U.S. grocery slowdown deepens as shoppers buy fewer items, raising pressure on food companies

Don't forget to save for some children's hospital bombs too

I'm trying to limit my avocado toasts to just 3 times a week.

I haven't eaten for three weeks so I can donate more bombs as a patriotic act. I'm doing my part!

I use mine to buy necessities like gasoline to make molotov cocktails out of the empty bottles I collect from the trash.

and foreign AID to a country who doesnt need money for thier own healthcare.

They should be patient and wait for it to trickle down.

Capitalism is an infection of the soul.

DJIA is not an economic indicator. The index highlights half of the relation between Industrials and Transports (DJTA). The S&P 500 is closer to an economic indicator but still not really. The Dow is usually referenced as a distraction from real indicators like the Capitalization to GDP ratio (aka Buffett Indicator). If one looks at the real indicators, we've been in some real economy ending doom for quite a while now.

It's a true economic indicator for the top 10%, those that have assets. It doesn't say anything about the bottom 90%. But these days the top 10% drive so much of consumption they're the ones that count for leadership.

When your entire focus is one fiscal quarter long, you never think of the long term repercussions of your choices.

Yes, but are you considering the shareholders?

Remember, companies are people. The GOP knows they are the most important people and are far more important than the people who are people.

Rice and beans are pretty good though, especially if you add in a little salsa or some grape tomatoes and a sprinkle of shredded cheese.

Hey, don't forget about quantity! Cereal boxes are so thin that they can't stand up on their own anymore, old recipes don't work anymore because cans are too small, and pretty much every non-food item has gotten 25% smaller or more.

It is absolutely a scam. Remember the egg shortage? Eggs were going for $7+ a dozen in SoCal and a few miles across the border the prices had only risen slightly to maybe $2.50/dozen.

And now there's this:

Egg producers will pay $3.3M and donate 53 million eggs to settle price fixing claims

Forcing U.S. egg producers to pay a minuscule 0.37% fine on $1.22 billion in excess profits sends an unmistakable message to businesses everywhere. With Trump in charge they can fleece Americans without the slightest fear of consequences and they are doing just that.

I genuinely don't know how families are doing it. I spend as much on food as a single person as my parents did with a family in the early 2000s. Granted, we didn't eat much, but we didn't starve, and I don't eat much either. I rarely eat meat, I don't go to restaurants, and maybe once every month or two I'll "treat" myself to a gas station meal or a bagel sandwich from a coffee shop. I'm so glad I don't have children to try to feed.

old man here. I am not exaggerating to say you could have large paper grocery bags full of food using a 20 and get change back. Those paper grocery bags held more than twice the standard plastic ones from today. I keep complaining that places still have signs saying they won't take over a 20 when that was what everything would take when I was a kid. Nobody had signs saying they won't take anything over a 5 or 10.

Im close to your age, I worked in a grocery store when I was a kid. I recall one repeat customer who had several children, and would fill two carts. I remember being blown away that this woman was spending $200 on groceries.

Now I have one kid living with me, and my grocery bill approaches $200 if I'm not very careful on what I buy.

power/gas /water isnt telling its customers that the rates are going up because of AI datacenters, i saw our parents rates increase as well.

beef products very rarely (because it’s fucking expensive now)

I was in Acme a few days ago looking through the steak section. There was a porterhouse close to expiration on sale for ... $54 fucking dollars. It was a little over one pound. I'd be astonished to pay that much for a steak at a fucking steakhouse, cooked and brought to my table with sides and drinks.

If I want the taste of steak these days, I buy bottom round and flatten the shit out of it with a tenderizing mallet.

I have a family with 3 teenage boys, I spend $100 pretty much every day...

Probably has a lot to do with it. A friend says his retired, low income parents had their SNAP benefits cut from $300 / month to $30.

Don't forget food banks got their funding cut

Well I'm sure that has a lot to do with it, I would expect it's simply also just due to the massively inflated prices of many foods and the massively increasing costs of other standard expenses like rent

thats not even the worst part, peoples preniums on thier aca plans became unaffordable, although there doesnt seem to be that many using ACA marketplace.

Sorry, no...Best we can do is charge you more for groceries, gas, and basic necessities.

There will literally pay private armies to start killing us before they would pay us a dollar more per hour.

I was going to make a joke, but it was shitty.

Spending weeks in the bathroom seems like a viable vacation plan in our nice little capitalist hellhole. Not some luxury cruise or resort, but something anyone can do.

at least you lose weight from cyclospora.

Recipe reformulations with fewer and cheaper ingredients, cheaper substitutions, more soy and water in the sausages, and other general quality reductions.

I'm wondering when they'll start using recycled paper/cardboard as an ingredient with an innocuous-sounding name like "cellulose gum" or something. It's probably already started.

But, but, but, the stock market!

and canada ignoring climate change as is every other country, and you have massive wildifres going on too. shrinkflation was pretty noticble early in the pandemic, in never went away. all toothpastes(crest) were affected, they try to be sneaky by making thier 8.2 to 5.4, or 4.6 to 4.3 oz, plus changing the ingredients enough that they had to use so much mint oil to mask the taste(the mint oil and other ingredients are known allergens to the lips)

We can't even build floors right anymore. Too expensive.

that's every company. no one looks long term. it's quarter by quarter. they all "live in the now".

The whole locking up of items or transitioning to self check outs was an attempt to A. blame the price increases on shoplifters and B. encourage people to transition to shopping online. Neither of which worked. you could literally live in a 0 crime society and they'd still jack up the prices.

Went to buy a tent the other day and it had one of those electric alarms on it. Ive never seen anything else in that store with an alarm.

thats what GLP-1 is for.

If prices keep going up you probably won't need ozempic.

And skip the bread rolls unless you'd like a side of broken glass.

The cost of each dose probably overshoots that of food unless your insurance is really good.

And how many shitty fast food chains have gone broke? People are still wasting money there.