Food prices skyrocketing again!

[cookingthebooks]

DH disagrees, says it’s all stabilised out now and slowed down but he’s not actually done the shop in forever.

This month I’ve just been walking around the supermarket aghast. The price hikes that are going on, my favourite bar of ‘cheap’ dark chocolate has gone from 65p pre Christmas to £1.10!!! Fishcakes from £1.80 to £1.95 and the kids mini pizzas from 45p to 65p all pretty much overnight. There’s lots more and fruit/fresh food have all risen too. I’m really struggling to do the full week shop for our family of four for less than £150 a week now (everything included, pull ups, all work/school lunches, cleaning and toiletries)
Some weeks it’s closer to £170 and I’m very frugal I hate it!

tell me this isn’t just me?

Thats not my experience of grocery prices in Portugal at all.

We done a villa for 4 weeks in the summer last year and couldn’t believe how cheap the food was. We got sirloin steak for €1.99, chicken breasts for €1, baguettes for actual pennys, wine for €3.

I would be tempted to move there to be honest. I could do the groceries there for a fraction of what we pay here.

Freddo prices are the key marker of inflation!

Eggs on Ocado went up from £1.30 to £1.45 this week.

Well more than half the country voted for Brexit, knowing this would happen... I feel like we can't complain.

No they’ve done it to increase profits.

Yes it has gone up. I shop online and add my favourites list to the basket before adding other items. My shop is around £30 more per week since Xmas.
The employee NI increase in the budget will cost Tesco alone an extra £250 million per year. Of course they will increase their prices to compensate. All businesses will do the same.

Our food prices aren't cheap compared to the rest of the EU.
They were, pre-Brexit, but the margins are narrowing. Now we get poorer quality and pay more.

It’s a constant creep upwards isn’t it. I go shopping and there’s so much I don’t buy. Granted it probably helps that I don’t eat much anymore due to the injection but I still have to buy for my family and lots of things have more than doubled in price since Covid.

Definitely going up. 500g butter is now nearly £5 in my local Co op (an expensive place to shop at the best of times).

Those who voted Remain can though, so I do.

The minimum wage and N.I contributions are increasing so it was obviously going to be the result , amongst other factors.

Before Christmas I was buying small tins of Branston beans in Farmfoods for £1 for two tins. They are now 59p a tin. Waitrose charge 80p for the small tin!

I usually shop Aldi and Lidl and some items from the bigger supermarkets but even my small shop at Aldi this week was noticeably more expensive.

Supermarkets and it seems almost everyone is taking advantage of the 'cost of living crisis' and increasing prices on things we have no option but to pay for.

Supermarkets are making huge profits as are utility companies.

I have never seen cheaper food in Europe than in Portugal! Even with the shite exchange rate. Even northern Italy tourist spots are now cheap compared to London.
also shelf life on vegetable shorter, which makes online shopping hard, and the quality of vegetables has gone right down.

I mean "we" as a country. I also voted Remain but accept the result - but what I struggle to accept is the number of people who voted for this who are now complaining. As if they didn't see it coming. It was entirely predictable that everything was going to get more expensive.

So many people just don't seem to see the link between the referendum result and what is going on, but it was as clear as day that this would happen.

Agree with this and the budget is going to increase inflation as food retailers look to cover significant additional costs with price increases.
we would have all been a lot better off if they had put a couple of p on income tax

That chocolate used to be ridiculously cheap though. I've always used a lot of it for baking and until a few years ago, it was 30 p a bar and just as nice as similar products at two or three times the price, the margin must have been tiny, so it's no surprise that it's gone up due to the increase in cocoa prices.

However, it's still 55 p in Aldi, according to the website, I don't think their prices have gone up anywhere near as much as Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco, so worth doing at least some of your shop there if it's an option, with perhaps just an occasional trip to Sainsbury's to stock up on anything you can't get in Aldi.

Like a PP says, supermarkets are not charities, they're businesses that need to make a profit, have relatively small margins and have seen significant increases in their own costs over the last few years (wages, energy and stock all gone up massively).

Supermarkets work on single digit margins - it is not highly profitable, but, slightly protected by the fact people always need food other areas of retailing like fashion will suffer more

It usually works out cheaper to buy multipacks of chocolate these days.
in my corner shop a 4 finger KitKat is 89p but a multipack (I think 6) is £1.25

I have noticed it as well.

I was thinking exactly this last night after nipping into Morrisons to get more coffee and a couple of other bits (partner has been doing the shopping the last few months as I’ve just had a baby, so haven’t really kept up with prices). The own brand ground espresso is £3 a bag. For such a long time it was £2.25 or 2 for £4. Antiperspirant £4.50 a can! Standard box of mini weetabix £3:65. Some things are creeping up so they think we won’t notice but then other items are just so bloody expensive it’s unbelievable.

It's not ideological nonsense to say that supermarkets are more interested in their profits then keeping food prices low. It's just fact. Just look at the profits they made doing cost of living crisis they were hardly protecting the consumer.

I'm not sure why people struggle so much with this concept.

Labour's budget with NI and NMW increases hit businesses massively, retail is being decimated, it's tens and tens of millions.

Look at numbers - NMW increase per employee (assuming 37.5h/week, 49 weeks/year) - £1350.
NI increase for the same employee - £330, so £1670pa per employee.

Tesco employs 330k people - it's £0.5bn cost hit!

It's absolutely massive. No business will ever absorb this, of course there will be price rises and mass redundancies. Whoever believed that Labour will protect "hard working people" but taxing those stinky rich and businesses is frankly an idiot - everyone will pay.

The price of cocoa has risen sharply following a series of poor harvests in W Africa. Supply and demand.

I was in booths the other day which I know can be a bit more expensive but Cadbury giant buttons were £4.20! That’s like cinema prices!