Is it just me, or have other people noticed a sudden spike in grocery prices?
Normally our weekly shop for the four of us comes in at around £55-75 … pushing £80 if I’ve been a bit extravagant (or had every household cleaner run out at the same time).
Over the last month it has suddenly shifted to being between £75-90… sometimes pushing £95, yet I’ve been scouring the receipts and we’ve not been buying anything different or unusual to explain the dramatic increase.
I menu plan on a five week rota so theoretically our food bills should stay pretty steady. Going to have to reassess other household budgets if this is going to be a continued trend…
21 responses so far ↓
1 Dom // 21st Apr 2008 at 5:30 pm
Food prices are going up everywhere. The only solution is to not eat.
2 Lisa // 21st Apr 2008 at 5:37 pm
You are not alone – ours have increased by the same sort of amount. Get an allotment!
3 Kitchen Witch // 21st Apr 2008 at 5:52 pm
No, you’re not alone, as Lisa says – we’re spending about £10 – 15 more per week, somehow, yet not actually getting anything different either. Is all most tiresome.
Oh, and first-time comment – hello! :)
4 Mis L // 21st Apr 2008 at 6:00 pm
I noticed this when I came back, I don’t buy regular items but everything seemed more expensive.
5 Colin Brooks // 21st Apr 2008 at 6:25 pm
I have been changing my grocery shopping habits and so have been buying totally different things over the past couple of weeks. I hadn’t noticed it. That is a big increase! I thought it was just my healthier diet costing me more!
6 Pete // 21st Apr 2008 at 6:33 pm
It’s not your imagination. It’s a global food crisis, and it’s only just begun.
7 Karen // 21st Apr 2008 at 7:36 pm
Another option is meat-reducing, which also has other sustainable lifestyle benefits.
8 Bealers // 21st Apr 2008 at 8:46 pm
30%+ rise in prices on staples such as bread & milk, 15% plus price rises for energy and if you, like us have to pay for fuel oil for heating and cooking then you’ll notice huge rises in costs there too. I think most people are noticing huge petrol increase whilst all the while the RPI is only currently around 3.1% such a ‘high’ number that Merv will need to write to Alistair Darling soon an explain why it’s above the BoE target.
They* are so paranoid that people will start noticing and then start demanding wage rises that’ll feeding back and further increase pressure on an the (already IMO f00ked) economy that it’s being downplayed like you wouldn’t believe.
Anyway, the daily Mash summarises it much more eloquently than I could in their usual genius manner:
http://tinyurl.com/4tx8sr
* For the record I am not generally a conspiracy theorist
9 DG // 21st Apr 2008 at 9:00 pm
Bealers – great link :)
I’m not surprised; the government has been fudging their ‘official’ inflation figure for many years to the point where it’s pretty much meaningless as it doesn’t include anything useful.
Guess it’s time to buy SmartPrice stuff and wean Kat off her confectionery addiction!
10 anabels // 22nd Apr 2008 at 5:23 am
This is a world wide thing. Here in NZ there are bleats in the paper about the price of cheese. seeing as we produce a lot of the stuff everything thinks it should be cheap but of course the producers aren’t going to sell it at anything other than current (expensive) price!
11 Lisa // 22nd Apr 2008 at 9:30 am
You could buy normal block-shaped cheese?
12 Pewari // 22nd Apr 2008 at 9:38 am
In general, I should say that I’m happy with our current diet. We have a fair amount of cooking from scratch, I don’t buy organic as I’d rather have greater quantity of veg (but I do buy free range chickens and eggs), we don’t eat a whole lot of meat and I’m not really prepared to change our diet as such (especially as I’m finally winning the battle to get the kids to eat THIS one).
I just have to reallocate the budgets! I really wanted to find out if this was happening for everyone or if I was just imagining it somehow…
Lisa: cheeky moo. I do buy normal block cheese with the exception of mozzarella which I buy pre-grated cos I can NEVER grate the damn stuff.
Kitchen Witch: hello and welcome :) Nice to see you!
Bealers: that is scary stuff and I think your right :( Lots of belt-tightening to come, I think.
Thank you for all your comments :)
13 Pete // 22nd Apr 2008 at 10:28 am
Japan has run out of butter.
14 Blue Witch // 22nd Apr 2008 at 11:39 am
As we don’t eat meat or buy bread or eggs, and grow a lot of our own veg year-round, and I use Aldi, the local market, and Costco (plus Sainsbury’s for BOGOFs and the odd thing I can’t get cheaper elsewhere), I haven’t noticed as big a rise as others are saying.
If you eat rice and have the storage space, buy some extra as it’s already gone up 50% in the last few months and is predicted to go up another 75% before the end of the year.
15 Spinky // 22nd Apr 2008 at 12:57 pm
I am just impressed that you have a rota menu system.
16 Ys // 22nd Apr 2008 at 3:46 pm
weirdly, our shopping bill went down when everyone said there’s was going up. i don’t know how that happened. sometimes we have a tight week (usually when everything runs out at once) but we do okay. probably jinxed us now!!
17 Pewari // 23rd Apr 2008 at 7:12 am
Looks like the papers now have the story: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article3799327.ece (you heard it here first at the Prattle!) Bad news is, prices are set to rise even further.
Still, at least we actually *have* food in the cupboard :(
Spinky: don’t be impressed – it’s because I’m fundamentally lazy and want the food planning and shopping completed as quickly as possible.
18 Spinky // 23rd Apr 2008 at 8:03 am
I must admit, I go to the indoor market in Birmingham to stock up on meat and fish. £40 will fill the freezer for a month, I then go to Lidl for grocery shopping (no stigma for me as i grew up in Germany where Lidl and Aldi were the norm) and finally Tesco/Sainsburys for anything else I need. I tend to cook lots of weird and wonderful dishes as I enjoy cooking and get bored easily – not as easy with children I guess.
19 Pewari // 23rd Apr 2008 at 8:14 am
That sounds excellent :) I do need a bigger freezer at some point, I think… then I can do similar with the meat thing.
At the end of the day, I suppose it’s what you enjoy doing. I loathe the whole process of planning of shopping for food, but I enjoy cooking and eating it :)
Would much rather spend more time on the cooking and family mealtimes and get the shopping part done with a few clicks and then it turns up on the doorstep!
I have done the shopping at independent stores thing, but besides the problem of it being time consuming, I also didn’t enjoy the process as I was repeatedly told I would. It didn’t add any enjoyment to the food, for me. Nor do I like any kind of shopping as a leisure activity (I’m guessing browsing the online Amazon store doesn’t count).
The shopping once a month for meat sounds doable – but the trick is finding a decent quality but cheap source where I can buy in bulk for the month…
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