Shrinkflation is out of control
Up untill a week ago Nofrills carried these "three packs" of salmon for $10. Now the same pack contains two for the same $10. I thought it felt light when I bought it yesterday.
This comes to about $0.02 increase per gram, and a $1.10 price increase overall. Or a 11% increase in price overall. Meanwhile inflation is at 6-7%?
This sucks. One of my favorite places to eat has both inflation and shrinkflation. Higher price for smaller portions.
More than likely their suppliers are bleeding them, a lot of restaurants in my town are dealing with the same shit
Yeah. One of my favourite restaurants closed a couple months ago because they just couldn't justify charging more for food, but their suppliers sure could.
It's not the supplier "bleeding them" the supplier has the exact same problem the restaurant has, inflation, if they don't raise the prices they go bankrupt. It's a vicious cycle of everyone raising prices not to go bankrupt which causes everyone else to do the same.
If you don’t think suppliers are using inflation to justify robber-baron price hikes, I guess you missed the part where companies are posting record profits.
Huzzah for our current system of capitalism that insists a company is only doing good if each quarter has record profits. What's bad with doing "good enough?"
This concept of greedflation has been disproved in recent meta-analysis. It should probably die. I'll copy paste a comment I wrote in some other thread analyzing it.
I think everyone should probably listen to this great report from NPR that dissects this issue. The Tl;dr: is greedflation is not really a real thing.
The deeper answer to your question of, "can one party increase prices in a market?" is sort of basic economics, and the answer is, "Usually, no." In a competitive market, the answer is no. In a monopolistic market (meaning one company controls most of the market, think like Google with browsers) with no government oversight, the answer is yes. Things get complicated when you add in government regulation or oligopolistic markets (markets where only a few players control the market). In those cases, it depends on how strong government regulations on price-gouging are and any anti-monopoly or anti-anticompetitive practice laws are, and also depends on how oligopolists behave. Sometimes, particularly in industries with few big players, the big players will make the same decisions independently. If they do this cooperating it will usually violate antitrust laws, but if they both decide they'll be better off say, not paying workers as much, or charging super high markups, them that can happen. A lot of economic research shows that kind of "tacit collusion" happens in real life, like in the oil and gas industries. But other times oligopolies will behave very competitively, only uniting through lobbyist trade groups if at all (think Microsoft and Amazon in cloud software).
So that's the facts, but here's my economic musing: The reason it feels like greedflation is a thing is a combination of factors:
I work for a packaging supplier and inflation is hitting us hard.
Perhaps the people whose job it is to know shit a actually do know shit
I'm an inflationary economist and I feel you, man.
People will just tell you "Ah, that's the excuse they gave you to not raise you to match the inflation".
And we won't and can't know who's right until we know who you work for and what's their past and current financial output.
I know who is right because I'm not some bottom-tier employee parroting what I've heard. My job requires me to work with our finance team, M&A team, COO, and SG&A team as part of overarching strategy.
Inflation drives all the numbers up. If money inflates to half the value but you maintain the same profit margins, you'll make record profits despite the finances having functionally remained exactly the same.
Workers are also making record wages. It doesn't mean much if you don't consider how much the money is actually worth, as we've all been discovering over the last few years.
so why not just lower the profit margins? also give me some of them record wages please, all I got was a bottle of champagne for all the work weve done and record profits but also raises in pay are frozen because of the turbulent times
Probably for the same reason you don't casually decide to go to your boss and say that you voluntarily want a pay cut.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages
Average hourly wage at the start of 2020 was $24. It's now $29, which comes to about $10,000 more each year, and is an increase of about 21%. That growth has been concentrated in the service industry, but the data is pretty clear regardless, and the general trend applies to basically all sectors. Inflation in that same time period is 18.1%, so it simply is a matter of fact that the average worker has greater buying power today than they did in January 2020.
That's an average, of course, and may not necessarily apply to you individually.
You got champagne? All I got was runaround, brand new policies pulled out of thin air, and creative counting to deny seniority benefits. Turns out, I've worked for the same place 30 years when it inflates their retention and longevity numbers for the oversight agencies. I've also worked there for only a year (started a new position last year) when it suits them to deny a published benefit. The completely mindboggling part? These two countings were in the same email.
you got champagne? I just got lumped onto more projects for no more money
Workers are not making record wages, maybe CEOs and the upper middle class are but nobody else is. Maybe this is specific to America? Nearly everyone I know across multiple wage brackets I struggling with the cost of living.
