By My neighbor was telling me recently about how she’d started shopping at three different grocery stores on the same day to get the best prices across categories — produce at one place, staples at another, meat at a third. She spent an extra hour and a half doing it. She said she saves about $60 a month.
I don’t know if the math works out when you factor in her time. I don’t think she’s done that calculation. What I do know is that a year ago she shopped at one store and never thought about it this hard.
Where Grocery Prices Actually Went
Grocery prices rose sharply between 2021 and 2023, in some categories more than others. Eggs became almost a cultural reference point for inflation because the price increases were so dramatic and so visible — a category people buy every week, with a price that at moments was nearly triple what it had been.
Meat, cooking oils, and processed foods also saw significant increases. Fresh produce moved but with more variation depending on category and season. Store-brand basics rose, but often less than name brands.
By 2024 and into 2025, the rate of grocery inflation had slowed considerably. But as with the broader inflation story: slowing is not reversing. The prices that went up largely stayed up. The grocery bill that used to be $400 a month for a family might be $550 or $600 now, rising slightly each year rather than dramatically — but from a new, higher baseline.
How Families Are Adjusting
The behavioral changes are widespread and, at this point, fairly well documented. Private label and store brand purchasing has risen sharply — people who were loyal to name brands have traded down and, in many cases, discovered that the quality difference wasn’t worth the price difference. That shift in behavior has hurt some major consumer brands significantly.
Meal planning has increased. Eating out has become more scrutinized — the restaurant bill that used to feel like an occasional indulgence has gotten expensive enough that some families have reclassified it from discretionary spending to something that needs active justification.
Protein substitution — choosing chicken over beef, eggs over meat, legumes over animal protein — has been a documented behavioral shift as relative price changes created new incentives. The egg price surge paradoxically pushed some people toward eggs as a substitute for more expensive protein, which was then disrupted when egg prices themselves spiked.
The Shrinkflation Reality
One of the more quietly infuriating aspects of the grocery situation is shrinkflation — the practice of reducing product size or weight while maintaining the price. The chip bag gets lighter. The pasta box has fewer ounces. The yogurt container is now 5.3 oz instead of 6. The price stays the same or rises slightly.
This is technically not price inflation in the way it gets measured, because the unit count is different. But for the person standing in the grocery store buying the thing, it absolutely functions as a price increase — you’re getting less for the same or more money. And it’s been pervasive enough that consumer advocacy groups and regulators have paid increasing attention to it.
The Budget Share Squeeze
The hardest part of the grocery price story for lower-income households is budget share. Lower-income families spend a higher proportion of their income on food than higher-income families — sometimes double or more, as a percentage. When grocery prices rise, the impact is therefore more severe for people who have less income to absorb it.
This is the mechanism by which food inflation functions as a regressive tax. A $100-per-month increase in grocery costs for a household earning $150,000 is a minor inconvenience. The same $100 increase for a household earning $45,000 is a genuine crisis — it might mean choosing between groceries and utilities, using credit cards for basics, or depending on food banks.
Food bank usage has risen substantially over the past several years, including among households that would not have described themselves as food insecure before 2020. That’s the real story behind the aggregate price data — the people who couldn’t adjust their way out of it.