Grocery store prices for the holiday are out of sight.

Ruth n Jersey

Ruth n Jersey

Well-known Member
Location
Northern New Jersey
My daughter,son and their families will be here for the Memorial Day weekend. I thought I'd go grocery shopping today. The prices were ridiculous. Not only were they jacked up but so many items had to be bought in groups in order to get the sale price. I would have to buy 5 bottles of Pepsi for the discount. We don't drink soda at all and I doubt the family will drink that much. I intended to have corn,reasonably priced at 20 cents an ear. I needed butter for the corn,which was double the price,no savings there. No brand of ice cream was on sale this week either. No savings on milk as well. Ground beef was an excellent buy,which I needed for the hamburgers. Wouldn't you know, we were only allowed 1 package at the sale price. Had I known I needed these items I would have stocked up before hand but it was a last minute decision. I will be out all day Saturday so I really needed items with little prep involved and I do like to treat them to what they like. I'm willing to pay full price if I have to but having to buy double or even triple the amount of an item to save just isn't fair. I guess people who live alone or on a strict budget never get a break.
 

I know that produce prices are through the roof, bought some peaches at $1.99 lb. and had to trash them, they were horrible and never ripened properly, like dried out sponges. Usually they'll have the buy 5 items to get the sale prices at Kroger's supermarkets, but you can mix and match any 5 items on the list to get them all at the discounted price. I don't blame you for not wanting to buy 5 bottles of Pepsi, one is enough if you're having someone over who drinks that stuff.

I bought some ice cream too that was on sale yesterday at Kroger's, Turkey Hill Natural and Tillamook had sale prices, and I think Breyer's was on sale too. The prices amaze me sometimes, hard to get a bottle of orange juice these days for $3 or less, they really take advantage and make it hard for middle class or poor people to buy decent foods. We were buying the Philadelphia brand cream cheese in the little containers to use for lox and bagels, and noticed that the package size is slowly shrinking, but the price surely isn't. Going to start buying it in bar form again, hopefully that isn't getting smaller too. :dollar:
 
When I'm grocery shopping and see the prices, I continually wonder how in the world people manage to feed growing families with the price of food what it is today.
 

I'm single and I make a concerted effort to not throwing food away.

I only buy enough for one or two meals and I hate left overs, so only cook enough for one meal.

I live in Canada and I haven't seen a spike in prices for our Victoria Day weekend which compares to your Memorial Day weekend.

I also cook for myself and bake for myself. When you are retired you have all kinds of time to do this and you get exactly what you like.
 
I haven't noticed it for this Memorial Day specifically.

In my city the lack of specials and higher prices seem to always come during the first week in every month. In my city 31% of all households receive SNAP benefits and in our state those benefits are loaded to the benefit cards on the first 9 days of the month excluding Sundays and Holidays. That creates a huge wave of grocery shopping activity that the stores have to stock up and staff for, it also creates an opportunity to in many cases make additional money by keeping prices on the high side. The stores still send out flyers but if you are familiar with prices you will notice that the prices offered are in many cases the regular price. Just another drag on the poor, very sad.
 
I know what you mean about having to buy 'x' amount for the sale price, drives me nuts! One store had both 'buy 5' and in addition, had 'buy 3'. Deal? So confusing, I bought zero and went to another store.
 
We have two grocers here. An independent which always has higher prices probably because of a smaller market and less buying in bulk. The other was a chain store known here in the west. Until recently you required a club card to receive the major discounts. However since they were bought up by a larger corporation they have been doing the 5 for discount thing, there product selections have changed to that of the corporation which also owns other major chain stores.
The large outlets are about an hours drive if you dont like the local stuff.
 
We have relatively low food prices here in the UK, mostly due to competition. The market is saturated and most towns and cities have several supermarkets. There are four or five mainstream supermarket companies, a couple of high end ones and now two or three discount places which have come in from Europe. My small city - 60 thousand or so has about ten! Prices are remarkably stable and there are always offers.

There's no avoiding wholesale rises though and I have noticed that manufacturers, rather than putting up prices are trying to fool us with smaller portions for the same price. Things like chocolate bars have bigger spaces in them, packaging is designed to make stuff look bigger etc. I don't know who they think they are fooling.
 
We took a quick run to the local "rural" grocery store this morning, and there wasn't any evidence of prices being raised. They even had a few good markdowns on items we regularly eat, so we picked up some extras. This nice store is only slightly above a Walmart...12 miles away...with its prices, and most of the time it costs as much in time and gas, etc., to drive over there, rather than just shopping locally.
 
debbie in seattle said:
I know what you mean about having to buy 'x' amount for the sale price, drives me nuts! One store had both 'buy 5' and in addition, had 'buy 3'. Deal? So confusing, I bought zero and went to another store.
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Province of Quebec. No having to buy three. You get the price of each. Buy one same price as if you buy three.

That should be a law everywhere. If they can afford to cut the price for three then they should be able to sell one at the unit price.
 
I am particularly amused by the "Buy one Get one free" scam.. Prices are doubled for one and they really think people are that stupid? They like to do this with Ribs and whole chickens in the summer for the holidays.
 

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