Disguising Price Increases(No Politics Please)

[Seven Bends]

We ended up with great turkey bargains here in northern Virginia this year. Yesterday I bought a 14.6-lb "Nature's Promise" fresh turkey (just turkey, nothing added) from Giant for $3.83, or a little over $.26/lb. The official price was $1.29/lb, but you got 1500 "rewards points," redeemable for $15 off a future grocery purchase, so my $18.83 turkey cost me $3.83. Or instead of taking the $15 coupon, you can take a $1.50/gallon discount on a gas purchase up to 20 gallons. If I had a car with a bigger tank I could have gotten a turkey for negative dollars!

The same rewards deal was available on Butterball fresh turkeys, though the price of them was $1.69, so a 14.6-lb turkey would have come out to $9.67 or a little more than $.66/lb. Giant also had another deal where if you spent $25, you could get a Shady Brooks Farms frozen turkey for $.37/lb. Lidl had Shady Brooks Farms frozen turkeys for $.49/lb with $25 minimum purchase. Amazon Fresh had Butterball frozen for $.49/lb. Safeway had a fall deal where you could get a free turkey if you spent $300 between 10/14 and 11/24 and clipped the digital coupon through their rewards program, but that was more effort than I wanted to mess with.

Aldi didn't compete on turkeys (best price in their ad was $1.07/lb for Butterball frozen), but they had Ocean Spray cranberries for $.99, celery for $.95, butter for $1.99/lb, eggs for $2.09, 10-lb bag of russet potatoes for $2.99, and pineapples for $1.49. Sweet potatoes for $.49/lb, but Giant beat them at $.39/lb. I also got my favorite chicken stock at Giant for $1.99 instead of the $3.09 they've been charging for the last six months.

Overall, the deals here this Thanksgiving were much better than last year, and everything was fully stocked up.

[Uncle_Feist]

Black Friday shopping this morning.

[slugworth]

McD big breakfast same price but they give you 1/2 the amount of eggs

[Uncle_Feist]

Went shopping at the salvage store today.

4 cans of pink salmon
4 sardines in evoo
5 cans of tuna 3 packed in olive oil
4 cans of fruit in heavy syrup
2 cranberry sauce
12 servings of little Cesar
1 pound of lima beans
1pound Barilla pasta
2 bars bittersweet chocolate
2 bottles ketchup
2 cans of peas
2 cans of olives and a package of egg noodles.
Everything has a great use by date ranging from 2023-2027, only some minor dents in some of the cans or some label damage. The 2 bottles of ketchup have damaged caps but still sealed.
Anyone want to guess total price?

[GoDawgs]

Guessing $12.00? 30 items at an average of about 40 cents. Maybe a bit high?

[Danny]

$14.50 is my guess

[Uncle_Feist]

The purchase was $22.90. The salmon alone would have been more at my local Kroger. Pink salmon is over $5 a can, and red salmon is pushing $8.

[GoDawgs]

So how much at the salvage store for the canned salmon?

[Uncle_Feist]

So how much at the salvage store for the canned salmon?

All canned salmon in 15oz cans $1.50, all tuna regardless of variety in 5oz cans .50, tuna in a 12oz can is $1.50. The majority of the tuna available is solid albacore, I don't know why that is.

[Tormahto]

A huge glut of russet potatoes at the local WalMart.

First it was 6 pallets, $3.53 for a 10 pound bag. A couple days later, 3 pallets of 5 pound bags come in. The 10 pound bags get reduced to $2.50, and the 5 pound bags are 85 cents each. At those prices, a pallet a day disappears fast. With the lousy weather and the holiday, shopping will likely slow down for the next three days. Monday, I'll see if any 5 pound bags are left. I don't need any at the moment, but it would be an inexpensive experiment to see how they would store in the coolest section of the basement.

