This is my point. The purpose of the thread does not appear to be opening minds to food disparities and the struggle to feed families. If that is the true purpose of the thread, a title change might help focus the conversation away from how CCer are responding to price increases.
Perhaps, “Soaring Grocery Costs Put Pressure on the Table. How Americans are Coping.”
Only a few states have an H Mart, but I find SOME of their produce prices much lower than my standard Ralph’s. Some produce prices are the same, but savings can be found.
Go for it. Change the title!
The title reflects my feelings - surprise, anger, empathy - at post time and I did not need to make it reflect the title of an opinion/term paper. That’s the way I roll.
We also have Price Rite here which is the lower price version of Shop Rite. They have terrific produce and meat at better prices. Plus other things.
I know these are luxury to have, but we got our summer hanging plants there for $10 a piece (so did all of our neighbors). A fraction of the cost anywhere else.
These numbers don’t say much except groceries are too damn expensive and lower income families are the ones that suffer the most. “Averages” don’t paint the picture of the family that’s feeding extra kids, because even though they struggle, their neighbors are struggling more. Or, the family that has to decide whether to buy medication or groceries. Or the family with only one real choice of where to shop based on location. I think @abasket’s point was one of empathy rather than data crunching.
In 2020, it was estimated that 14 million students lived in food insecure households and 3.8 million college students were food insecure. That is just not acceptable in a country where people have $50 million weddings. Part of it is grocery prices, but there’s also the amount of food waste and that often times waste is more profitable than feeding people. I’m so glad that I at least live in a state that has decided to continue the free school lunch program.
I’ll just gently say that being “whomped across the face” by the rising price of ribeye, varieties of peaches, and bakery items (all luxury goods) reeks of privilege that I’m sure you did not mean. Lamenting the price of cake invites one conversation, concern for pressure on the less privileged is another. IMO, they are two different threads rather than a title change, but I’ve said what I’m going to say on the topic as presented.
I’m not sure what kind of country we live in when peaches and cake are considered luxury items. Yes, I know I am extremely priveledged, but it would kill me to have to tell a kid that they couldn’t have a peach because it was unaffordable.
Neither peaches nor cake are necessities (and no one ever needs to purchase bakery sweets). If the cost of one fruit is too high, choose another. Even canned fruit packed in water provides nutrition. It’s the inability to see these things as “luxuries” that is the myopia of the rich.
Good to hear that we are not alone. Dh received two teaching awards back in the day from the grocery store chain where he works now. Funny that there’s an education tie to both dh’s and your brother’s decision.
ETA: I hear Costco is a great employer. One of my cc friends from back in the day used to brag on them. Her dh and then her son worked there. And I have another friend whose dd has worked there PT for years. Seriously, y’all, consider a grocer for a PT retirement job to help with food costs!
It could also be considered privilege to consider a non-exotic fruit or a treat (cake) to be frowned upon as selections by someone who on the daily has to stretch their dollar.
To balance it out I’ll also share that the 80/20 ground chuck was $5.99/pound, the bananas .69/pound.
Saving grace though, basic potato and coleslaw .99/pound!
Only tangentially related but today DelMonte declared bankruptcy.
My youngest falls into the category that I think @abasket is thinking. They are a family of three, both working but grocery prices are hitting them hard. They also live in a small town with no real grocery store. It’s an agriculture area but no farm stands. They have a tiny grocery store which has odd items and a Dollar general. They both commute for work so do drive through towns with major market chains and Costco. Many of their neighbors who work in Agriculture don’t have the time or transportation to drive 30 minutes to a grocery store.
I am privileged and rarely looked at prices. I find I’m shocked when I look and I’ve put some items back on the shelf. I do shop at Whole Foods now that we are just two at home. I shop the sales and some of the 365 branded items are inexpensive like the canned beans. They also have a section of local produce.
I don’t have a Walmart but I don’t see myself supporting that company. I’m really picky about my chicken. Yesterday I went to Costco and got organic strawberries for 6.99 for the big container. The cherries were also a good price. I also got organic blueberries.
Presumably your wages/income has increased over the past 20 years, along with the nominal prices. This usually makes real prices a better measure of affordability than nominal prices, when comparing to previous decades. Some products/services have had price increases that far exceeded inflation, such as rent/housing (post GFC drop). Others have had price increases that lagged far below inflation, such as typical consumer electronics. Grocery prices are somewhere in the middle and have largely kept pace with inflation and changes in median wages.
Using the earlier USDA “moderate” numbers, a healthy diet for family of 5 currently costs $1543 per month, expressed in 2025 $. 20 years ago in 2005, it would have cost $1566 per month, when expressed in 2025 $. There was a small 1.5% decrease in real grocery costs over the span of 20 years.
One area that has had more notable changes over past 20 years is the prevalence of grocery delivery. Most major grocery chains now offer a delivery and/or pick up service. There are also many 3rd party services like Instacart, Door Dash, and Uber Eats; as well as services like Amazon Fresh. A survey last year found that most grocery shoppers had made an online grocery purchase in past year, and 27% make online grocery purchases on a weekly basis. Younger shoppers reported that the majority of their grocery shopping was not in physical stores. These percentages show notable increases over time. If the trend continues, then most grocery shopping will be done online in the not distant future.
As I touched on earlier in the thread, I am among this group that has started regularly using grocery delivery and find it to be a solution to reducing grocery costs. With the fight for market share in this rapidly growing segment, large discounts to encourage online shoppers to choose a particular service common. Delivery has also opened the door to new lower cost grocery options I didn’t know existed. For example, a few months ago Instacart offered me 50% off at Food4Less. I hadn’t heard of Food4Less because there aren’t any in my town. After checking them out on Instacart, I learned that Food4Less sells the same products as the Krogers/Ralph family, but at substantially lower prices and with a wider selection of products. I wouldn’t want to drive that far out to physically shop at Food4Less, but using delivery with a shopper doing the drive gives me the opportunity to get lower prices on the same items sold at my local Ralphs.