Wage growth in the US has been most pronounced in the lower end of the market. Growth-oriented businesses like tech are a lot more sensitive to interest rate spikes, since their entire model is to borrow a ton of money to pay highly skilled workers a lot to "disrupt" an industry and achieve very rapid growth.
That isn't necessarily contradictory with still struggling, since inflation exists. If you suddenly make 10% more money but everything costs 10% more as well, you are objectively making record wages, even though your buying power remains the same. Per that report, inflation-adjusted wages have actually grown on the lower end of the job market, so the average low-wage worker's buying power has actually increased, but general statistics don't always translate over to real-life experience super cleanly, and of course, a slight improvement from a bad financial situation doesn't suddenly put you in a good situation.
I think that's exactly it. I don't know for sure, but these numbers may be average wages. And if that's the case, having the top % or earners earn more while the bottome stays the same would still increase the average And would increase the divide between the top earners and bottom earners
You're getting downvoted but the suppliers have suppliers too, and even if it's a farm-to-table thing the farms have supply costs.
Every place I used to eat pretty much. And they cheap out on cheap shit too, like fries and rice. I used to work at a restaurant and the owner always taught me to fill up the sides cause it makes people feel they got their money's worth
The worst part of shrinkflation is that it ruins all the old mid-century recipes that were based on "convenience foods" and specified ingredients like "one can" of cream of mushroom soup or "one package" of jello. Nowadays you've got to use a can and a half, or whatever -- WTF am I supposed to do with half a can of leftover soup, assholes?!
Americans in shambles as shrinkflation ruins their measurement system /s
I had a recipe for queso I found that asked for 13oz of condensed milk.
The stores here only sell 12oz cans. So I had to buy a small 5oz one to go with it. It's so dumb.
... Or, you know, just adapt the recipe. Not simping for shrinkflation here, but it's pretty dumb to buy more than you need just to exactly match a recipe for queso. Shit ain't analytical chemistry
Food isn't as precise as people think. I used to stress over recipes and shit when I first started cooking regularly. Shit just kinda works if you stick roughly to most recipes.
Edit: this is just a general comment, I know some foods require an absolute fuck ton of skill and precision to get right
Baking is where it turns into an exact science.
Cooking is art, baking is science.
I've never made it before and I usually follow recipes as they are and everything always comes out really good so I try not to deviate from that.
When I get experimental, it sucks and then I'm wasting food.
I was also intimidated by making queso specifically as I have a hard time making sauces. I do experiment but they come out shitty when I do and they come out shitty when I follow the recipe.
Most other things come out fine if it's a recipe I already know and can change a bit without having to worry.
I didn't mean to come off rude before. I'm sorry for that.
I can see this is very important to you and I shouldn't have made light of it.
Thank you. It did turn out for the best that I had extra condensed milk so I could figure out the best measurement for it.
I'm actually working on something tricky making my own queso. I want to make something that stays liquid but uses real cheese.
Cursed cheese. Never the consistency you need lol.
it's so hard to find the perfect medium!
as a chemist this got a chuckle out of me
Lol, you just wrecked this guy so politely and firmly here. Well done.
Gee thanks.
LOL, it's true!
That said, it's certainly possible to have the same problem in metric. To the extent that you don't, it's probably because you're still cooking with real ingredients scooped into a container in a market instead of processed, packaged ones.
In other words, the thing you should really be gloating about is being less at the mercy of Cargill and Nestle and whatnot than us Americans are.
being at the mercy of loblaws isn’t much better
I'd try adding more milk or cream if you've already got some. I ain't wasting an extra can either. I'm the kind of person who puts a ton of beans in my chili compared to ground beef because I can't waste them lol
The thing that pisses me off the most is “””eco-friendly””” companies doing shrinkflation. My guy, you can tell me it’s recycled plastic or whatever, if the portions are smaller you’re still pumping out more plastic than before, asshole.
Some countries have outlawed this behavior. If the seller/producer wants to decrease the package contents and keep the package size and price the same, they can (of course), but they must write on the package that the contents have decreased in large bright characters that are hard to miss. Something like this:
255gnow 200gI'm not sure where you are (assuming USA, based on the packaging), but it's not illegal in the USA, since consumer protection is near to nonexistent.
