carry has gone up from $4.99 a mega tub to $5.29 a mega tub. Brussel sprouts are same price and bag size. Those were my main quick take aways lol.
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Have you seen this?
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One thing to know about food prices and consumer price index is that they hide the stores and brands that they shop for - BECAUSE essentially you could alter the course of the US economy if you knew which brands/stores the governments used for the “basket of goods”. This is because the CPI has a direct impact on social security payments and the US federal reserve bonds.
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I can remove if it’s irrelevant! I thought since it still tracks prices and spending it might be interesting to some people but maybe I misunderstood!
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Oh no! sorry! it’s super helpful! I just wanted to give more context for the CPI! I just find the process for collecting fascinating (secret spy shoppers who go to the same stores to get the same things every month but can never be found out).
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Oh no it’s me probably, I’ve been on meds for the last couple of days so my cognition is a bit impaired, lol. How do I apply to be a secret spy shopper? Haha.
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I found the article very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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I could totally be a spy shopper my Costco list is intensely consistent.
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https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?d=DL&show=hp&hp=public&p=2
Bureau of Labor Statistics 
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My ex did secret shopping for awhile but mostly a lot of work for not much money.
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Also you probably can’t use credit cards or rewards cards because those things track you insanely close…
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The BLS secret shopping for CPI is full time government employees with govt cards, not like the other kind
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Canned/wet cat food. I usually order from Chewy.
January 21st 2020: $32.88 for 24 5.5oz cans of chicken.
March 30th 2020: Same as above.
July 22nd 2020: Same as above.
October 2nd 2020: $37.68 for 24 5.5oz cans of chicken.
July 18th 2021: $45.88 for 24 5.5oz cans of chicken.
Then, I couldn’t find any canned poultry from this brand (Hill’s) on Chewy, but they were selling the same thing in plastic packets. These are more expensive when you calculate the price per oz…
October 20th 2021: $39.12 for 24 2.8 pouches of chicken.
November 3rd 2021: Same as above.
Since the canned version was cheaper, I checked PetSmart’s website, and they had the canned version…
November 26th 2021: $46.05 for 24 5.5oz cans of chicken
I checked Chewy today. The price for 24 5.5oz is $45.92, but they are out of stock.
I didn’t notice much of a difference with dry cat food, although they stopped making the usual brand I get, so I switched brands anyways.
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