[MissS]

I have a 5lb bag that I bought last winter in my garage that stays pretty cool during the summer and they are still fine. I had one last week. I am going to leave a few to see just how long they will keep. Ditto with a bag of Yukon Gold. Now of course I have bought more potatoes since then. The spring and summer potatoes don't keep well at all. They last about 3 weeks.

[Tormahto]

While these are russets, they don't have the full thick russeting. They are sort of in-between new potatoes and russet potatoes, with patches of russeting, and parches of whiteness. I doubt that they have long storage qualities, but they are still likely better than smooth skin types. At .17/lb, no one is going to complain.

I picked up a spiral-sliced ham for the holiday, at $0.99/lb. The problem was that the packaging didn't say shank or butt. I had to turn about 20 of them upside down to find the one butt among the shanks.

[Danny]

"find the one butt among the shanks" I COULD so say something here....LOL

[worth1]

Texas gots the butts.

[Danny]

Butt what do you mean?

[GoDawgs]

A friend of mine on another forum posted about egg prices shooting up in her area . I've been paying $3.36 at Walmart for the 18-count box as recently as a week ago. So when I read her post I pulled out my receipt from yesterday and the 18-ct eggs were $6.90 each! That's 4.40/dz. Last week I read about the most recent depop of chickens due to bird flu but I didn't think the prices would jump so soon. Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal that I read five days ago:

Egg Prices Surge to Records as Bird Flu Decimates Poultry Flocks

By Jaewon Kang and Patrick Thomas
Dec. 22, 2022 5:30 am ET
www.wsj.com/articles/egg-prices-surge-t ... 1671689775

Egg prices are hitting records, driven by an avian-influenza outbreak that has killed tens of millions of chickens and turkeys this year across nearly all 50 states.

Wholesale prices of Midwest large eggs hit a record $5.36 a dozen in December, according to the research firm Urner Barry. Retail egg prices have increased more than any other supermarket item so far this year, climbing more than 30% from January to early December compared with the same period a year earlier, and outpacing overall food and beverage prices, according to the data firm Information Resources Inc.

For supermarkets, eggs are a staple product that most consumers pick up on trips to the grocery store, similar to milk and butter. To maintain store traffic, grocers said they have been sacrificing some profits on eggs to keep prices for consumers competitive. Some suppliers are projecting potential relief in price by February or March, but cold weather could hamper production in the near term, executives said.

“We are trying to keep eggs relatively accessible,” said Dan O’Neill, director of center store and perishables at Angelo Caputo’s Fresh Markets, a chain of eight stores in Illinois.

Angelo Caputo’s bought extra-large eggs for $5.09 a dozen recently, up from $1.30 at the start of the year, Mr. O’Neill said. The grocer has for months been selling eggs for slightly above cost, he said, as wholesale prices have increased.

Grocery prices have continued to increase this year because of what companies have said are higher costs of labor, ingredients and logistics, helping supermarkets generate higher sales and profits. Those factors have propelled egg prices, too. As eggs get more costly, some supermarkets are selling more organic eggs that are sometimes less expensive than conventional varieties, while suppliers say consumer demand has remained steady despite higher prices.

Cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza have so far this year led to the deaths of about 58 million birds, the deadliest outbreak in U.S. history, according to Agriculture Department data. Entire poultry flocks are destroyed after an infection is confirmed, to help limit the outbreak’s spread.

More than 40 million egg-laying chickens have died in the current outbreak, according to USDA data, with the total supply of egg-laying chickens falling more than 5%—to about 308 million—from the start of January to December.

Despite a tight egg supply and high prices, shortages are still a long way off, said Emily Metz, chief executive of the American Egg Board, which represents egg producers. Egg supplies have been more stable this year compared with the previous major U.S. avian-influenza outbreak, in 2015, she said, as the time it takes for farms to recover from an outbreak has shrunk to roughly three months from six to nine months.

The current outbreak has largely been attributed to wild birds spreading the virus to farms as they migrate across the country, agriculture-industry officials have said. While the 2015 outbreak ended in June, cases this year continued to pop up throughout the fall.

