Recessions' impact on supermarket products

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't really consider it stealth size reductions - it's more that consumers are happier with prices staying the same and sizes going down than sizes remaining the same and prices going up.

Most people I point it out to seem unaware that the packs are now smaller. A lot of the time the changes happened when the packaging is changed to something snazzier. An example is the moverment from 2L bottles of Coke to 1.75L ones in many stores.

Its the same with some of the larger packs of stuff - it used to be cheaper to buy them than two smaller ones. However,in many cases I have found buying two smaller packs ends up cheaper.

It just shows you how much people pay attention to packages now.

Its a tactic used in many countries around the world.

Hence,looking at prices alone is a pointless,until you actually see what you are actually getting for the price.

The price drops I have seen,have funnily enough been for things like milk,free range eggs,cheese,and "ethnic" foods.

Things like corned beef and tinned Tuna have skyrocketed in price over the last decade or so. The same goes with bread.

[jim]

Most people I point it out to seem unaware that the packs are now smaller.

Exactly - but how many would've noticed the price go up? My guess is a fair few more.

We can moan all we like, but one of the two had to happen.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Exactly - but how many would've noticed the price go up? My guess is a fair few more.

We can moan all we like, but one of the two had to happen.

The problem is though,people might end up spending more especially when you have a family or a group of people to feed!

[Saracen]

....

The same goes with bread.

That might not be the best example, though. I think that, at least in part, it's because there was a bread war in supermarkets and a lot of bread, especially the cra .... erm, poor quality own-brand stuff, were hugely loss-leading.

That said, premium bread has gone up too, and so have wheat commodity prices.

I still reckon the best, and cheapest, bread is the stuff you make yourself. Or I do, anyway. And that way, you KNOW how fresh it is, and what's in it.

[Saracen]

The problem is though,people might end up spending more especially when you have a family or a group of people to feed!

True enough, but it has encouraged me to be a bit more careful what I buy, and what I eat.

Ironically, my food bill has gone down, because I buy a bit more selectively, and invest more time in preparation. I.e. learning to cook things I've never done before.

Oh, and my food quality, and taste, has gone up, too.

[peterb]

Yeah, the offers can be infuriating. If you can't do mental arithmetic, as you're walking around the store, you're gunna get fleeced. Tesco bog roll - 9 rolls for £3.50 or a BIG VALUE 18 pack for £7.50.

Most phones have a calculator, I use that a lot for the complicated comparisons. I also stock up on special offers. Things like breakfast cereal, clothes washing material, and so one, often appear heavily discounted, so I buy in bulk.

Own brand stuff is often a better buy, but worth trying first in small quantities. Careful use of a freezer can also help with bulk buying of perishable stuff.

But you need to be on the ball to make sure you exploit the offers in your favour.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

True enough, but it has encouraged me to be a bit more careful what I buy, and what I eat.

Ironically, my food bill has gone down, because I buy a bit more selectively, and invest more time in preparation. I.e. learning to cook things I've never done before.

Oh, and my food quality, and taste, has gone up, too.

The thing is though the stealth reductions in food size do have an effect. For instance,if it was a pack of ham or something,which is now 120 grams instead of 150 grams,at the same price,the latter might have lasted you 4 days and the former 3 days(I just made up those figures for the example),so over a few weeks,you buy more packs and so on.

The smaller packs just encourage people to shop more often.

Another cunning ploy is some of the pre-packed fruit. Either they quietly drop the number in a pack or change class(compared to what is loose),so you get smaller fruit.

That might not be the best example, though. I think that, at least in part, it's because there was a bread war in supermarkets and a lot of bread, especially the cra .... erm, poor quality own-brand stuff, were hugely loss-leading.

That said, premium bread has gone up too, and so have wheat commodity prices.

I still reckon the best, and cheapest, bread is the stuff you make yourself. Or I do, anyway. And that way, you KNOW how fresh it is, and what's in it.

Yeah,but only issue is many of the bread-makers make smallish loafs,and you are limited to what kind of bread you can make. You could use and oven,to bake,but that is assuming you have access to a decent oven I suppose.

[opel80uk]

Most people I point it out to seem unaware that the packs are now smaller.

I've been saying to the wife for ages that things have been getting smaller in the shops, and she's always said I’m imagining it and dismissed me as being a moaner. She may well be correct in her assessment of me, but I feel vindicated after reading this thread.

