Shrinkflation

 

 

No one is going to be surprised to hear that prices have been going up lately. Post-Covid inflation is bringing price increases across a wide range of goods and services from gas for your car to food for your family. What you may not know is that food prices have been going up for years, long before the current bout of inflation. The cause? Shrinkflation.

Shrinkflation, also known as grocery shrink ray or contents downsizing, is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, or even sometimes reformulating or reducing quality, while their prices remain the same or even go up a bit. You aren't paying more, but you are getting less. And unsurprisingly, manufacturers carefully disguise this from you. For example, packaging is usually identical, it just contains less. "New and Improved" often means nothing more than less product in a redesigned package.

Instead of increasing the price of a product, something that would be immediately evident to consumers, producers reduce the size of the product while maintaining the same price. The absolute price of the product doesn’t go up, but the price per unit of weight or volume has increased. The small reduction in quantity is usually unnoticed by consumers (at least that’s what the manufacturer hopes). Producers always indicate the weight, volume, or quantity of their products on packaging labels. So it’s not illegal – it’s just sneaky.

Some examples....

Coca-Cola: in 2014, Coca-cola reduced the size of its large bottle from 2 liters to 1.75 liters. The price did not change.

Toblerone: in 2010, Kraft slashed the weight of Toblerone bars from 200 grams to 170 grams. The price did not change.

Tetley: in 2010, Tetley reduced the number of teabags sold in one box from 100 to 88. The price did not change.

Toothpaste: a tube of toothpaste used to contain 7.2 pounces of product. Now nearly all brands contain only 5 ounces... but the size of the tube, like the price, is unchanged.

Other common victims of shrinkflation include breakfast cereals, toilet paper, canned tuna, ice cream, coffee, peanut butter and canned anything.

There is not a lot that you can do about these ubiquitous hidden price increases. But you can at least be aware of them by checking the "unit cost" information that is posted by grocers along the edgers of their shelves.