Shrinkflation and product quality

Try Costco one brand still really good quality and get so much on the roll that it makes it good value

I bought a carton of Tropicana juice this week and thought it had leaked as it looked like it was only three-quarters full. Checked the back and the juice content is 850ml but using the 1l cartons so they look the same on the shelf!!

Stop buying it.

I tried that peanut butter in a date with chocolate thing the other day and they're delicious. I'm going to make a batch of proper ones using the freezer and melted chocolate like you are supposed to, I just put a bit of each in my mouth when I tried it but I won't be buying sweets anymore, I'll be making these.

I bought some Lu biscuits (those chocolate topped things) and where there used to be 12 in a pack, there is now 8. Thats a third missing. For the same price as before too.

Not buying them again.

I’ve started making my own bars. Lots of oats, jar of peanut butter, condensed milk, half a dozen ripe bananas, butter, grated apple/ raisins. It does cost about £6 but it makes about 2kg.

Clubs and I think penguins are now chocolate flavour coating

Toilet paper! I bought a HUGE pack of rolls that have previously been decently thick and reliable only to find that they've either gone down a ply or used MUCH thinner paper and I'm now stuck having to use about a billion rolls of paper so thin that your finger goes through unless you use about half a roll every time.

Completely agree. I noticed my gins in tins had reduced from 2 units of alcohol to 1.6 - so they’ve cut the amount of gin in the tin by nearly a quarter yet the price has gone up by 50%. Yes yes, I know, hardly a staple - just my one little treat - and alcohol taxes etc but still.

In terms of reducing the quantity, Waitrose takes some beating IMO.

I agree OP. Everything seems to be either tiny or crap quality these days.

For anything with chocolate in, the price of raw cacao has gone up massively in the last few years due to poor harvests in west Africa. And that is probably due to climate change.

if the % chocolate in the bar stayed the same, the price would have gone up even more.

and if the government tried to regulate the price, manufacturers would just stop making chocolate bars.

but I have no idea how they factor the shrinking into measures like the consumer price index. If they don’t, then real inflation would be higher than official statistics suggest.

Absolutely, I bought some cereal bars the other day, and I noticed now there are only 4 in a box when there used to be 5 and whilst the wrapper is the same size the bar is a lot smaller. The price had also increased.

This was a product from a large FMCG company as well! One that historically had values heavily centred on corporate social responsibility none the less! These bars probably cost pennies to make in the first place and it’s not like there’s a lot of wastage through short expiration dates, but some bright spark at head office has probably found a way to save 0.003p per bar by making them smaller!

It’s totally exploitation and protection or even increase of already huge profit margins. In this cost of living crisis and increase in raw material costs, food manufacturers with already very healthy margins (I’m definitely not talking farmers here) should be prepared to run with slightly lower margins to protect food price inflation but they have instead used it as an excuse to raise prices and lower quantity and quality. The problem is they’ve got away with it.

There should be far more regulation on food pricing.

The real sad thing is that because people are spending money on food, they don’t have the funds to spend on other things and other sectors suffer.