Grocery shenanigans: Smaller size, same price?

[Subdivisions]

Jimmy Dean sausage customer compaint..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4RNb3tt0LM

[Incitatus]

1. Inflation is a bitch

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. yep. what about potato chip bags

[Odin2005]

23. Half air.

Inflated to "protect the contents", of course. :eyes:

[Toots]

24. Sometimes some deals are there if you look

For instance one brand of chips just changed from a three ounce bag to a two ounce bag and kept the same price $.79 per bag, however they kept the one ounce bag the same $.34 a bag, Now two one ounce bags are cheaper than one two ounce bag, It pays to check things out..

[blue_onyx]

26. The chip dip I buy got smaller too

I buy Dean's French Onion Dip Lite. The container is now about 1/3 smaller than it use to be.

[Hepburn]

33. Bags of chips used to be HUGE....

...and now? They look like a snack pack or a side for a sandwich.

Same price, tho.

[Liberal_in_LA]

39. I know! They are tiny now! Did the price of potatoes, salt, and oil soar?

[WonderGrunion]

3. Tuna went from 6oz to 5oz cans recently AND went up in price.

It means you don't have the same amount of tuna anymore as required by my older recipes. What a scam.

[Petrushka]

5. All of my olde tuna recipes call for 7-oz. cans of chunk-style . . . drained. How many ounces

. . . of water or oil went into those old 7-oz. cans? How much is in today's 5-oz. cans? :shrug:

Rather than purchase that water/oil "waste", I've been buying solid-pack tuna rather than
chunk-style. Yeah, they cost more; but, at least, I'm not wasting money on water or oil.

[starroute]

29. The 13.25 oz boxes of spaghetti are what bug me the most

I think somebody deliberately designed them to be a size that can't even come close to dividing into 4 oz amounts, so you have to keep buying more to round it out.

[TwilightGardener]

31. Noticed that. One can barely makes two sandwiches now, and casserole

requires three cans.

[DainBramaged]

4. Oreo cookies are now 18oz. instead of 22 oz.

Brown Gold coffee JUST went from a 16 0z. can to an 11.5 oz. can for the same price, the 18 lb. bag of Purina naturals cat food is now 16 lbs.

It goes on and on and unless we do something they will continue to steal from us.

[1]

10. "and unless we do something..." what do you suggest we do?

boycott smaller packages?

demand that they keep the package sizes the same and simply raise the price?

pass a law so they can't raise prices?

what should we do, exactly?

[Mariana]

12. Keep the package size and simply raise the price.

Be fucking honest instead of trying to deceive us by putting less product in the same size package as before. Not only is it sneaky, it screws up our recipes.

As far as "doing something" goes, we can refuse to buy from companies that do this, and write to them and tell them why.

[DainBramaged]

16. Stop buying the products and let them know you did, at least I'm

pro-active about it. Oreo's are one of my few indulgences, but I haven't bought them in nearly 8 months since they jacked with the price and packaging. Brown Gold got a letter from me in an old 16 oz can, Purina got a picture of my cats eating Meow Mix.


Is that good enough?

[lpbk2713]

21. One thing I have noticed about ice cream ...

I have noticed air pockets some times the size of golf balls in the 56 oz size (formerly ½ Gal size) and I'm not so sure that is any accident.

[Blue State Blues]

37. No accident -- they pump air into it

If you get a chance, pick up a quart or half-gallon of Trader Joe's ice cream -- I mean pick up, literally. It's heavy. (It's also tasty, if you want to pick it up in the other sense).

[Zoeisright]

6. This has been happening for decades.

Look at older cookbooks that specify container sizes. No packaged food is as large as it used to be.

[Phentex]

11. It's true...

and, as I said in another thread, they sometimes offer the old size and promote it as a bonus! 35% more FREE!

[bermudat]

7. Yoghurt went from 8oz to 6oz to now 4oz but remaining the same price.

[buzzycrumbhunger]

8. Ice cream is one of the most flagrant

One of those rare occasions I splurged on a half gallon of frozen yogurt and damned if that doesn't mean 1.2 L now. I guess they figure if they also switch to metric, we'll be too confused to figure out it's half as big as it used to be.

[AnneD]

9. Are they just NOW noticing this????????

They started doing this full tilt when gas prices went up during the Bush admin.

I always calculate my purchases by unit volume so it shows up right away. The stores use to post unit prices but they have stopped doing it.,,another way to keep you an ignorant consumer.

to cal. unit price :
take unit of measurement and divide by cost= price per ounce, pound, can, or what ever.

I keep a record the unit prices of my commonly used ingredients by stores. It makes it a breeze to tell the true sales and worth my time.



I thought the video was a hoot. Being from Texas myself-I could feel his pain. Dad did heavy labor and wanted a good breakfast before he left for work. That rant could have been him. No bowl of cereal for Dad.

[michreject]

15. It was going on way before then

Candy in the 60's comes to mind.

[Obamanaut]

13. This has been going on for ages. Notice the concave bottoms

of many of the jars you buy - peanut butter for example.

[Chemisse]

14. I splurged on ice cream recently

And we - shockingly - wolfed the whole thing down in one night. It turned out that it was not a half gallon, but was 1.6 liters (note the clever switch to metrics to conceal the change).

