Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US grocery slowdown is real

bain.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 150 posts

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#71

Post by [deleted] »

fluidcruft wrote: post #59
gustavus wrote: post #14

> Our analysis of NielsenIQ grocery data shows a trend in negative unit growth starting in mid-2025, masked by steady price increases. But since February 2026, units have stepped down sharply enough to pull sales lower across the US. Prices are still climbing 2% to 3% year over year, Seems pretty straightforward. They increased their price to try and make up for losses, which in turn mean less people purchasing, whic…

Yeah it's real rocket science at work here. Grocery bill keeps going up and less and lower quality food comes home. It's a real mystery.

[deleted]

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#72

Post by xnx »

estearum wrote: post #23
billfor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just lead with saying that obesity rates have tripled since the 1960s and maybe they will start declining a bit now.

Very well-supported argument by the fact that obesity tends to accumulate in the well-off who can afford lots of food, while poor folks tend to be slender. So yeah, clearly lower spending on food would reduce obesity.

Cheap GLP-1's will probably finally bend this curve for lower incomes. Muscle-mass (via paid meds) will be the new marker of wealth/status for upper incomes.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#73

Post by silisili »

kart23 wrote: post #33

cooking one or two portions at home using quality ingredients from stores in SF is literally as pricey as eating out nowadays. doesn't surprise me that people are trying to get their dollars to stretch further by buying in bulk, planning ahead more consciously, etc.

Honestly, it's always been that way for a lot of things. Ten years ago I remember trying to make the ultimate home pizza, spent over $30 in ingredients and realized it's cheaper to buy out. Same with hamburgers - unless you can use all of the ingredients to make 5 or 6.

Restaurants have always been rather low margin, and they're buying ingredients a heckofa lot cheaper than a single shopper can.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#74

Post by 9x39 »

altairprime wrote: post #54
mrob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they don't eat all the banannas before tomorrow, they will go bad This one specifically has a good solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_bread

The missing datapoint is that households are having to work more labor-hours per banana every year for decades, so the energy necessary to cook banana bread is in direct competition with the energy necessary to purchase bananas. Atomic Era assumptions that a household has the time, energy, capability, appliances, and electricity budget to cook banana bread no longer reliably hold in the U.S. and cannot be taken for g…

If the point is that cost/calorie has risen too much, it's substantially worse in the cost/calorie sense to eat prepared food out of the home versus cook at home.

As an aside, a quickbread like banana bread happens to be one of the simplest to make with some of the cheapest shelf-stable ingredients, and almost every home has an oven and access to the ingredients. For those who like it, I highly recommend this recipe (Mark Bittmans):

===

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, plus some for greasing the pan

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¾ cup sugar

2 eggs

3 very ripe bananas, mashed with a fork until smooth

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

½ cup grated dried unsweetened coconut

===

Step 1

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan.

Step 2

Mix together the dry ingredients. With a hand mixer, a whisk, or in the food processor, cream the butter and beat in the eggs and bananas. Stir this mixture into the dry ingredients; stir just enough to combine (it’s okay if there are lumps). Gently stir in the vanilla, nuts, and coconut.

Step 3

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, until nicely browned. A toothpick inserted into the center of the bread will come out fairly clean when it is done, but because of the bananas this bread will remain moister than most. Do not overcook. Cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#75

Post by darth_avocado »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #62
darth_avocado wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything costs too much. I went to the grocery store yesterday I spent $50 to get a packet of bread, a dozen eggs, two yogurts, two yellow onions, a jalapeno, two tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. This covers breakfast for 2 days for my partner and I. In 2022, $150 would fetch the entire week’s groceries for the two of us. We are paying more, while having to change what we eat with cheaper/unhealthier options. Other…

Where are you located? I think even NYCs groceries are not that expensive.

SF Bay Area. I will say that these are not Costco prices or a store where I’d be couponing, but it’s not Whole Foods either. I would love to go to Costco but unfortunately I do not have the space to accommodate the bulk quantities that I’d have to buy and consume.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#76

Post by Brybry »

darth_avocado wrote: post #56
Avicebron wrote: post #3

They should just lead with people don't have any money to buy things because wages aren't increasing to match living expenses. It cuts back some of the fig leaves

Everything costs too much. I went to the grocery store yesterday I spent $50 to get a packet of bread, a dozen eggs, two yogurts, two yellow onions, a jalapeno, two tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. This covers breakfast for 2 days for my partner and I. In 2022, $150 would fetch the entire week’s groceries for the two of us. We are paying more, while having to change what we eat with cheaper/unhealthier options. Other…

I feel like some of that is maybe shopping at the wrong place. Which the article I guess covers by saying people are addressing by changing retailers to save money.

Where I am in the US, you can get a dozen eggs for ~$2 at Walmart. A loaf of bread with 22 slices is like $2 to $6 depending on store brand vs name brand. The canned refried beans I buy are still $1.30 to $1.50 for 4-5 servings.

Some stuff is way too expensive (beef) but other food items seem at normal prices to me.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#77

Post by fluidcruft »

wahern wrote: post #52
dyauspitr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat is like $30/lb. What a joke, I see almost no one at the butcher counter in grocery stores anymore.

AFAIU, when beef prices started to spike a year or two ago, ranchers decided to cash in and slaughter much of their herd, including breeding stock. This was on top of a decades-long decline in herd size, and a recent drought that has driven up costs of maintaining a herd--another reason why they decided to cull and cash-in. The current situation will be the new normal for at least the next several years. Chicken hasn…

There's also a screwworm outbreak going on.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#78

Post by irishcoffee »

entropyie wrote: post #50
hadlock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I got married our food waste probably tripled. My food waste as a single guy was significantly less than married. When I had kids it probably tripled again. Much like a horse to water, you cannot explain to a 3 year old that if they don't eat all the banannas before tomorrow, they will go bad. We probably throw out 1-2 lbs of fruit a week, which is ~100 lbs a year right there. The kid might have ate 2 lbs of blu…

I have two kids and this is pure bollox. They'll eat what they are given if they are hungry enough. Or eat the leftovers yourself. Cook the fruit and make compote. We never throw out edible food, virtually zero waste. Just make an effort.

Same here, 3 kids, we don’t waste food. As an aside, we’re all slender. We just figured out how much of what to buy each week, plan our meals, etc. I also personally like eating leftovers for both breakfast and a packed lunch, which probably helps a bit.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#79

Post by indoorfish »

irishcoffee wrote: post #70
dyauspitr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat is like $30/lb. What a joke, I see almost no one at the butcher counter in grocery stores anymore.

We buy a side of beef at a time from a farm down the street for $6/lb, up from $4 a few years ago. Can’t buy beef any other way.

$7.35/lb where I am with a $600 deposit. It ends up being about $2k all things considered. It may even out, but a lot of folks don't have that kind of money around, ~5% of a yearly salary isn't nothing for a lot of people.

I completely forgot about needing a chest freezer and space for a chest freezer..that's also not nothing.

Re: The US grocery slowdown is real

#80

Post by xnx »

Consumers have been optimizing for convenience over being value shoppers.

Grocery prices at Aldi, Walmart, Costco are amazingly low, especially when accounting for the freshness, quality, and variety of foods today vs. 30 years ago.

Post reply on HN