Pretty sure this is Canada, no frills is a franchise chain under Loblaws. Loblaws is the kind of company that increases a product price by 20% and then puts up a "same price everyday" sign to gaslight customers.
Meanwhile Kroger raises their prices and then puts a giant yellow tag on them labeled "Everyday Low Prices".
It's not on sale, it's always more expensive than it was before, but they want you to think it's a discount.
Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb.
Cool business move...... NOT!
(Should we even be bringing back the 'not'?)
Same price everyday (only for the day)
In the US it's actually illegal for companies to do something that benefits the consumer
If it's not Shrinkflation, it's Diluteflation.
I occasionally see posts and news articles about how AriZona Tea Company has "held the line" and kept their giant cans of iced tea priced at 99 cents for so long.
Well, after drinking a few cans of the stuff recently, I'm almost certain they're watering down their product. The tea is nowhere near as concentrated as it was a few years ago. There's practically no flavor to it anymore.
I kinda doubt they would bother to water it down. Realistically the flavouring in it costs a fraction of a cent for them. If they changed it for any reason would probably just be to be healthier
Companies operating on that scale sell millions and millions of beverages. Even half a cent per can can add up to huge amounts of money. Also, their job is literally to sell containers of diluted high fructose corn syrup, so I don't think customer health is their priority.
Hmm I've been drinking it for years and don't notice that either. Maybe check the sell by dates on yours. They do kind of deflate over time.
Here in southern Ontario near the border we've been getting REALLY great deals on Arizona lately because our local market buys in bulk from across the border. I've never been able to get Arizona for 50 cents my entire life before. It must be overstock or something, but I'm having one or two like every day.
The old fish costs $3.92 per 100g, the new fish $5. That's a price increase of (255/200 - 1) = 27.5%. The difference per gram (which isn't of interest to anybody) is 5-3.92, i.e. ¢1.08. Which also equates to a (5/3.92 - 1) = 27.5% increase.
Not sure what you were calculating, but every result was wrong.
Cost per gram is the only sensible measurement
and yet every single online grocery shopping I've been on refuses to have a filter or sort by price per weight option. It's even more incredibly infuriating when you have to click into an item's description or calculate it yourself, extra bonus hell points to the sites that change the weight metric so it's an extra step to figure out what the actual comparison is (probably more a US problem with ounce/pound conversion).
I just wish the weights were consistent across similar products. I've seen some supermarkets where one brand uses cost per gram while another brand uses cost per 100 grams, and yet another brand uses cost per kg, all for the same product. Some toilet papers are cost per sheet, some are cost per 100 sheets, some are cost per roll. In the USA, one item might use price per ounce while the product next to it uses price per pound. Some packs of soft drink cans use price per can while others use price per 100mL or per fluid ounce.
Drives me crazy.
This is as designed. It's like shopping for mattresses, they don't want you to comparison shop.
Unit pricing is mandated in many jurisdictions, however many of them don't mandate the specific units that are used. I wish they'd do that so that we could properly compare items.
The marketing law in Denmark does that. With few exceptions, everything must have the price displayed in the proper unit (liter, kilogram, meter, square metres or cubic metres) in addition to the price pr. item.
Price per roll has to be the worst seeing how rolls are different thicknesses
I know right? I'll take a photo next time I see per roll unit pricing.
It's 2 for the price of 3 - 50% increase
$3.33 to $5 is 50%
In pieces, sure. But the old pack contained 255g of fish and the new one contains 200g ;)
My bad thanks
Interesting that while there is only 2 instead of 3 in a pack, the total weight has gone down only 22% (from 255g to 200g, instead of 170g if the weight dropped by a third/33%). So the actual salmon pieces may be bigger?
This is still shrinkflation but there has probably also been previous hidden shrinkflation in the individual salmon pieces too and that bit has been slightly undone.
Usually when I buy bigger packs of salmon, the amount varies and the only thing roughly consistent is the weight. So if they decreased the weight, you might either get 2 bigger fillets or 3 smaller fillets depending on the package
Packages says right on them 2 packs and 3 packs. So amount isn’t changing on these particular ones.