[neonplanet40]

I think the majority of people now know they are spending more for less. I am shopping more in Aldi and Lidl now (much better meat, fruit and veg that the 'bigger shops'). I am also starting to grow my own vegetables and tables. Every little helps

[wasabi]

Sainsbury's drives me nuts with confused offers. Most of the time in the local one they have an ad saying Haddock fillets, 2 for £3. Great, but they have a different brand of haddock fillets above the advert than the one in the offer. Or it only appilies to new 'lime zest' flavour version not on the shelf. So you have to read the smallprint every time.

So I mostly go to Aldidl.

[Saracen]

The thing is though the stealth reductions in food size do have an effect. For instance,if it was a pack of ham or something,which is now 120 grams instead of 150 grams,at the same price,the latter might have lasted you 4 days and the former 3 days(I just made up those figures for the example),so over a few weeks,you buy more packs and so on.

The smaller packs just encourage people to shop more often.

Another cunning ploy is some of the pre-packed fruit. Either they quietly drop the number in a pack or change class(compared to what is loose),so you get smaller fruit.



Yeah,but only issue is many of the bread-makers make smallish loafs,and you are limited to what kind of bread you can make. You could use and oven,to bake,but that is assuming you have access to a decent oven I suppose.

On bread, the small , loaves isn't entirely a bad thing, though. We find a loaf typically lasts 2 days ... not because it's stale or going mouldy, but because we've eaten it. So, our bread is fresher. And as a by-product, I make breadcrumbs and use those for cooking, like breaded chicken, rather than buying pre-coated chicken breasts.

So before, I'd buy stuffed chicken breasts. Now, I stuff and breadcrumb my own. It works out cheaper, I control exactly what goes in, and they taste better too. And, when I make the crumb, I can decide on the fly if I want to include a little cheese, or herbs, or pepper, in the breadcrumbs.

Or, for a spag-bol, instead of a typically UK version, I buy less mince but higher quality mince, and let time (about 3 or 4 hours) reduce it (and a more genuinely Bolognese ingredient list) and I wind up with a much more intensely flavoured proper ragu, rather than spaghetti (or tagliatelle in my case) and tomato-flavoured mince.

Or, relatively simple ingredients in a slow cooker, cutting down on the meat element, increase the veg, and let time do the work. And because it's cooked long and slow, I can use 'unfashionable' cuts of meat that can be, comparatively, very cheap and ironically, the cuts with the most flavour.

Or, increasingly, I grow my own herbs. I make my own peanuts butter, using ONLY peanuts. I buy while spices, seeds, etc, and grind, toast, whatever I need when I need it. It's SO much better flavour, but does require a little time and effort.

Or, there's a HUGE range of soups you can make that are relatively cheap, relatively easy, use fresh and nutritious ingredients and blow away the taste of anything coming out of a can. Home-made fresh soup, home-made fresh bread, even home-made butter if you wish ..... heaven.

I'm not suggesting it's a total answer to rising prices. Not at all. It's not, for me, even entirely motivated by prices. It's more, in my case, about quality control. And flavour. But the point was, I'm more selective about what I buy, but tend to use less of the expensive bits, like meat.

And one more classic example. Bacon. Hunt down a good quality, dry cure bacon, and fry a rasher of that to a similar weight rasher of typical bacon from a supermarket. Once cooked, once all the plumping up water and chemicals have cooked out, the supermarket bacon ends up a shriveled little item about half the size of what it was when it went in tne pan. The dry-cured rasher, though, will be almost exactly the same size as when it went in.

So, the cost per gram, uncooked, make the dry-cured 'quality' bacon look rather expensive, but compared to the weight once cooked, when you need maybe half to a third as much, because it doesn't shrink, and it's actually cheaper. And oh, the taste.

I get dry-cured bacon either from a butcher-friend in Nottinghamshire, who sources his meats from local farms, or from a local farm shop near me that specialises in Aberdeen Angus beef, but gets their bacon from a Devon-based dry-cure bacon specialist .... and they supply beef to the Devon bacon specialist.

Typically, prices are actually about the same as supermarkets, sometimes even a bit cheaper than supermarkets. Quality, though? IMHO, far, FAR higher. I just have to be prepared to invest the time to hunt down the suppliers rather than cop-out and pop into Tesco.

Oh, more more really fine thing.

Don't be seduced into using meat in the quantity a supermarket wants to sell it in. Instead of using, say, 450g of minced beef because that's the size of pack in comes in, consider .... can I used 400g, or 350g, etc, in this recipe? Maybe counter that with an extra carrot, or whatever.

