Hundreds of grocery items 20% more costly – Which?

CONSUMERS have seen the price of hundreds of popular grocery items rise by more than 20% over the past two years alongside a drop in supermarket discounts and budget ranges, a study has found.

Which? found that the price of 265 groceries soared by more than a fifth at the same time as the availability of supermarket discounts and budget ranges – upon which consumers are increasingly relying – fell.

The watchdog analysed the prices of more than 21,000 groceries over two years, comparing their average prices at eight major supermarkets between the start of December 2021 and the end of February 2022 with the same period two years previously.

Items included Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes Cereal 500g, which increased by 21.4% at Tesco, Asda’s 250g Own Label Closed Cup Mushrooms, up 21.4%, and Cathedral City Extra Mature Cheddar 350g, which rose by 21.1% at Ocado.

Across 20 categories of groceries, fizzy drinks saw the biggest average price rise at 5.9%, followed by butters and spreads (4.9%), energy drinks (4.8%) and milk (4.6%).

Groceries with the lowest inflation included chocolate (1.4%), fresh fruit (1.6%), biscuits (1.8%) and vegetables (1.9%).

The study also found that across different supermarkets there have been fewer discounts, limited availability of own-label budget ranges and products decreasing in size but remaining the same price over the same period.

The number of promotions fell across every one of the 20 categories the watchdog studied, including the number of discounts on bottled water down 14.7% and on vegetables, 11%.

Meanwhile, the size of savings in promotions that did still happen was also cut in threequarters of the categories. This was most pronounced for butters and spreads, where the size of savings fell by 3.6% over the two years, followed by vegetables (3.5%) and crisps (2.9%).

Examples of ‘shrinkflation’ – reducing the size of product while maintaining the original price – included Nescafe Azera Americano decaffeinated instant coffee shrinking from 100g to 90g and Walkers Classic Variety crisps dropping from 24 bags in a multipack to 22 bags.

Which?’s investigation also found that own-brand budget ranges – which have seen the lowest level of inflation at just 0.2% compared with 3.2% for own-label premium ranges – have become less available.