I was shopping at our local produce market this morning where you can get produce (local when it’s seasonal), deli stuff, fresh meat, beer, wine, and some sundries and snacks. This is a family owned spot where you can often be sure to save some $ over big box or even some of the farmer’s markets.
I’m the only one who shops for food in our household besides a very occasional stop by H to get something he wants specifically. So shopping and prices are nothing new to me.
But I have to say some of the prices were hitting me like a whomp across the face! Small ribeyes which I used to be able to get for $8.99 each are now nearly double. Multiple varieties of peaches/nectarines (not local at this time) $3.99/lb. - maybe 2 peaches to a pound?! A slice of local bakery carrot cake you can MAYBE split in half for two small servings, $9.99. (A sheet cake type not layered)
While I was able to get basic coleslaw and potato salad for .99/cents pound I was so, so, disappointed in the prices. $35 for two small steaks for H and I? No thanks.
Do you have a rant of prices? A solution?
On top of everything else going on these days (I’ll stop there…) how are the less fortunate going to survive??? College kids who need to shop?
Food pantries, where available. My d volunteers at the food pantry run by her university which serves the student and staff population (anyone affiliated with the university is welcome). The lines are long, indeed. Fortunately, they are still well stocked with fresh fruits and veggies as well as other staples, but I have heard the city and county food banks are stretched very thin and are struggling to meet the need. I have seen the local Quaker church ramping up their food bank to try to fill the gap. People are trying to help. But the need is always greater than the available resources.
This is not a fancy produce market. I have shopped here for 20+ years and it has always beat everyday prices on produce and many meat prices. I’m not talking fru-fru.
If you don’t want high prices, don’t shop at the local produce market that has high prices. There are often many lower cost options. Less fortunate persons are usually well aware of options below the costs you list.
The vast majority of my grocery spending is via delivery, which I usually find is the lowest cost option due to delivery offering steeper discounts than in store. Delivery also allows me to shop at discount grocers that are outside of my town and further away than I’d want to drive. Some examples are below:
Costco Sameday currently has a 30% off deal (code listed on website) that can be stacked with 10% off Instacart giftcards at BestBuy. 30% off is available at both Costco Wholesale and Costco Business Center.
Instacart has 50% off in rotating grocery categories and regularly gives me 30-50% off deals on full order at different grocers. I often choose to shop at the particular grocer where I can get 30-50% off, rather than the same one every week. Like Coscto Sameday, Instacart can also be stacked with 10% off Instacart giftcards.
Uber Eats gives me 50-60% off groceries at least once a month, which can be stacked with 25% off Uber Eats gift cards at Costco. This usually isn’t as good a deal as Instacart due to Uber Eats having higher markup and offering limited discount grocers (only Grocery Outlet and Target in my area, not Walmart/Aldi/Costco/…).
My local supermarket and Target offer comparable pickup grocery deals from time to time – not every month.
It also helps to favor in season, on sale, or generally good deals. I often choose the grocer that has the best value on what I want to buy, rather than shop at the same store every time. Example prices of specific products I have purchased recently are below. I live in a VHCOL area where most food prices are substantially higher than US average.
2lb Frozen Wild Salmon – $10 sticker at Aldi → ~$7 after discounts
Rotisserie Chicken – $5 sticker at Pavilions ($5 Friday deal) → ~$3 after discounts
Full Size Watermelon – $4.67 sticker at Walmart → ~$3 after discounts
Cantaloupe – $1.50 sticker at Grocery Outlet → ~$1 after discounts
3lb Pink Lady Apples – $4 sticker at Target → ~$2 after discounts
2lb Brown Rice – $1.70 sticker at Food4Less → ~$1 after discounts
10lb Quaker Oats – $10 at Costco → ~$8 after discounts
1 Gallon Water – $0.85 sticker at Target → $0.50 after discounts
The point is this place for 20+ years IS the lowest place in town to get lower overall prices!
I am a good shopper. I am not a fru-fru shopper. I know how to shop sales and cook with $ in mind.
I am not on a shoestring budget. I also don’t have unlimited $ to spend. I AM empathetic though and don’t know how those less fortunate than me are making their budget work.
raspberries are $8.50 for a pint whereI am. A box of cereal is $8. Gluten free stuff is even worse.
What do people who don’t have transportation, work 50 hr/week, or little disposable/flexible income do? They buy food at Dollar Stores. They go hungry. They skip meals. Some of them starve. Their kids go to school unfocused and hungry and more hungry, and then their parents are blamed for doing a bad job. The teachers buy snacks.But in the summer, no school lunch, and now lots of summer programs have been DOGE’d.
Our food bank requires a referral and you can only come once every 30 days. Virtually all of our 200+/month guests have a job, or two. I help run a seasonal garden that gives away produce but it is a drop in the bucket.
The solution is to prioritize poverty and food insecurity instead of other things.
I don’t know the details of your town, but I do know you have mentioned shopping at both Costco and Aldi in other posts, listing lower prices that the numbers in your post above.
Both of those are also seeing increases as well! Increases on previous increases!
This is my point. I live in a Midwest blue collar town where the cost of living is quite low. Keep in mind that also means salaries are not high. There is a lot of poverty. Generational poverty.