Food-industry officials said they fear the current outbreak could continue. “There’s definitely a lot of cause for concern,” said Karyn Rispoli, who determines egg pricing at Urner Barry.

Wholesale egg prices have been rising for nine consecutive weeks, according to Urner Barry. Strong demand has driven prices higher in recent months as people bake more and eat warmer breakfasts during cooler weather, Ms. Rispoli said, though some consumers are starting to buy less.

Steve Schwartz, director of sales and marketing at Morton Williams Supermarkets in New York, said: “Every week you get an egg quote, it’s more and more.”

There aren’t many substitutes for eggs, grocery executives said. Specialty eggs, such as organic eggs that are sold to retailers and distributors on a fixed-price basis, can be about $1 cheaper a dozen, but there are only so many available brands of eggs for operators to secure, they said.

“Some of those replacement products are just as rare or expensive,” said Max Bowman, chief financial officer of the largest U.S. egg producer, Cal-Maine Foods Inc., at a November investor conference.

KeHE Distributors has been trying to secure a wider variety of egg brands, as well as plant-based egg alternatives, said Jennifer Onoja, a senior category manager of dairy, nondairy and refrigerated beverages at the grocery distributor. Eggs cost the company 20% to 50% more this year.

“These are essential categories that are staples in your refrigerator,” she said.

After the major outbreak in 2015, the USDA upgraded its virus testing and detection systems, training and equipment, officials have said. Some farmers invested in new biosecurity systems for their barns meant to disinfect anyone who walks into the tightly sealed poultry houses. Despite the changes, farmers and USDA officials have struggled to halt this year’s outbreak.

“All signs are pointing to that this will be something the industry has to deal with,” said Ms. Metz of the American Egg Board. “We continue to manage it and improve in how we manage it.”

[Vanman]

We buy boxes of 5 dozen at WM. They have been 20-21 bucks recently. I did not check the price the last time I was there.

[bower]

Our eggs have gone up a bit, to about $5 a dozen or close to it. They are mostly locally or regionally produced at my store. We had bird flu scare early in 2021 but nothing reported on since then. So I think the modest price increase here is due to increased prices for feed, because it's shipped here from the bountiful prairies.

[pepperhead212]

I got a dozen eggs for $3.27 at lidl, last Wednesday, when I went there mainly for the butter @$2/lb (they also had LOL butter @$5.98/lb, and I've seen it more than that in supermarkets!). That was the cheapest I had seen eggs (and butter, for sure!) for a while. I went back today - their ads run from Wednesday thru Tuesday - and got 6 more lbs of butter, and chocolate chips at $1.49/bag, semi-sweet and dark, since I put a dent in the supply, making cookies. The eggs were up to $3.89/dozen - didn't need any more, like I did last time, and I won't need any more for a long time, at the current prices! I'll be putting my remaining butter (9 lbs) in vacuum bags, and into the freezer; I don't use it a lot, except for the cookies, so I'll probably have some left next season!

I don't understand (but I won't complain!) why the chicken prices haven't gone up as much as eggs? Eggs have basically quadrupled in price, around here, but the sale prices (all I look at!) on chicken hasn't even doubled - I used to occasionally see leg quarters for 49¢/lb, but a month or so ago they were 69¢. Boneless breasts are still occasionally $1.99, though they used to be that on a regular basis, and cheaper on big sales, but again, nothing like eggs. Fortunately, I'm not addicted to eggs, and cookies and desserts (only occasionally) are the only things I use a lot in.

[worth1]

It's the poor Mexicans I feel sorry for.
The ones from south of the border.
Their carts are always overflowing with eggs some sort of meat but not much and tortillas and cheese.
It is a staple for them.
Not uncommon to see 8 36 count cartons of eggs totaling 288 eggs.
Right now that's about $110.72 in eggs alone.
Unbelievable.