Food Prices - are some companies profiteering?

[Moonopoly]

Just wondering what your thoughts are. I went in to Co-op near us and the Nescafé (admittedly large) was £8 a jar!
I generally shop in Aldi, Heron Foods or Iceland but occasionally nip in to Sainsburys, Co-op or Morrisons. The former have had small price increases but the later seem to have some crazy leaps in cost!

@Bertieboo82 what’s that got to do
with anything? I send my children to a
private school too just in case you wanted to
know. You don’t need to be currently on the breadline (and I have been in the past!) to have a wider social conscience!

You are absolutely right, thank you for saving me typing it out 😁

You understand how business works, right? Their reason for existing is to profiteer!

@Doorhandleghost see the post above yours.

Co-op has always been extortionate compared to everywhere else, though £8 for a jar of coffee is pushing it even for them!

Our local one recently closed but I never even went in the door. Spar is similar - I never go to our local one of those either unless it's on a Sunday night and the big Tesco is shut

Yes prices have increased massively. We’re veggie and the price of Quorn frozen foods has gone up and now they’re more expensive in Asda than Sainsbury’s. Surely veggie foods should be cheaper than meat but that isn’t the case

Quorn is a brand, an expensive brand too @AchillesLastStand its not really to do with the fact it's meat-free. Plant based can definitely be cheaper, but quorn isn't plant based. It's not actually food to be honest, it's a man made product grown in laboratories then any nutritional value is added in.

Unless you are mixing up making a profit with profiteering it's totally untrue that businesses exist to profiteer, why do you think that?

Unless a cartel was operating or the business is a monoply how would such a business survive, consumers would vote with their wallets pretty quickly. Do you not remember shops that tried to do that over the first lockdown?

To answer your original question, food price inflation is roughly in line with the overall inflation rate. But individual foods will also have their own inflation rates. Foods that are reliant on a lot of oil and can’t be reformulated, foods transported over long distances, foods that are labour intensive to produce, with rising wages, foods that require a lot of energy to make, will have higher inflation rates. Industrial energy consumers are not protected by a price cap.

If you take Lurpack as an example This news article explains why the price has gone up so much relative to other spreadables.

But having opened the thread you're not really leading a discussion.

Your views are all over the place and when people bring insights you get defensive. When invited to share your ideas for solutions, you have none.

I think this thread is just a moan that a particular brand of coffee was expensive in a particular store.

Therefore will leave you to it.

OP I've been wondering this since around January when I noticed packs of apples were in 4s not 6s fruit. Pretty certain price of these has gradually crept up but I can't be bothered to verify.

Your post isn't about coffee or co-op as such but it gives a very good example.

The only instant coffee I like comes in 190g jars so standard sizes. It used to be £4 beginning of the year as far ad I remember. Often on offer, all instant coffee seems to be, so I was buying 2 jars on offer. Then the price grew snd grew, less regular offers, and now it's at £7. I can sometimes find in at £6/jar which still seems expensive to me. But that illustrates the scale of the problem.

I tried a lot of alternatives and don't like them one bit. While I can buy this one, I will continue to do so suspecting that the producer and supermarkets maintained their margin. In a perverse way I am encouraging them because they can see this product continues to sell at new prices.
If the time comes when I can't afford it , I will use a less palatable alternative that I can afford. I know I won't give up instant coffee.
Faffing about with my coffee pods or the cafetière is annoying during the day so, although I do like the taste of that coffee more, I barely use it.

What's this nonsense from some PPs about coffee is not essential, don't buy it if the shop is too expensive for you etc etc?
Butter is not essential either. It really isn't. But a lot of people use it, like it and it's a staple of their consumption.

It's exhausting comparing prices and by the time you plan a shop around best offers and do all the travelling, what you might save on particular items is lost transport or time. People forget that time really is money. Realistically, a lot would earn a lot more money during this 'planning time' than they'd save by taking advantage of offers.

Trolley.co.uk is going by the way. Found it recently and it is a useful tool.

@alwaysmovingforwards yep it’s just a moan about a coffee… if you can’t see beyond that then it’s probably best that you do leave the thread. This is a wider and complex issue. The poster below you has summed it up very well if you’d like some cliffs notes

I don't think the supermarkets are profiteering. I think oil companies are though, and that's driving up the cost of everything else.

@alwaysmovingforwards

it is simply wheeling out the very simplistic “it’s the government to blame” “oh I don’t forget the nasty big supermarkets too”

Basically they don’t actually read the business news and so seem to have no concept that we are a very small island and are genuinely beholden to the world markets and supply.

but nope - the horrible government and nasty supermarkets are so much easier to be cross with

I thought you’d gone @Bertieboo82
thanks for coming back just to be patronising…
you have no idea what I do or don’t read

On the basis of this thread, I think we have a fair idea of what you read! 😂

Good for you @Bertieboo82 glad you are so superior to everyone else. May it serve you well.

Not everyone, good grief far from it!

just you when it comes to this specific issue as I can’t comment on any other issue! 😂

As I said. Good for you.

Thank you

My lord why are ppl so nasty on this thread!?
I wanted to read ppl moan about inflation and the inept government and what do I get? Idiots defending this shitshow! 🙄

To answer your question, no I don't think co-op are profiteering any more than they always have. They are a business so making a profit is their aim

Except they're not. Clue's in the name - they are a consumer co-operative, rather like the John Lewis partnership is a workers cooperative.

They have to be profitable to stay in business, but that's not their reason to exist.

So you wanted an echo chamber thread where everyone reinforced your settled view?

It's one of the strengths of MN that it reminds you that not everyone sees the world as you do. Doesn't mean you need to agree with them, but it does mean realising that MN is as much theirs as yours.

I’ve just been Waitrose and saw that pre-prepared watermelon is £6 a tub! Breakfast muffins are up 50% in price. I only popped in for some bread, I’ll be sticking to my Tesco deliveries.

OP I really do think a lot of manufacturers and retailers are indeed marking up prices just because they can and the current climate is a very good excuse.
It started tentatively back in January and now is in full swing.
It annoys me when people say, well don't buy it if you object to the large price increase. The thing is, where do you draw the line? And it erodes at trust in brands, which they don't seem to care. I'm loyal to only a handful of brands. I'm about to drop Douwe Egberts after putting up with their ridiculous price increases for a few months now. It's the only instant coffee I like. I can't be arsed with the coffee pods and grinding fresh during work but it offers the perfect solution for taste. I tried all other alternatives and don't like them. Yes, coffee is not essential blah blah blah. But where do we stop?

I don't think you can expect private companies to behave any differently; they are not a public service. Customers are price sensitive and will switch away from a shop or trade brands or not buy at all if products are too expensive. There isn't a conspiracy between the supermarkets to inflate prices; they are FAR too competitive for that.

There has been a huge pricing war between the traditional supermarkets and the cost cutters like Aldi and Lidl for years already and this has shaken things up a lot. Each supermarket makes it's reputation for quality, price, value, superior shopping experience, "buy British", branded/not branded, fairness to the supply chain, and so on. When market conditions change the supermarkets will re-strategize aiming to increase profit - maybe they aim to increase market share and so they will take a hit on margin and allow prices to stagnate. Maybe they look to increase customer loyalty by tying customers into good discount or reward schemes.

At the end of the day the only way to address it is through macro economic measures put in place by the government.