And my point, I DO shop the prices that make economical sense. Costco, Aldi, this local produce market and our farmers market which is a true Midwest market - not artisan.
Not everyone has the ability, transportation or mobility to get to the Costco or the Walmart. The Costco costs money every year that not everyone has.
Small produce markets and small grocery stores are where you find a lot of older and less wealthy people shopping. Because they don’t have the ability to get to the cheaper places.
I know that the area office on aging had a program to give vouchers to low income seniors to use at the farmers market. Will that program still be available? I don’t know that answer.
It’s incredibly sad.
I’ve also noticed that prices have gone up a lot. At these locally owned and operated markets. Or the prices have stayed the same but sales are less often or less discounted
Costco is at minimum $65/year. Many towns don’t have them. No gas in the car to drive 30mins to one. No public transportation to get to one. The list goes on and on.
Not surprising but this is isn’t the first time I’ve noticed it but it’s hitting hard today.
The most recent CPI report at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf shows only a 2.2% increase on food at home over previous year. This is more consistent with my experience – unlike 2022 and other high inflation years, not dramatic increases over previous year on most products. Eggs are an obvious exception, which do show a large 41% increase in linked report.
You mentioned Costco and Aldi are having large price increases. Costco shows purchase history online, so it’s easy to compare prices to previous year. A summary of how prices have changed over last year on the Costco items I purchased both in recent trip and previous year are below. All items I purchased were exactly the same price as last year.
Our town has (or had before Covid) a produce co-op where you could sign up online for a box of misc. produce that came from our mountains. It varied depending on the growing season and it literally came in a dusty box however it came out of the ground. It was really cheap. They had pick up locations at several places and came on certain days. I’m also aware of several companies that do this with misshapen produce, that isn’t pretty enough to sell in the stores. There are also deals to be had at farmer’s markets, especially right before they are packing up to go home for the day.
I’m generally not a Walmart fan but it is one of the cheapest options for a lot of things. I am renting a house this weekend and got all the paper products from there for pretty cheap (all Walmart branded). My D just moved into an apartment and we got most of her kitchen and household stuff from there as well.
Totally agree about food deserts and the poor being gouged by the poor options available to them. Poverty is a complex topic for another thread.
Among those who have disposable income and are not poor, I side more with @Data10. It’s all about choices, and I’m not going to list what I do as a comparison other than to say I’m not being affected much by higher grocery costs due to the choices I make about food purchases and preparation. We all make choices, and our various choices have various costs. Much of this is controllable. If you object to the cost of X or Y, don’t buy it. You probably won’t starve going without, making/growing it yourself, or purchasing alternatives.
I do agree that we all have to think more mindfully these days, but it is what it is.
I live in a poor area. People who are doing well tend to shop at Walmart/Sams. We don’t have a Costco or Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or anything semi high priced. Our Farmer’s Market is small and leans on the higher side, I think. I don’t go often. Aldi has its fans. I’m not one of them. Our Lidl closed a few years back.
Poor people shop at one of the many, many Dollar Stores and other Dollar Store-like chains. Or Walmart/grocery store with SNAP benefits. We have terrible, almost non-existent, public transportation, but the bus does stop at Walmart. We have a food pantry that never seems to have enough donations and an ever growing list of people in need. Churches sometimes have free meals. One on the way home from my office has free lunches on Thursdays. I see several people there each week.
But how they are coping, I have not heard. Most people in my office - while not rich with both adults working & family gross incomes of < $100K - have not been complaining. They complained more with the previous administration which is not surprising for my area.
I have not personally noticed anything that terrible, but I don’t to pay too much attention. I spent way too many years crying every month after getting paid and going without. We are doing fine now, so I refuse to play that game if I don’t have to.
Costco is indeed associated with higher income persons. It’s not so much an access to transportation issue, as it is a combination of Costco stores generally being located in wealthier areas, and wealthier persons being more likely to favor buying in bulk.
However, the same is not true for all discount grocers. For example, Walmart is by far the highest market share grocer in the United States. No other grocer is even in the ballpark. Walmart shoppers skew both lower income and older than the general population. Reasons include Walmart stores location not skewing towards high income (Walmart intentionally favored more rural/small town and lower/middle income locations when starting out), and unlike Costco, not requiring buying in bulk.
Walmart claims that 90% of US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart. It’s not everyone, but it’s the vast majority. Shopping at Walmart for groceries also doesn’t require owning a car or having gas. One only needs to own a phone for delivery.
I agree…prices have gone up and it seems like a lot. We are fortunate to have an upright freezer so we are able to “shop the sales”. When we see meats on sale, we buy more, and break it up into two person packs and freeze it. Most bread things can also be frozen…again, we look for sales.
But yes, it is increasingly challenging to find lower priced foods, particularly produce.
We have also noticed that our food banks are having much more frequent food drives.
It’s not how much it goes up each year. It’s that it’s gone up again after a huge jump. It’s reached a tipping point.
Those are the prices that have stayed the same, but what has gone up? Some of those things (Rotiesserie Chicken, Water and Hearing Aid Batteries) are loss leaders at Costco.