I buy meat in 'bulk', but bulk defined in domestic terms. I buy, usually from that butcher or farm shop, and I use a vacuum sealer to bag it into quanities I want to use, not what the supermarket wants to sell. Then, freeze it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The problem is Saracen is that plenty of towns and cities don't really have local butchers or shops like them anymore - its mostly a supermarket of some description. Where I live there are alternatives since it is a better off area and they are all in walkable distance,but even the local Butchers which is known for decent quality stuff is now shutting down after being around for yonks. Even some of the alternate shops for other stuff are targeting a very high end market,with insanely silly prices for certain things - unless you are well off and also have the time to cook,its not really possible. Even the artisan bread shops we have its a few quid per loaf,and they are very nice to eat,but its about cutting your coat according to your cloth.

I would love to shop at them,but my food bills would skyrocket. Plus I know the veg in many supermarkets is meh,when I lived in Sri Lanka,veg,bread and meat tended to be fresher. Most bread and break products in that country is freshly baked and would not last more than two days before going stale - very little of the processed bread exists,and is mostly for specialist dietary requirements.

For certain things I would go to the specialist shop- for example one of the local delis does proper Garlic not that shrivelled stuff you get in many supermarkets. In some of the areas with a larger Indian/Pakistani/ethnic populations its actually easier to get access to fresher meat,spices and other stuff at decent prices(we don't though)- luckily we have a Morrisons near us. They tend to be somewhat better for quality of meat than supermarkets like Tesco and Asda,I find and the same goes with their veg selection,but even then time is more the driver than anything else.

The thing is when supermarkets start making things smaller and smaller,it means for people like me who already plan stuff,we end up having to spend more which is annoying.

I would rather they just charged more for the same size(within reason though OFC).

In some of my past jobs,I was often working up to 6 days(sometimes 7 days) a week - I had hardly anytime to even boil some pasta and put some sauce on it. Even when I did have time to cook it was for a larger quantity so I could freeze it down and have 4 maybe 5 quickly microwaveable portions over a week,plus some rice or pasta with some kind of veg/veg dish with it. Nutritionally balanced but bloody boring to eat though. It was that or eat microwavable things.

Plus things like lunches -if I buy a pack of ham,or something else,it need to last a certain amount of time. Smaller standard pack,means me having to buy more to last a specific time period and so on.

Some of this can probably be sidestepped by more deli sections in shops,but not all supermarkets have them,especially if you live in cities,where most of the supermarkets are actually not that big.

Even shopping was whatever I could find locally and quickly(usually a supermarket of some kind) - I would have loved to travel around but it takes time and when you have limited free time,it cuts into that.

It would be wonderful to be able to shop at artisan places,waitrose,m and s and specialist shops more often,but you need the budget and also the time. Unfortunately we are not the French,and we are moving more and more towards the US,in longer and longer work weeks and less and less free time.

The thing is though,it gets worse when you live in rented places,especially if its not a whole rented flat or house just for yourself. There are limitations to what you can cook,down to space on the shelves,fridge and freezers, and whatever is available in the kitchen. You don't have the luxury of a custom kitchen with all the space you want,especially if you are sharing with other people. If you had the right type of people you could cook among the group meaning costs could be cut down and not so much replicated space for the same bloody things,but then if you didn't and it was all individualistic cooking,then its more problematic.

[shaithis]

Yeah, the offers can be infuriating. If you can't do mental arithmetic, as you're walking around the store, you're gunna get fleeced. Tesco bog roll - 9 rolls for £3.50 or a BIG VALUE 18 pack for £7.50.

I notice that Asda put price/unit on their item labels so you can compare different brands/sizes.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I notice that Asda put price/unit on their item labels so you can compare different brands/sizes.

There are also price per g and litre markers on the labels. However,they do not always take offers into consideration.

[OilSheikh]

Another cunning ploy is some of the pre-packed fruit. Either they quietly drop the number in a pack or change class(compared to what is loose),so you get smaller fruit.

Yes, I have also noticed that esp with bananas. Fairtrade bananas are of a very poor quaity and they definitely are not in the same class as top bananas from Chiquita or Del Monte

[Lucio]

Things are tough, but is it the "fault" of the supermarkets or the fact that they're compelled to deliver ever increasing profits to the shareholders?

Look at the news reports we see with things like "Tesco sales down 11%" or M&S see a slump in web sales. It's all portrayed to be a terrible thing for the economy, that these big businesses must keep delivering ever increasing profits or the world as we know it ends.

We're currently trapped by these cycles and until it all falls apart, things won't get any better. There are diminishing resources being stretched over an ever increasing population.