The absurd thinness of the "family size" boxes of frosted mini wheats is another one.
They won't be able to stand upright in the next round of shrinking.
I love them sockeye... Watching them fight to get to spawning ground is something special to watch. One year I watched a group splinter off the Hoh river in Washington and make their way up a feeder stream. Ever day after school I'd run out to see where they were. So many started and only a few made it.
They literally saved my life. I was looking for somewhere to end myself when I found them. Their presence intrigued me and I decided to see it out. The day the last one spawned and died broke something in me, that hate I had. It's hard to explain but I was so overwhelmed by the experience I decided that if they can do that journey, i can do mine.
Thinking about it again always makes me so emotional.
Anyways that salmon is cheap and it should be cherished for what it is.
Sockeye Salmon are the best flavor of salmon.
You comment made me feel emotional too. I'm glad you're doing better now.
I have lots of stomach issues and can't eat a lot of foods, which means I mostly eat the same few things over and over. One of the few things I can have reading out is a particular local restaurant's chicken strips, and I'd get them for lunch a couple times a month. They've raised their prices twice in the last 6 months, and what used to be 6-8 strips for$6 is now 5 chicken strips - just the chicken, no fries or other sides - for $10. If I'm feeling masochistic, I'll get myself and my father each one of their chef salads. Two of those are now $27. They are a very, very popular place and usually crazy busy, but since that last hike I've noticed the parking lot at lunchtime is often half empty. This is not a wealthy area, people can't afford these prices. They are going to greed themselves right out of business.
They've also lost every single long-time employee they had. And when I say long, I mean 15, 20 years working there. I watched most of them grow up, get married and have families. Every. Single. One. is gone, and I've seen most of them at other restaurants now. Their staff is now different every time I go in there, and service sucks and orders are frequently wrong. My work stopped ordering food from there for meetings because of it. Greed, greed, greed, with a healthy dose of apparent staff mistreatment. Story of the world at large nowadays.
If you are paying a restaurant to make your chef salads and chicken strips you have no reason to complain about price when you can easily make those for 1/4 the cost yourself with ingredients from a grocery store.
Sometimes a guy just wants to not have to cook and to just go eat some god damn chicken strips
Apparently even the simplest pleasures in life are luxuries now.
I've never been able to make a single salad for less than the price of a salad at a normal-priced resturaunt, ever. Sure I can make 10 salads for the price of one, but it's really hard to buy 1/4 a tomato, or 1/2 a head of lettuce from a grocery store.
"If you like eating at restaursnts once in a while, you deserve not to be able to afford to eat!"
Fuck off, prick.
There's a fresh Canadian fish market near my house. A huge piece of wild caught Atlantic salmon that can feed 3-4 of us is $28 or so after taxes. The salmon is fresh, delicious, and way more plump. Shrimp too, I buy a $20 pack of shrimp at food basics and it shrinks to nothing while cooking, and the $25 of fresh shrimp from the fish market stays huge and doesn't soggy my recipe
Sounds like they might be pumping water into that shrimp. They do it for chicken breast and I think up to half the weight of the product can be water added or something ridiculous like that.
That's how they do, it's all water weight and then they freeze it. You end up paying more for their shitty shrimp than you would at a decent market.
I have a locally-run produce store close to me, and I've found even for things like the brand of packaged cookies they sell, there's a unique texture and crispness to them - it's made me a bit more aware of the quality standards that individual stores may have.
If I go there, I don't get my pick of 17 brands for common things like meat or milk, but I end up enjoying the one or two options they have.
Buy less. Use less. Reward good pricing with your money. Spouse stopped buying favorite frozen sausages months ago because they went from $5 to $12. The other day noticed they are "on sale" for $5.25. Bought 2 and will continue buying them until they go back up. I've also started buying a lot of things on sale in bulk that will store awhile, so I can just walk by the ridiculous pricing until the next sale drops it again.
Arizona Ice Tea the fucking OG.
Still 99 cents for a huge ass can.
Respect.
El busto coffee too
You have to stop buying them now. That's the only way the prices will ever stabilize.
The ever reducing diameter of wraps is the thing that gets me the most. Do they think we won't notice?! It's maddening. I want a big wrap.
You'd think with a wrap it'd be easier to just stuff it with cheap starch and keep it looking big and satisfying in the display case.