[annabanana]

17. NOTHING comes in a 1 pound can anymore. .

13 1/2 oz, maybe, 14 1/2 oz

[Selatius]

18. I wonder if the federal government even makes note of this when they calculate annual inflation.

If a can is 5 ounces one year and next year it is 4 ounces but the same price, does it even show up in inflation reporting?

[Yo_Mama]

28. It's often missed

I calculate my own inflation numbers based on my own retail price survey, and somehow my numbers are always different than the government's.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

19. Folgers coffee from 1 lb ->13 oz -> 11.5 oz.& Ie is also creating havoc on some of my recipes

[SoCalDem]

41. remember the old recipes that called for can size?

I have a cookbook from 1920-something that is full of recipes that call for a #303 can of this or that or a #10

Equivalent chart
http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blhelp7.htm

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

43. Wow! That's the first time I've seen that. The oldest cookbook

I've had in my possession was from the 30s (sold it on eBay) and it had regular measurements. The oldest one I have now is a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60s.

[Cleobulus]

20. As others have said, this is nothing new, and its been a longstanding practice...

for many different food manufacturers for decades. Most famous example would be the old Hershey's nickle bar.

[Odin2005]

22. You just noiced this?

this has been going on, like, forever.

[asdjrocky]

25. But there's no inflation.

Remember that.

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. That's been happening in the UK for a good while now. "Must preserve margins, you know...

.... have the clamour of the shareholders for ever bigger profits to think of."

[conscious evolution]

30. Mayonnaise also

Only thing is is the jar is the same size.What they are doing is whipping it up with more nitrogen in it so that you actually get less in the same size jar.

[starroute]

32. It also means you're buying more packaging with your food

More crap for the landfills, more plastic using up the oil reserves...

I remember the days when everything advertised "Large Economy Size!" Now there seem to be fewer and fewer products where that's even an option.

[Mariana]

48. Sometimes the larger sizes

cost more per unit of product than the smaller sizes. I've noticed that for years. The store figures you'll just assume the bigger package is more economical.

[seabeyond]

34. food club. i want to knwo about stores kicking out known brand and going to their brand

food club is the cheap product with labeling copied from the popular brands. i want to know if these are the stores product, ergo making that much more product.

in my store last week, i could not get jiffy cornbread or kraft jack cheese. to major products. more and more our store is eliminating other products forcing us to buy the inferior brand.

so dishonest and manipulative. i hate it. and without complaint, the more they do, the more we buy this product, they will eliminate competition for their inferior brand

[flyarm]

they started it years ago with coffee..used to be 1 pound..then they made it 13 oz..

and packaged it in plastic instead of tin..and no one said a damn thing..it has been done with paper towels and toilet paper and laundry detergent..the list goes on and on..

[tyedyeto]

50. I remember the coffee 'down-sizing' many years ago

It's nothing new except for when it happens to a product which one buys on a regular basis. Recently, there are too many products that have succumbed to the pressures of big business and down-sized their product while inflating the price.

[DemReadingDU]

35. a 'pint' of ice cream

is now 15 oz. nope. just 14 oz.

a 'half gallon' of ice cream is now 1.5 quarts.

[Gormy Cuss]

36. I can understand the decision to sell the product in smaller quantities, but deceptive packaging

should be illegal. First off, keeping the package the same size tricks the eye into thinking that there hasn't been a change in volume of product. Only shoppers who are being extra careful will notice the difference in the store and that's intentional. Secondly, it's a waste of materials to build in bigger air pockets or add more water rather than retooling the package size. It's not as if they ever intend to return to the original weight/volume after all -- or maybe they DO think it's possible if enough customers complain about the change.

[Mrs. Overall]

38. I just bought a can of cranberry sauce--

Now 14 oz. instead of 16 oz. and a higher price.

[drm604]

40. His complaint is that he can only buy the 12 ounce size, because 16 ounce is no longer available.

Also, he states that he doesn't mind paying more, he just wants 16 ounces for a meal.

So why doesn't he just buy 4 packages? He could cook 1 and 1/3 packages (16 ounces) per meal. If they only eat sausage once a week (or once a month or whatever) freeze the uncooked portions. Problem solved.

That said, I agree with all the comments about reducing the package size rather than simply raising the price. It screws up recipes, among other things.

[bridgit]

42. Rich Hall called it Snack-mosphere. Bag of chips 1/3 full the rest is snack-mosphere...

And they charge you for that air bubble too :rant:

[DainBramaged]

44. This is an excellent thread want to keep it kicked and recommended.

[Roon]

45. I like banquet dinner swedish meatballs

A couple of years ago, you got five meatballs. Today I only get four meatballs. What a ripoff..

[gleaner]

46. Yup...

I'm noticing that on all kinds of products. Sometimes it is smaller size and more expensive too. In addition has anyone else noticed that when they downsize your product they make it harder to open when it is repackaged?

Maybe they think we won't notice the size change (we are all such children, you know) or if we do it will be so hard to open that we will just be grateful to get it and forget about the size completely.

[dixiegrrrrl]

47. Here he is, happy now, back to 16 oz size.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go3Uvxdatj8&NR=1

[JVS]

52. LOL!

[Vidar]

49. SOP for the damnable marketing wonks.

[Paula Sims]

51. Just one comparison trip to Ultra Foods convinced me

At our local Ultra, yes, the prices are lower but that's because the packages are smaller. Comparing ounce for ounce, it's actually more expensive.