To not really understand the increase in the cost of food and to think that supermarkets or just added their own price increase?

[mrsfindlay]

Just that really...are they just exploiting the cost of living crisis ? How can prices be rising so significantly ? Am I just ill-informed or a conspiracist?

I was chatting with a manager in a coffee shop, the electric bill for the about 5/6 branches has gone up by five million pounds. That’s why they’ve increased their prices.

I think that supermarkets will overall be working to a ‘target profit margin’.

However, that doesn’t mean every product will go up by the same amount to achieve that. Some items (often basic, high turnover, daily items that people are very sensitive to the price of, so may swap supermarkets if eg Tesco increased the price but Sainsbury’s do not) will be sold at cost price or even as ‘loss leaders’. Tesco matches sone products to Aldi but not all, and sone of those items will therefore sell at little or no profit to Tesco but will be of value in marketing Tesco.

Other items (smaller turnover, often more luxury or niche) are not as cost sensitive for customers, so those will be marked up more.

I think food has been underpriced for years and true costs are now being reflected with lack of wiggle room.

So if you ONLY buy eg Aldi-matched products, or ONLY those on Clubcard offers ir whatever, you will see less price inflation. On the other hand, you will be choosing from a more restricted and variable range.

Business won't be fine. They can't pay their suppliers, and their customers can't pay them. They are going insolvent left, right and centre.

It was in UK. Very cheap. Prices have gone up everywhere as well and UK is now catching up hence the shock prices

But when FUCKing Tesco charges seven quid for fake margarine ie a product that's fake anyway, we're being screwed over

Oil prices. I mean like they went absolutely mental for a while, I think it's gone bit down now but still

There's a lot of this at work. We're all used to things costing £1 or 3 for £10 etc, so the shops probably kept to these prices as long as possible, even when the price should have been £1.20/30 etc.

But when they couldn't any more, that's when we suddenly saw increases to £1.50, or removal of the offer and the thing was just £5 anyway.

All we can do is shop around, change what we buy and prioritise.

Private businesses aren't required to sell us what we want at the price we want to pay and we're not required to buy from them. If your cereal is cheaper on Amazon, buy it from Amazon.

If your £7 giant tub of fake butter is too expensive, just buy normal size blocks of own brand real butter. It's cheaper, nicer and better for you anyway.

They want us to believe a regular coffee shop has energy bills well over £1m? Is it also a hospital? Things have gone up but that's not even close to accurate.

You suspect but you don't know

I was forced into poverty due to DV in 2014. I worked FT but to pay my rent it meant I had very little wriggle room with finances and just learnt to feed my 3dc and I cheap, cheap, cheap. Like a pp said if you buy only price matched and clubcard etc prices and walk round local shops and several shops to buy the cheapest stuff (farmfoods, boyes, Aldi, Lidl and your towns market) you can keep the cost of your weekly shop down but it takes time, mental effort and energy and you basically eat the same meals over & over again. You can beat the profiteering but you either have to do it for a moral crusade or just absolutely no choice.

I've had a massive change of circs now and our household yearly income has gone from 9k to 90k. I still can't get out of the mindset that I can't have nice things. If you are used to doing a weekly shop at Sainsbury's you are going to pay more for it - there is some level of individual autonomy involved.

Supermarkets especially in the UK compete heavily on price, to the point that it causes problems for suppliers, this is pretty well known.

If they had the option to just keep prices lower, then at least one of them would have done this as they would have customers streaming through the doors at the expense of the other supermarkets.

They aren't all in conspiracy going yeah great we can make loads of profit this way. They are in competition with each other.

I don't get why you think that a highly processed product (I assume what is meant by "fake") is cheaper to produce than something else? It's not just pinged into existence by a computer simulator. It still has ingredients and processing to make it.

Slightly off topic, but as a dairy farmer the price I receive for my milk has fallen by 33% since the start of the year and like everyone else we are still paying through the nose for electricity, fuel etc. We have had to let 1 member of staff go and are desperately looking around for other ways to save money without impacting on animal health. The only people who seem to be profiting are the oil/power companies who are reporting massive profits.