How Far $100 Goes at the Grocery Store After Five Years of Food Inflation

In grocery stores, a Benjamin just isn’t what it used to be.

by Stephanie Stamm

In grocery stores, a Benjamin just isn’t what it used to be.

The pace of food inflation in supermarkets has slowed sharply over the past year, returning to levels that were more typical before the pandemic. But groceries are still much more expensive than in years past, meaning $100 doesn’t go as nearly as far as it once did.

Grocery prices were up 1% in February versus a year earlier, Labor Department data show. They increased 10.2% in February 2023 compared with a year earlier, and 1.2% in February 2019.

Prices for hundreds of grocery items have increased more than 50% since 2019 as food companies raised their prices. Executives have said that higher prices were needed to offset their own rising costs for ingredients, transportation and labor. Some U.S. lawmakers and the Biden administration have criticized food companies for using tactics such as shrinkflation, in which companies shrink their products—but not their prices.

Inflation-weary consumers have pushed back, and food makers have begun offering more deals or reducing the prices of goods such as coffee and margarine.

Consumers have also become creative to cope with a stretch of record food inflation. Sharon Faelten, a 74-year-old retiree from Underhill, Vt., said that instead of a wallet-punishing ordeal, she tries to think of trips to the store like procurement raids depicted in apocalyptic novels, where the goal is to stock her fridge, freezer and pantry for as little money as possible

.

“Chicken is always on sale somewhere,” Faelten said. She has managed to keep her grocery bills to prepandemic levels, she said, but it takes a lot of work.

The price of food and household staples continues to weigh heavier on consumers’ minds than other economic concerns, although survey data indicate that those fears are ebbing. Some food-company executives have said that shoppers will adjust over time to higher prices, as they have in the past.

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