To never buy Anchor butter again?

@Rummikub you can make it with any kind of mixer, whisk or food processor. I make a lot in one go and my arms would drop off if I did it by hand

Making butter is surprisingly easy - I've done it two or three times by accident!

Just overwhisk some double cream. I was using a powered hand mixer, so it was easy to let it go beyond the point of no return. Fascinating to watch it separate into fat and water, and nice to eat, even if I had to get more cream to re-make whatever it was.

I’ll take a look. At least it’ll be exercise for my arms!

You can do it by hand in any jar.just takes a little time.There's loads of videos on line. Just make sure the butter is washed well to prevent it going rancid.

But how much is a kenwood mixer?

Is it easy by hand?
I guess paying for convenience is a choice.

I haven't bought butter for over a year- I buy 1 litre bottles of whipping cream from Morrisons cake aisle and make my own with Kenwood Chef mixer. Takes about 10 mins on max speed. Drain solids and wash out remaining butter milk in cold running water. Add salt to taste and you have 3x 250g blocks butter for a quid

Yes is that 500g size. I also do this

I do sometimes when I feel really aggrieved. Very rarely get an answer back. They simply don't care, it's all about profit and how much they can get away with before we notice. And...I'm never eating Ryvita again having seen how much the packs were reduced and tasted the difference.

I only buy Anchor from Costco. It’s not worth it from supermarkets

I suppose from the companies point of view:

Our costs are increasing. What can we do so we can keep the cost of our services the same?

So then you get ideas such as reduce the amount of stuff you get whilst keeping the actual container the same size (if possible), take away some of the good service you normally get and add them as optional extras, reduce the content of particular ingredients in the product - and hope that doesn't affect the quality.

I am sure there are more ideas out there - but the public are on to this

I've swallowed most things and reduced my own portion and filled up on cheap smaller packs of custard creams but DOVE deo. What the hell have they done there. Twice the price lasts half as long. Can't do without though everything else makes me smell and itch.

These posts are getting worse.

They have to pay people off sick and those not pulling their weight working from home.

Oh even my blooming vegan sausages are at it now! They were noticeably shorter when I had them this morning, so my sausage sandwich was a bit paltry.
Of course, they price had not shrunk with them.

This has been an insightful thread an an interesting read, thank you @Alittlegusty for starting this one off 👆

Every business is at it.

theres now Skimp-flation, where business charge the same but give a lower quality service

eg hotels like Premier Inn offer guests an impoverished breakfast (cheaper ingredients, less choice, smaller portions) and even more shocking, they wont service your room or give fresh towels unless you ask. It all started during COVID and they've carried on from there.

That a lot of buttercream! I follow an 8oz/4oz ratio of icing sugar to butter and I find that’s normally a bit too much for a cake. You’re talking about 4 times that much, I’d love to see your cake! Mmmm I do like buttercream….

Sorry, that should have been on a Christmas thread 🤦‍♀️

Ordered fancy biscuits this week, one for a present for stepson. We agreed no presents as they are struggling. We’re visiting soon with presents for grandson.

I’ve half sorted a large cupboard and sorted the Christmas bedding for DDs, they’ll be back from Uni 😁

@Scaredycatofrodents

There is no equivalent to Kerrygold, there is only Kerrygold. 😂

I just checked the butter I bought in Lidl yesterday. 227grammes.
I normally buy Tesco's equivalent of Kerrygold. I'll check the packaging next time.

@MadMadaMim - yes. From 100 to 80 to bags.
We used to order x4 boxes of x4 100 (so 1600) at a time for annual overseas delivery. Only get 1280 now in same order, and the price has increased

Twinings have done this too. I think it's a 3rd less tea bags!

Because the massive amounts of market data they have tell them that there's a cut off point that people where demand will drop off. This is not always tied into value for money but just what proportion of an allowed budget it represents.

If you have a 20/day budget for example and you want steak but you need 15 for everything else then that steak has to cost under 5 or you're buying chicken. In this instance a 6 quid steak isn't good for the supermarket and it's useless to you.

This is easier to understand with something like sugar tax, there's no driving reason for the companies to take the sugar out other than cost, they could just charge more, but market data tells them that at £x/ unit people stop buying it and buy something else, so the sugar comes out and they can maintain the price point that maximises volume. Same thing with dwindling ABV and chocolate getting more and more shit

The Competition and Marketing Authority reviewed Unit Pricing. You can find their report and an open letter here.

Unit pricing - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The review identified several practices that we think are problematic, and which are likely to prevent consumers from making informed decisions when comparing products. In summary, the practices of concern are:

• examples of missing or incorrectly calculated unit pricing information – in some supermarkets and variety store retailers we saw isolated examples of this; however, in other variety store retailers we reviewed we found missing information across whole product ranges

examples of incorrect units of measurement – we saw examples of some grocery retailers using grams and millilitres as standard when the PMO requires most products to be unit priced by kilogram and by litre;

• different unit metrics being used for the same type of product, such as liquid laundry detergent – both within the same retailer and across different grocery retailers in-store and online – making it hard for shoppers to compare prices on a like-for-like basis;

• issues with unit pricing for products on promotion – we found grocery retailers are taking different approaches to displaying unit prices for products on promotion both in-store and online, with some grocery retailers not displaying unit prices for discounted products at all;

• examples of unit prices in-store, particularly among the variety stores, which we consider are difficult to read;

• certain pages on some grocery retailers’ websites not providing a unit price alongside a selling price until individual items were selected

We expect grocery retailers to:

• ensure that they unit price all their products of the same type using the same metric;

• display the unit price of each product clearly next to the product and selling price instore and online;

• give unit prices for products on promotion for all types of promotions where this is feasible. For example, for price reductions, promotions where a loyalty price is presented alongside a standard selling price, and multi-buy promotions for products of the same price and size across both in-store and online;

• review staff practices, procedures and training so that mistakes in unit price labelling do not occur.