Last month I gave Grocery Outlet a try for the first time, again because of a delivery discount. This is one of the most unique grocers I have purchased from. They sell a mishmash of brands that are apparently overstocked from other grocers or private labels, including some brands I haven’t heard of. Many are similar or higher priced than other grocers. However, a few are dramatically lower priced than all other area grocers. There is no obvious pattern to which products are the especially good buys. This can make searching the store sort of like a treasure hunt. I wouldn’t want to do all my grocery shopping there due to the incomplete inventory and inconsistent prices, but it works well for a delivery order. I get some products from Grocery Outlet, and some products from other grocers. Increased prevalence of discount grocers like above is another change in past 20 years, and corresponding reduced market share of traditional supermarkets.
My hair salon used to be located next to a Grocery Oulet. It’s an odd mix of items and like you said it can be a treasure hunt. The one in my city has a healthy section where I’ve found Braggs vinegar and primal kitchen brand and all kinds of seeds. It’s hit or miss. They also have the largest selection of unhealthy cereal I’ve ever seen.
I buy about 80% of our weekly groceries at Aldi. They are, by far, the cheapest place around. The remaining 20% – seasonal produce, mainly, and a few specialty items I can’t find there (think tahini, PB powder…) I get at Wegmans or ShopRite. While definitely higher-priced than Aldi, I don’t find the prices out of control, and without analyzing and itemizing receipts, I don’t think the prices for most of the things I routinely buy have increased much (or at all?) in the past year or two. I do keep to a monthly grocery budget and am still managing to stay within the same amount that I have for a few years. Incidentally, that amount is about 20% LESS than I was routinely spending nearly 10 years ago. That is more so due to being conscious of spending, meal-planning, not making mid-week refill runs each time we ran out of a single thing.
That said, my D24 complains we are an “ingredient house” 
so I’m sure if certain items were on my roster of weekly buys, I would likely notice an increase.
Going back to free meals at school. Our district has done this forever. My kids had free breakfast/lunch available since they went - even though we didn’t qualify. It’s free for everyone.
But oh the waste! For breakfast, they often have these awesome breakfast bars. The cafeteria ladies at H’s school knew we loved them, so they would snag all of the unopened ones on kids’ plates that were supposed to be trashed. Unopened & pre-packaged! We had tons of them. But then a new lunch director came on board and forbid them from doing that anymore. Into the trash they all go!
I know there are plenty of stories like this out there - especially with fast food restaurants and stuff. It’s too bad we can’t connect the dots…
Actually the answer is “minimal” increase. While I’ve always worked, I was not working full time then and I worked for a non profit program within a university structure and salary increases were small and infrequent. But the job worked well for my family so I stuck with it. Both H and I have degrees/extended degrees but not all professions see a steady rise in salary.
And again applying this thought to lower income potentially not educated in a specialty person they are also not likely getting increases that meet and exceed inflation. And minimum wage is still quite dismal in many areas/states in the country.
I went ahead and made the change.
In terms of the topic, it reminds me a bit of when the CPI was changed from the ? (can’t remember the name) to the chained index. Essentially, it used to be based on the same items (like chicken breasts), but they switched it to a version that followed consumer behavior, as in, if chicken breasts get too expensive then people will switch to chicken thighs, so it would include the price of chicken thighs instead (which, coincidentally, are now often higher in price than the breasts!).
So when economic times get tougher, there are the switches that many people make, from going to cheaper cuts of meat, to selecting cheaper types of produce, switching from name brand to generics, using more plant-based meals (a la real beans and rice…not Beyond Burgers), etc.
But then there’s the class of people who already were choosing the cheapest meats, produce, generics, etc when economic times are “good.” When things become economically bad, what are their options? They eat less and/or depend on food pantries or SNAP benefits, if they qualify. And the BBB’s current incarnation switches part of the cost of SNAP to states, so poorer states are more likely to have lower benefits or to be eliminating categories of beneficiaries because the states won’t be able to provide a comparable amount of food aid as the federal government was providing. So if you need food benefits, better hope you’re in California or Massachusetts rather than Mississippi or New Mexico.
I find this thread significantly more tone deaf than the usual cc ivory tower
Approximately 15-16 percent of US households(not people , but households) do not have a credit card according to the Fed. Please tell them how much money they could save using Instacart and Uber eats.
Food instability is linked to housing instability in urban areas ( I don’t live in rural area so I won’t touch that issue). How is a mom living in a motel room with three kids supposed to be preparing these healthy meals y’all think she has no trouble accessing or paying for because the CPI says that grocery costs are down? She keeps the milk on the windowsill for God’s sake.
Spend one day in the prep area of a food bank and pack the boxes according to the social workers notes. This family has no refrigerator. That family has a hot water kettle but no oven. This elderly couple can’t use stairs so the “meals on wheels” driver who brings sandwiches for lunch and a box of donated food items needs to double park, walk the food up four flights of stairs and put the perishables away because the elevator in the building is still broken. Another elderly person lives alone in a garage…no stove or oven, but he likes peanut butter, just knock hard since there is no bell in his illegally converted living space.
This is a shocking thread.
I was going to write something similar to this, but it sounded too whiny. My take home pay in 2006 was lower than in 1997 - for the same job within the same company. After 17 years I was still at 0.0% within my salary scale. My area was always in a bind. We never saw an economic boom like the rest of the country. The talk of budget time made us all sick to our stomachs each year.
Life in my area has improved since then, but we still can’t compare ourselves to any averages or typicals that you read about. And while we aren’t average, we aren’t unique either.