For that they just put all the filling in the middle, cut them in half and only display the cut side for stuffed looking cross section. Meanwhile half or more of the wrap is empty.
its literally impossible to make a burrito in Australia. every wrap is made for ants
It's like that episode of Next Generation "Remember Me" when the universe is shrinking and everyone's disappearing and the Enterprise computer keeps gaslighting Dr Crusher trying to convince her it's fine, everything's fine, this is totally normal. But it's not fine, it really isn't.
Everybody blaming shrinkflation and nobody mentioning how terribly low salmon stocks are right now.
Atlantic Salmon populations have been doing fine and have an LC conservation status. Most of the issues with other salmon are in the populations off of the US West Coast.
Alaska has been seeing their populations increase in large part due to government hatcheries and wildlife management.
Can someone please check on the salmon make sure they're ok?
This is the first I've heard of this. What's causing it?
Same reason for every animal resource: over exploitation of the resource, habitat destruction/pollution, and climate change. This isn't a recent thing, salmon stocks have been declining over the last 4 decades. The response to this decline of course has been to continue extracting the same amount year over year.
Will at least all our problems of overweight, diabetes and clogged arteries be solved in a few years? Or will most of us be dead by that time? I fear the latter...
Unfortunately, buying ultraprocessed foods is cheaper than buying healthy food. So I'd say it will only make the problem worse.
The lucky ones will be dead. I don't expect that surviving the collapse is going to be a desirable option.
If you're from a first workd country and not already in poverty, you're probably going to be fine.
I'm sorry, what? The entire American west is becoming unlivable, Canada is burning to ashes, poisoning tens of millions of people across the continent, a hirricane just hit Californis, an entire fucking city just got wiped off the map in Hawaii, and western Europe is going to go into freefall when the impending collapse of tbe Atlantic currents drastically ravages their climate.
But sure, tell me more about how being in a developed country is going to save us when there's no fucking food and everything is on fire.
Oh nooo people won't be able to live in Phoenix Arizona
Was all yall dumbasses fault for trying to settle big cities in literal wasteland.
Most places in sane locations in the first world will be more or less shielded from the worsr effects of climate change.
That’s certainly a revision of what you said earlier. So now you have to not only be financially sound, in a premier country, but also not say, anywhere near the southern US or any flammable forests?
Economically, maybe.
in every other respect? uhm.... have you looked at the news this year?
It’s weird to me how much people focus on surviving widespread near-apocalyptic disasters. Why would I want to?
Cheap food is usually less healthy but if you talk about people staving a little from time to time it seems realistic that many might get slimmer, not the healthy way to do it but I guess some could end up healthier
My guy.
Losing weight by starving does not lead to a healthier person. What you get is a malnourished person.
Thinner people does not equal healthier people. These two factors need to be considered separately. Of course, the grossly obese tend to be less healthy, but even those in a "healthy" weight range, can have a large number of health-related problems, both with their diet and with their exercise and otherwise.
Of course, it's a missfired joke!
Look at a thin person's legs: little or no muscle means the low body mass is the product of self-starvation, muscled legs means it's the product of lots of exercise.
Also you can notice that people who starved themselves to be thin as teenagers (much more common in women) have arched legs.
Thinner people are healthier in that they won't suffer from the same medical issues that plague the obese. A thin person might have high cholesterol, but they're not going to also have the same increase chance of heart disease an obese person will see. No individual who's 300lbs is healthy, obesity in and of itself is the disease. The fact thin people suffer from other, non-weight related diseases doesn't mean there is not point in not maintaining a healthy weight.
Food insecurity is not a solution to the obesity epidemic, but eating a couple hundred calories per day less than maintenance is also not starvation. And ensuring healthy foods and produce are more affordable than unhealthy and high-processed alternatives is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.
Well, this specifically being smoked wild salmon, it's not really problematic in that health sense (farmed salmon, on the other hand, has way much more fat and because of what it's fed, that's not even the good fat with lots of Omega-3) except perhaps any slightly hgher cancer risks associated with the smoking process (also it depends on any kind of chemicals added to accelerate the "smoking" - you can actually add "smoked flavour" - and preservatives).
The cause of obesity usually isn't the size of a pack of salmon.
