“Mistake” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
And now they expect us to go into a spending spree with these “new amazing low prices”.
I think they ought to prepare for disappointment.
One thing the pandemic “shortages” taught me is that in most categories I really do have enough stuff already.
Anyone noticed a pricing difference with “local” grocers? Obviously there aren’t many left and at least in my area they rely on a regional distributor that’s pretty consolidated. Just curious if they’ve been treating consumers any better.
The spouse does most of the shopping but I was in a Harps the other day and saw that a medium (shrinkflated) bag of Cheetos was $8.75 USD.
Harps isn’t super local but… Holy shit. Who can afford Cheetos at that price? I used to buy them as an occasional treat but fuck that noise.
EDIT: for fun I just searched Walmart and they’re $5.94 there. I’m still not spending that much for a garbage treat.
The local grocers that I shop at are all Asian, but aside from the big Japanese one, they are all far cheaper than the big stores, especially when it comes to meat and produce.
Interesting. All the local shops here are far and away more expensive than the chains. I want to shop local, but everything looks to be 20-30% higher. I can’t justify it.
Do you have any local shops that cater to an immigrant community, such as Asian, Hispanic, African…? These tend to be so much cheaper than what I think of as “white people grocery stores” (Safeway, Albertsons, Publix, whatever is in your region). They might not have everything you’re looking for, but they’re fantastic sources for fresh food.
P.S. To be clear, I don’t actually think that those big name stores cater exclusively to white people. I just go to a lot of Asian stores and I needed a way to easily communicate to my husband which kind of store I’m going to (he likes to ask for ice cream and frozen pizzas that they don’t have at the Asian stores), and that’s what evolved for us.
I got a 6-pack of a Korean drink I enjoy called Milkis in an Asian grocery for about the same price as a 6-pack of Coke at a Kroger.
The imported Korean drink and the American drink are the same price except one’s in a local store.
Imported goods do often cost more, and Japanese and Korean products tend to cost more to begin with. I’ll bet that Asian grocery had good prices for vegetables.
If the old Asian man who either couldn’t speak English or could speak English but with an accent so heavy I didn’t understand him didn’t insist on proudly showing me random products (I can’t blame him, his store had just opened and he was happy to see customers), I’d tell you, but it didn’t exactly give me a chance to browse. Thankfully I happened to see the Milkis in the middle of it and grabbed them before he took me somewhere else so I could nod and smile some more.
Anyway, I’m definitely going back. Hopefully he’ll be showing someone else around and I’ll actually get a chance to browse.
Not local, but I’ve been shopping at Lidl and Aldi for years and while their prices raised some with inflation, it was negligible compared to bigger grocery stores. I pay less than half at Lidl than I would at another store.
I’ve been seeing the horror stories of $9 milk for years but I’ve never paid more than $2-3 for. Gallon of milk.
Hope Loblaws here in Canada follows suit
Big-box stores lowering prices wasn’t an altruistic move to throw customers a bone during tough times. Retailers have suffered from weak sales due to customers’ struggle with high prices. Target reported a 3.1% drop in net sales from a year ago and a 3.7% quarterly dip in comparable sales, marking its fourth consecutive quarter of declines. Though Walmart has continued to soar, it owes much of its 6% revenue growth to its e-commerce successes and wealthy customer base, the latter of which makes up a growing chunk of its audience.
This trend has continued in fast food, with McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King all announcing meal deals following earnings reports that suggest customers are losing their taste for high-priced fast food, including $18 Big Mac meals and threats of surge pricing.
No one could have anticipated this outcome
Due to this fuckery, my family will literally never by fast food again unless we are traveling.
Pack a cooler with sandwiches, take bags of trail mix and other healthy snacks, and drink water from refillable bottles.
Fuck the leeches. Live healthier, cheaper, more satisfied lives by cutting out the “convenient” fast food that costs too much, fails on nutrition, and makes you feel bloated and gassy. Prep doesn’t take any longer than stopping along the road to order and get your food, and you can still stop at rest areas for a picnic in an actually enjoyable environment if you want.
Been traveling on the road for about a year. Life got better when I started prepping my meals and stopped eating garbage.
Or maybe get creative with your meals because, as someone who grew up with endless long road trips, what you just described are some of the most depressing meals you can get and after a couple days most people will be so sick of cold, sad, sandwiches that they’ll be desperate for ANYTHING else.
How is trail mix a healthy snack? It’s just some bread-adjacent carbs with extra flavorings. It’s literally the same as any other junk food
Cross-country road trips now have the sandwich fixings stored in a cooler in the car. Pre-make the next day’s sandwich the night before and toss it in the cooler.
Honestly it’s much nicer sitting at a picnic table at a rest area, which generally has nice views, than going into a restaurant or eating drive-thru in the car.
At least the pandemic had some silver linings, would not have necessarily thought to do this otherwise.
Though Walmart has continued to soar, it owes much of its 6% revenue growth to its e-commerce successes and wealthy customer base, the latter of which makes up a growing chunk of its audience.
wtf
Amazon Fresh just became the latest big-box retailer to cut costs on thousands of items, following in the footsteps of Walmart and Target in reversing course on years of inflation-induced price hikes
Greed-induced. Inflation-excused.
Corporations are always greedy, so this factor never changed. It could not have been the cause of inflation, since we had greedy corporations and more inflation before.
I want to point out that your reasoning is irrational which makes your conclusion nonsense.
You didn’t root cause or analyze anything, then declared yourself to be right “because”.
Here I’ll show you, let me use your method to “prove” something.
“The Potato Party has always been in charge in Tombo County, the hungry kids in schools are not the fault of The Potato Party because kids here have been hungry before.”
We can “prove” so many things this way!
The Potato Party could have changed its policies, so your comparison is not apt. Corporations have never been not greedy, so what changed?
Corporations all raised prices at the same time. No competition to offset the greed. Normally that level of coordination is impossible among different companies, at least some would keep prices lower to retain customers.
Normally that level of coordination is impossible among different companies, at least some would keep prices lower to retain customers.
The biggest con in the world. You would think people are not capable of organizing for a common cause.
That level of coordination IS possible when all you need is a bunch of CXOs and investors in a union.
You think collusion to keep prices is not possible? Does that people people agreeing on a specific set of laws and policies living in a demarcated region (a country) is not possible?
The greed is constant, but the opportunities to excuse price increases are not. Egg prices jumped up about 6x because they had the excuse of bird flu, but the prices magically went down (but stayed elevated) after the government threatened an investigation. As ineffectual as our government has been made, increasing prices out of nowhere with no plausible excuses will invite an investigation.
So my point is instead of blaming greedy corporations, we just discussed possible causes and solutions. Isn’t this a more constructive conversation?
