Though the Great Recession is officially over, many people are still feeling the strain of tightened credit and high unemployment. In addition, the rising cost of commodities is making food and fuel more expensive. Some large consumer goods firms are caught in the pinch: The cost of raw materials is going up, but they don't want to be seen raising consumer prices at a time when many Americans are feeling a bit discouraged. So, what to do? Try making it look like you are selling the same thing at the same price, but put just a little bit less in the package. Yep. It's a fact.
Rural Ways buys its tortilla chips from Frito Lay. They are called "Santitas" and they come in a fat yellow package. The packaging always looks the same, and the price never changes, but the quantity of material in the bag moves steadily downward. Recently we noticed that each bag now contains 12 ounces, down from 13 or 14 last year. The price is the same, the packaging is the same, but the cost of our food has now gone up. The trend is probably not confined to corn chips, so . . . consumer beware. (See? Rural Ways is the place to go for good, honest value: Big ideas; small prices.)
I've noticed the same thing with snickers bars. they seem to have shrink just a bit over the last few years. and those snack sized snickers, they are now about the 2/3's the size they were when I was kid and would sneak two after school before going to soccer practice.
ReplyDeleteI hear milwaukee is developing an 11oz can.
I offer that the place to fight "shrinkage" is through COSTCO "gluttony". I am not sure that Rural Ways would embrace Urban (or Semi-Urban, in the Benson's case) Methods, but when you have to buy a case of ketchup for 3 people, it is hard to distinguish the loss of content in each container. You may be losing the retail battle but you don't know it - bliss resulting from ignorance. The Semi-Urban Method...
ReplyDeleteYou both, in a way, bring up a good point: Is it not better for the American waistline to be offered smaller portions? I think it is, although my opinion does not apply to Marathon-Man-Lannom who has never been overweight a day in his life. So, I don't mind smaller portions, I just want to pay less for them. As for COSTCO, Rural Ways has a semi-membership through our in-laws, and we sometimes benefit from a truckload of toilet paper. Of course, the real curse of COSTCO is that, while you pay less per ounce, you have to buy a bigger house to store all the savings.
ReplyDeleteI'm (as I type) eating tortilla chips from my 12 oz. bag of Santitas. My wife likes the white corn version better so that's what we get.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel better, you can get an acre-sized piece of pizza for a few bucks at Costco. That should make up for the shorting we're all getting on our ice cream, snikers, and chips. (and cereal and ...)