How are you all making it right now with grocery store prices?

return2ozma@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 230 points –

I don't know how they think we're all going to survive with these prices.

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Groceries will blame inflation and whatnot, yet they're printing record profits.

That's because the truth is the other way around. It's the hoarding of record profits by the corporate class what drives the inflation

Margins are down.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/albertsons-beats-profit-revenue-expectations-strong-demand-groceries-2023-07-25/

. So it isn’t the stores gouging you. Somewhere in the chain. Someone is though

somehow these poor struggling grocers can still buy one another for twenty five billion dollars.

That’s all debt. That isn’t from profits.

Their margins are low and declining.

The point being is the cash grab is further up the line. If it was the grocery stores, we’d see margins increasing. Food has doubled to tripled in many cases and their margins went down.

overall sales are up, prices are waaay tf up.

gross margins are down slightly, but they're taking that 27.7% (vs 28.1%) from a larger pie.

profits are up.

Grocery has some of the lowest margins of any industry. It’s not your local store milking you and I doubt it’s the local farmer.

The point being is the cash grab is further up the line

It's certainly not the farmers getting paid more.

If anything, the agrifood business that they sell to are pushing the farm gate price down, while at the same time input costs continue to rise.

I buy beef from my local farmer. His cost of went up and his prices have adjusted. He’s 3x more expensive but about about to quit because he can’t turn a profit.

I also buy local and they're thinking about calling it quits. You work all day and margins are so low, they can't keep fixing / replacing what breaks without increasing debt.

That is the issue he is running into. He has tripled the prices but his margin is lower than before.

I get many people want to blame the stores but this problem is further up the chain and someone is miking the system. I have two customers who are grocery store chains and they have said, the only reason they are profitable is they can't hire people and they have to use corporate staff to help in their stores. I know the director of security has to stock shelves two days a week.

I am not one for the government getting in the middle of everything but they need to audit the supply chain and figure out what is really going.