"our research shows customers want more manageable and convenient portion siz-"
THE FUCK WE DO
In restaurants... not the fucking store!
I'm totally with you that shrinkflation is an issue.
But these nofrills packages are intentionally priced at an even value like $10. to the point that the price is written directly on the package not an in store label that they can update. I get things like chicken and sausage patties like this too. So instead of putting in 3 and updating the price to $15 or whatever they just take one out.
Additionally fish is not a staple good, generally fish is sold at "market price" because it's affected by populations and seasons and prices for fish vary significantly through the years because of this.
But again I agree and the best thing to do is pay attention and not buy things that you don't think are worth.
They also print the weight and number of pieces on the package, which they had to update. Since the packaging is otherwise identical, shoppers will buy it without reading the weight of number of pieces because it looks exactly like the old package.
Obviously, No Frills wanted to keep the price at $10, so they reduced the amount of fish in the package. That's shrinkflation. If the goal were to keep customers informed of the change, they would have made more noticeable change to the package.
Is this near the sign that says “Always $10”? :\
lol
I rarely get fast food but I've gone recently and I was shocked when I ordered a burger and got what would've been the junior version just a few years prior. Makes me wonder how tiny the junior version is nowadays.
It's like ordering a Big Mac and getting a cheese burger
A Big Mac where I am is basically just a cheeseburger with lettuce, more bread and different sauce. The circumference is exactly the same and it's using the same patties too.
I want to say this is one of the more obtuse examples of shrinkflation. A lot of it is simply to allow a product, usually something by weight like cereal (where you're not getting x individual pieces), to completely sell out, only to be replaced with one with nominally fewer grams of product while maintaining price. Usually with a 2-3 week gap between the old product and new. Usually it will come back with a redesigned box or something or new "eco" packaging that helps to distract from the fact that they just performed a 10%+ moneygrab on your lucky charms. Most people are content to just be able to buy the product again, and since it's been completely sold out with no product to compare with, there's less of a chance anyone is going to be able to have something to directly compare to when buying the updated product.
If they had instead sold 3x fillets at 200g, I have serious doubts even you would have noticed; but since they moved to larger, but fewer fillets, it's starkly obvious that something happened.
Who is gonna stop them? Nobody, so of course they’re pricing them above inflation. They’re there to make a profit, fuck you and yours and all that
Over what time period, though? We'd need to know when the 255g for $10 price was introduced. If the price and weight have been unchanged for a few years, this could even be below the rate of inflation.
Absolutely agree with you.
It's anecdotal, but I think this product was only introduced a little over a year ago in the supermarket that I shop. I don't remember seeing this $10 "value pack" prior to this, and I pick one up usually every 4-5weeks consistently.
That's why you pass laws making this shit illegal. It clearly isn't going to regulate itself as we've seen and people are already being pushed past the point of no return.
What would the regulation be though? "you can't make your products smaller"?
What about "you have to add a sticker saying now with 30% less" for a year any time you change the size? Then maybe something about making different product lines visually distinct so they can't sneak it past
I'm not sure how you'd fix the problem, but at least we could make the shrinkflation more obvious to buyers
The bread rolls at the supermarket have gotten so comically small that you can't even use them to make a proper sandwich anymore.
While these price changes can certainly come in part from corporate greed, there may be some other costs at work being applied; the increased difficulty of agriculture in a world where the climate is getting out of control, or as someone else mentioned the war in Ukraine having an effect on agricultural exports from the area.
I'm at least trying to be flexible in my preferences. I try to be aware of the carbon offset associated to the food I buy, or the amount of land needed to produce it. We can also get a bit too used to certain foods actually being subsidized by the government, primarily meats. It doesn't necessarily mean I can eat cheaply, but sometimes I pick up an option I wouldn't normally consider that either saves me money or satisfies me even more.
The cost increase is one thing, like you said there may be valid reasons why pricing for these particilar salmons increased more than inflation did. The disgusting part here is in my opinion the sneaky way its done: by shrinking the package you are (again in my opinion) lying to the consumer by leading them to believe you are paying the same as you were before, as the package looks mostly the same.
There's this fast food fried chicken chain called Raising Canes, used to serve massive strips. Now the price is 50% more expensive and 50% less chicken. They're extremely tiny, never going back again... yet all the zombies who love that place are relentlessly spending their money there anyway.
