Another “Old” in the grocery checkout lane ahead of me asked the clerk, “Is this the airport?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, baffled.
“I’d expect to pay this much for a bottle of water there, but not here,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and the man moved on.
Food costs are skyrocketing. The Fed says inflation is easing and I have no reason to dispute the numbers. Perhaps, too, they have wrong data because few staff have been in a grocery store for some time.
Facts aside, what matters is our perception. What the Fed says means little next to what we experience in stores.
Most of us learned supply-and-demand basics back in school. If hurricanes closed oil refineries somewhere, gasoline costs would leap because, at least temporarily, they’d be in short supply.
If bad weather damaged Brazil’s coffee crop or fruit harvests here, the same. Bird flu made cost of eggs rise and so on.
Plus, it’s not just supply-and-demand for source products. For groceries, it affects transportation, labor, taxes, utilities and more costs. Then there are theft and measures to protect against it. Since stores installed self-checkout kiosks, retail theft has become a multi-billion-dollar business.
The checkout clerk’s not the enemy in any of this. One store me prices have risen so much at his store that, even with an employee discount he couldn’t afford to shop there.
Nor are store managers, many of whom work for much-larger corporations sold to hedge-fund managers stripping them of their best assets before selling what’s left to another owner.
At best, grocery stores keep the doors open on about 2- percent profit. Rarely does any trickle down to shelf-stockers, checkout clerks or the cleanup crew.
“Olds” like me recall ma-and-pop grocery stores handy in our neighborhoods. They were often small and owners lived in small upstairs apartments.
Schoolchildren might stop on their way home to spend a whole nickel on a Three Musketeers bar or a dime for a glass pop bottle taken from a chest cooler. Owner knew you by name and who they could trust or was known to have sticky fingers.
Luxury and elegance were foreign words. Aisles were packed tight and choices limited. Bath soap was usually Life Buoy, coffee was Maxwell House, Folgers or, sometimes Chase and Sanborn. Soup was what choice of Campbell’s cans was left.
If you asked Mae for Blue Mountain Coffee from Jamaica, she would give you an icy death stare that could put global warming back several decades.
We have more choices now and too many sometimes. Last winter Madame Dewey asked me to pick up a jug of Tide laundry soap. I found the right aisle but there waiting were dozens of Tide and other brand varieties. Ditto cornflakes, soda pop, on and on. Open containers at home, they are half product and half air.
Hedge fund managers, if anyone, are the ones who deserve our ire but if they are privately held, good luck finding out their names.
We can look in the mirror as well. Having tasted joys of fruit out of season, we’ve become addicted to added costs bringing it here. We prefer better meat cuts, pre-packaged desserts, pop in plastic bottles … even ice cream isn’t a special treat but is manufactured by a food group.
None of this comes to mind as we shuffle forward to the conveyor belt. We will growl at the price hikes, real or imaginary, hiss to ourselves “What rip-off” as we fill our carts and be seething by the time we pay.
Should the government name Food Czar to mandate price controls? Sure, bigger government; that will bring costs down.
We all have a hand in this, but before starting a revolution that may make matters even worse, cool down and think of ways cut costs by buying less of what we don’t need.
