‘SHRINKFLATION’
Firms hide hike$ by reducing sizes
America’s favorite brands are suffering from “shrinkage.”
Companies are quietly downsizing product packages — from toilet paper to coffee tins — without lowering prices amid the country’s worsening inflation problem.
This so-called “shrinkflation” means revelers buying a Party Size bag of Fritos Scoops will have to invite fewer friends over, as the snack’s package has shrunk from 18 ounces to 15.5.
Kleenex buyers, meanwhile, will have to figure out how to sneeze less this allergy season, as the number of tissues included has gone down from 65 to just 60.
Companies are pulling the move because they know shoppers notice price increases — but don’t keep track of net weights or volumes, said Edgar Dworsky, a Massachusettsbased consumer advocate.
“We happen to be in a tidal wave at the moment because of inflation,” added Dworsky.
Perfect storm
Dworsky says package size is plunging due to a perfect storm of economic turbulence.
Global consumer price inflation was up an estimated 7% in May, a pace that will likely continue through September, according to S&P Global.
Some companies have busted out tricks to disguise the downsizing, such as marking smaller packages with bright new labels, Dworsky said.
Other companies engaging in shrinkflation include Chobani, whose Flips yogurt cups have deflated from 5.3 ounces to 4.5, and Gatorade, whose bottles have gone from 32 ounces to 28.
PepsiCo, the parent company of Gatorade, says its smaller bottle size has been in the works for years and isn’t related to the current economic climate.
And Nestlé-brand coffee lovers are going to need a second cup to get their fix, as the company’s Nescafe Azera Americano coffee tins have shrunk from 100 grams to 90.
Cottonelle Ultra Clean Care toilet paper has reduced the number for sheets per roll from 340 to 312.
Folgers coffee also downsized its 51-ounce container to 43.5, saying it’s using new, lighter-weight beans.
Earth’s Best Organic Sunny Day Snack Bars were reduced from eight to seven bars per box, and Domino’s Pizza has reduced the size of its 10-piece chicken wings to eight pieces for the same $7.99 carryout price, citing the rising cost of chicken.
Alex Aspacher, who shops for his family of four in Haskins, Ohio, said higher wages for grocery workers led to shrinking packages of Swiss cheese locally.
“I was prepared for it to a degree, but there hasn’t been a limit to it so far,” Aspacher said. “I hope we find that ceiling pretty soon.”
A fourth-grade student who survived the May 24 mass shooting at an Uvalde, Texas,
elementary school recalled to House lawmakers in stark language Wednesday how she smeared the blood of a friend over herself, played dead and made a desperate call to 911 to plead for help from police even as the 18-year-old shooter continued on his rampage.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, told the House Oversight Committee her teacher made eye contact with the shooter when she went to lock the door after she heard noise in the hallway.
The teacher told the students to take cover behind her desk and in a pile of backpacks, Cerrillo recalled, before the gunman shot out the “little window” in the door and went into another classroom that was connected to hers by another door.
In pre-recorded video testimony, Miah described what happened next.
“He told my teacher ‘Goodnight’ and shot her in the head,” she said, speaking in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “And then he shot some of my classmates.”
As Miah hid in a pile of backpacks, she recounted, gunman Salvador Ramos “shot my friend that was next to me.”
“I thought he was going to come back into the room. So I grabbed a little blood, and I put it all over me,” Cerrillo added.
‘She is not the same’
After smearing the blood over herself, Miah tried to remain quiet until she got her teacher’s cellphone and called 911. “I told her that we needed help and to send the police in our classroom,” Miah said she told the dispatcher.
Asked on the video if she felt safe at school, Miah shook her head no. “I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.
Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, appeared before the panel in person to tell lawmakers his daughter has changed since the
shooting that killed 19 of her classmates and two teachers.
“Today I come because I could have lost my baby girl,” the father said. “She is not the same little girl that I used to play with and run around with and do everything, because she was daddy’s little girl.”
The House panel held the hearing in the wake of the massacre in Uvalde and the May 14 mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo that killed 10 black people.
The mother of Lexi Rubio, a 10-year-old Uvalde victim, recounted that hours before the shooting, she had attended a ceremony at the school where her daughter received a good citizenship award and was lauded for getting A’s in class.
“That photo, her last photo ever, was taken at approximately 10:54 a.m.,” Kimberly Mata-Rubio told the lawmakers as an image of her daughter was shown. “To celebrate, we promised to get her ice cream that evening. We told her we loved her and we would pick her up after school. I can still see her, walking with us toward the exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise. And then we left.”