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!

Just popping this here;

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11888217/Supermarket-essentials-DOUBLE-price-BoE-warns-companies-profiting-greedflation.html

And it’s the Daily Fail but the report isn’t from them.

@Moonopoly

Yes definitely.

I can often buy food and goods much cheaper, sometimes a 20 or 30% difference in local independent shops.

So if a small shop can buy stuff for less than Tesco etc with their huge buying power, then what conclusions can we draw?

Plus why is it always the stuff we buy the most that is rocketing in price but the things we rarely buy are not?

I'm waiting to see tha Super market end of year results!

Agree with all of this.
Both retailers and suppliers are also heavily regulated by law that ensures there is no collusion going on behind the scenes.

Do you work for or in the Supermarket/food industry?

There does not need to be "conclusion" as in price fixing, as anyone can easily find out what supermarkets are charging and food is not a option, its very hard to even cut back and where consumers have switched to own brand items, the supermarkets jack the prices up.

Supermarkets have a strangle hold on fuel and obv bulk buy and have always traditionally been a lot cheaper than the few independent forecourts, yet its the independents are often cheaper, sometimes a lot cheaper, despite not having the adv of bulk buying?

Supermarkets have one aim, to maximise profit, increase share price and dividend and hence board remuneration - Tesco doubled pre tax profit in 2021/22 from 2020/2021

If you are correct, competition would have not allowed that.

All the supermarkets play games with pricing. Some sell specific things cheaper but others more expensive to get customers sucked in to spend money on the overcharged items. It's nothing new, been happening for decades.

The "only" way to beat the system is to do a carousel of shopping at different supermarkets and buy specific things from different stores rather than everything at one. I tend to do "big" shops at 4 different supermarkets, a different one each week over the 4 weeks. The only things I buy every week from whichever are milk, bread, fruit/veg and fresh meat - all the packets, tins, frozen, etc I buy from whoever has them cheaper.

Recently, I've been using stores like B&M, Home Bargains and Iceland more for branded items as they're now consistently cheaper than any of the big supermarkets.

Tesco in particular seem to be hiking prices well above what their competitors are charging and are quickly becoming the most expensive place to shop. I've found Sainsbury are staying pretty controlled with their prices and are starting to generally be cheaper for a lot of the things we buy compared with Tesco and Asda.

How much profit has Tesco made in the last year?

Tesco said it now expects retail adjusted operating profit in its 2022-2023 financial year of £2.4-2.5 billion pounds
It had previously forecast £2.4-2.6 billion pounds, down from the £2.65 billion made in 2021-22.5 Oct 2022

Oh dear, no profiteering going on here at all.

@Kazzyhoward that's what I do, know what to buy from each supermarket but I'm lucky as I can drive home from work via different shops

Prices will now come down, Andrew Bailey, chair of the Bank of England, has just asked companies not to increases prices and to bear in mind inflation will fall.

What a plank.

I heard that on the radio but to my mind it just advises businesses not to increase prices further and there's no obligation for businesses to do so (free market and all that).
Depressing really not knowing what to expect when going shopping.

Let's see if price increases will, at least, slow down.

Yes they are when they increase the price of goods already on sale . could understand if it's new stock so bought in more expensive

co op has always been expensive but has bargains also and reductions.
all shops make profits,
they have overheads.

i sometimes use Trolley UK, for something specific,
i visit a variety of shops and yesterday i picked up tea in my coop because it was on special offer
the eggs were so expensive though!

They probably all are to a certain extent, also the manufacturers are, I mainly only buy non perishables when they are on offer and also keep an eye on Amazon prices as they seem to have some sort of dynamic pricing and sometimes you can get a bargain