Edit: grammar
We tried that recently and I was disappointed. For the price I could just buy my own chicken and cook it and have it for a week.
Tried them once, succumbing to the hype, they didn't taste like anything at all
I think it's done like that on purpose so that their Canes sauce does a lot of the heavy lifting.
That's what I told my girlfriend when we had them for the first time a couple weeks ago. Chicken is fine, sauce is dope.
I paid like $8 for 115g of marinated salmon last week because I wanted to try it, but it is getting ridiculous.
I always check price/weight, and its increase has been ridiculous. For ones that don't increase price also taste different, sadly. The best way to detect real value vs. price is look into nutrition tables but I don't have the all database memorized lol so they'll get away with it. :/
2 for the price of 3 is a whopping FIFTY% increase my dude, no frills feeling a lot more like Loblaws atm
I guess we're all going vegan at this point
Look closer. It went from 255g to 200g.
My bad thanks
Eating vegan is even more expensive. Source: sample of 1 (me)
If you want to save money, go fruitarian. /s
every day I think breatharians are a little less stupid
Why would it be? I can get tofu and beans cheaper than even the subsidized rates of meat and cheese. If you buy processed vegan products, perhaps.
Highway robbery.
I’d have more sympathy if this was something like peanut butter or eggs instead of smoked wild salmon.
Bidenomics at work
This is the cost of war.
This is the result of company greed
Literally just copy pasting this places now because so many people are still claiming greedflation is a thing. Not trying to spam but links to comments don't seem to work, and as a literal economist who works on inflation I'm tired of reading political talking points disguised as economic analysis.
I think everyone should probably listen to this great report from NPR that dissects this issue. The Tl;dr: is greedflation is not really a real thing.
The deeper answer to your question of, "can one party increase prices in a market?" is sort of basic economics, and the answer is, "Usually, no." In a competitive market, the answer is no. In a monopolistic market (meaning one company controls most of the market, think like Google with browsers) with no government oversight, the answer is yes. Things get complicated when you add in government regulation or oligopolistic markets (markets where only a few players control the market). In those cases, it depends on how strong government regulations on price-gouging are and any anti-monopoly or anti-anticompetitive practice laws are, and also depends on how oligopolists behave. Sometimes, particularly in industries with few big players, the big players will make the same decisions independently. If they do this cooperating it will usually violate antitrust laws, but if they both decide they'll be better off say, not paying workers as much, or charging super high markups, them that can happen. A lot of economic research shows that kind of "tacit collusion" happens in real life, like in the oil and gas industries. But other times oligopolies will behave very competitively, only uniting through lobbyist trade groups if at all (think Microsoft and Amazon in cloud software).
So that's the facts, but here's my economic musing: The reason it feels like greedflation is a thing is a combination of factors:
Why do stating profits vs profit margins matter? On that note, what do you think sounds better in an announcement to the general public - "we made record profits", "we increased our profit margins by shrinkflation and charging more", or both? I'd argue the first - if they cut costs or increased sales that would be worth bragging about, but charging more isn't something you really want to directly call attention to
Why does collusion vs tacit agreements matter? Consolidation of industries and regulation is why it's possible and is very relevant, but doesn't address the core question
Ultimately, groups of humans behave differently than the individuals they're made up of. Sometimes they even do things no individual member wants to happen - market forces are in this category of emergent properties.
You seem to think greedflation is a bunch of cigar smoking men in a room saying "there's a war on boys, what say we jack up prices again?"
It's about what companies are doing, not individuals. Companies are using the little ripples in the supply chain from every global problem to ratchet up prices in sync, and there's not enough regulation or competition to make them lower them back down.
That's what greedflation is - companies being greedy in sync across an industry,
Did you listen to the NPR report? I don't understand how you still have these questions.
If you mean Ru vs Ukraine, the for-profit cost gouging for groceries disguised as 'inflation' began prior to that.
What war?
the war of the roses. very costly.
"I would like for you to do us a favor, though" - Earl of Warwick, probably
the one in Ukraine
Yeah, my grocer has been sold out of Ukrainian Salmon for months, only kind they've had in stock is Hungarian Salmon and that's got way too much paprika on it plus I'm pretty sure it's actually some random lake fish they dyed pink.
we sent all the fish to Ukraine 😢????