Four Ways to Feel Inflation Less in the Grocery Aisle

Overheard in the aisles of grocery stores across America, put back the butter. Our pocketbooks are pinched. And while you’d hope butter makes the final cut in the cart, sometimes even the staples come out. Ouch. 

As inflation continues to surge, Americans are finding that the prices they’re paying at the checkout are far outpacing the national inflation barometers, says this Fortune article from July 2023. The annual inflation rate hit 9.1% last month, but that doesn’t mean that Americans are seeing their bills or their grocery store receipts go up by 9% across the board. In most cases, the rise in prices has been far greater.

A recent CNN article states that in the 12-months ending in June, overall food prices rose 10.4%, the biggest annual increase since February 1981, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Grocery prices jumped 12.2% in the year ending in June, not adjusted for seasonal swings. In that period, nearly every individual item got more expensive, with some categories seeing dramatic increases. Eggs spiked 33.1%, flour jumped 19.2% and chicken went up 18.6%. Milk got 16.4% more expensive, and fruits and vegetables were 8.1% pricier. That butter in your cart: 4.8% pricier.

So what can a savvy consumer do to adjust their purchasing and consumption behaviors and habits to feel inflation’s sting a bit less? Here are a few tips from Frego for you:

1. Buy frozen foods when possible. In most cases the frozen version of foods like peas, carrots, potatoesare healthier and cheaper than the fresh version in the produce aisle. On the back end, there is also less potential for food waste and frozen doesn’t spoil before you have a chance to get to it.

2. Cook and prepare real meals at home. If you can commit to this, even if it is not 100% of the time, it will still make an impact. Likely, you’ll find yourself and your family feeling better, eating less processed foods, and avoiding the inflation hike at restaurants, brought about by food and labor price increases.

3. Support local when you can and shift to more vegetarian dishes and cut back on meat. For the ambitious, start a vegetable garden! These in combination positively impact the health of the immediate community you live in, your personal health, and the health of the planet. Win, win, win!

4. And this one, a perhaps biased tip of ours: Store and take your meals and snacks to go – office or school – in Frego. Our vibrant containers will find you looking forward to lunch, without the sadness of having packed your items in plastic.

At Frego, we’re following all of these consumer trends, and experiencing the impact of inflation ourselves. Despite being a Minnesota-based business, our suppliers are global. We’ve held as firm as possible, but have been forced to raise our retail prices as the raw material costs have gone up beyond what we can sustain. Also alarming has been the high fuel costs and surcharges that have caused us to pay more for import via ocean and land. High fuel costs also affect the high delivery costs of shipping orders, thus, we also had to raise slightly shipping costs, most of which we are absorbing. To deepen that ouch for consumers, labor shortages in warehouse and other services have affected delivery due times – so you might experience some delays.

All negativity aside, we like to think we’re part of the environmental and healthy planet solutions. We hope consumers will continue to seek more sustainability in general in their approach to food purchasing and consumption. Let’s weather inflation together and continue to learn and become better consumers and corporations - our planet and pocketbooks demand it!