America’s Shrinking Food Wraps, by Kate Pickert at Time.com, via Yahoo! News. I read this last week, but Frangela reminded me about this morning on the radio as they were filling in for Stephanie Miller.
. . . is it possible that the amount of food Americans are buying is, in fact… shrinking? Well, yes. Soaring commodity and fuel prices are driving up costs for manufacturers; faced with a choice between raising prices (which consumers would surely notice) or quietly putting fewer ounces in the bag, carton or cup (which they generally don’t) manufacturers are choosing the latter. This month, Kellogg’s started shipping Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks containing an average of 2.4 fewer ounces per box.
Similar reductions have recently happened or are on the horizon for many other products: Tropicana orange juice containers are shrinking from 96 ounces to 89; Wrigley’s is dropping its the 17-stick PlenTPak in favor of the 15-stick Slim Pack; Dial soap bars now weigh half an ounce less, and that’s even before they melt in the shower. Containers of Country Crock spread, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Edy’s and Breyer’s ice cream have all slimmed down as well (although that may not necessarily be a bad thing).
“People are just more sensitive to changes in price than changes in quantity,” says Harvard Business School Professor John Gourville, who studies consumer decision-making. “Most people can tell you how much a box of cereal costs, but they have no clue how much is actually in it.”. . .
I’m very sensitive to tiny boxes, Professor Gourville.
Once they’re asked about the changes, food manufacturers are quick to explain their own increasing overhead costs – a Kellogg’s spokeswoman said reducing the amount of cereal per box was “to offset rising commodity costs for ingredients and energy used to manufacture and distribute these products” – but most are not exactly going out of their way to let consumers know they’re getting less for their money. Some claim newly shrunk products are responses to consumers’ needs. Tropicana told the New York Daily News earlier this month that its orange juice containers, which also include a newly designed cap and retail for the same price as the previous larger size, were the result of customer complaints. Said spokeswoman Jamie Stein, “We had a lot of spillage with our old products. It’s a value-added redesign.”
Value-added redesign? Don’t pee-pee on me and tell me it’s raining, Ms. Stein.
I understand that some of us Americans, regardless of our body size, need to exercise some portion control. However, this is not the way to do it.
Have you readers noticed any other cost-cutting measures enacted by major corporations, or by small businesses, in reaction to our struggling economy?
My local hairdresser refuses to take credit cards that have cash rewards, and discourages taking credit cards at all due to increasing credit card fees. It was a shock because I didn’t know until after I had my hair cut and colored and I hadn’t brought enough cash to pay. Fortunately they do take debit cards, so I used that instead.
They made 1L containers into 990ml or smaller containers ages ago here. Do they REALLY think people don’t notice?
I get paid 10/hour less than I used to for more work. I can’t NOT notice the struggling economy.
Okay, fruit juice is definitely not one of the things US needs to cut down on, unless it’s the type full of sugar that makes you fatter by the week.
Radically speaking, I think our governments (Canada and US), needs to add a luxury food tax, and then use that to subsidize groceries. Take-out food under five dollars shouldn’t be taxed, but companies that ‘overstock’ and waste food must be penalize.
I don’t understand that – what’s the difference to your hairdresser? Are the fees bigger? Or is it about the idea that the customer might be encouraged to use a credit card when they wouldn’t otherwise? Cause I gotta say, there’s protecting your customers from themselves, then there’s treating them like children.
According to the hairdresser the fees paid by the business are being raised and are even higher for cards that give back customer rewards. They can’t afford to take the hit in the raise in fees.
“Containers of Country Crock spread, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Edy’s and Breyer’s ice cream have all slimmed down as well (although that may not necessarily be a bad thing).”
Reducing the size of the package/actual amount of food has everything to do with minimizing the awareness of the increase in food cost and nothing to do with anyone in the food business looking out for American waistlines. But, somehow that is bundled into the story. Arg.
It’s so true….this has been happening for awhile now, but the rate of downsizing is accelerating due to increases in the prices of everything due to petroleum/transportation. Many of my mom’s/Grandma’s recipes that call for “a can of X” or a “bar of Y” no longer really work b/c the volume of a can or package or baking product has shrunk little by little. Granted, we need to re-evaluate our portion sizes for eating, but hiding price increases in shrinking packaging is just annoying. For instance, a container of yogurt is now a ridiculously small snack size. I buy the big tubs of plain and portion out my own along with adding berries and granola.
My yogurt now comes in 6 ounce containers instead of 8 ounces, for the same price.
‘Round here (other side of the Pacific) most of the food is imported, but even with domestic products I’ve noticed a subtle rise in price, but no size changes. I popped 200y in my pocket to buy a liter of tea, “knowing” it was 198, and then it was 208. Magic!
But contrary to this article, I haven’t actually memorized the prices of many items, so I can’t say which have changed or not. Just the 1L bottles. 500ml bottles are still the same. And food from elsewhere probably costs more (but everyone’s deathly afraid of food from China, so it’s still dirt cheap).
Take a look at all the entries @ http://consumerist.com/tag/grocery-shrink-ray/ to see how many different products are going this route.
Panera went the other way…
They had been shrinking their bagels…until it just got ridiculously small. Then they just started making more normal sized bagels and charging 25 more cents for them…It’s something of a sticker shock for me that bagels are $1.29 these days. I remember delicious and filling bagels available for 50 cents not *that* long ago…
So they’ll take a local bank’s Visa or Mastercard but not a Capital One Visa or MC that has a cashback program? Regular AmEx but not the new one with the affinity program attached? That’s almost certainly a violation of their merchant agreement with the credit card companies, and enough to get their ability to take any cards rescinded. If you advertise that you take Visa/MC/AmEx, then you take all cards that are Visa/MC/AmEx labeled, period.
Credit cards are a pain in the backside for shop owners etc because of course the dredit card companies want to earn money, too. So when a product costs $100 a shop will get $100 by someone paying with cash. But if they use a credit card they will only get $98 because the other 2 Dollars are the “merchant discount” and go to the credit card company and the shop’s bank. All card transactions mean someone else than the shop wants to earn money, too, but credit card companies are by far the worst. Those are the reasons why many European businesses don’t accept credit cards and many accept cash only.
Personally I haven’t seen anything yet but that’s probably only a matter of time.
My local gas station will only give me $50 worth, even when I ask them to fill it up. I know they don’t have a credit limit because two years ago I was driving a car that could cost $60 – 65 to fill up and it wasn’t a problem.
I don’t drive much so a tank lasts me about 2 weeks, but I need the whole thing. I’m kind of freaked out that they’re secretly rationing…
As much as I want to support a locally owned gas station, they probably buy their gas from Exxon anyway. I’m thinking of switching to Sunoco. The Sierra Club says they’re the least worst of all the oil companies.
It’s not just packaged food–at the pizza place I work at (a chain) the amount of cheeze on the pizzas just got lowered from 12 oz to 10 oz… supposedly to make the pizza healthier.
Yeah, right. Customers complain about the cost as it is. Their just trying to avoid raising the price to cover raising prices.
P.S. please don’t complain about prices to servers. It’s not like we can do anything.
Even this won’t change the fact that US portion sizes tend to far, far exceed those for the same (or similar) products in other parts of the world.
I work at a national chain bagel place, and we too are shrinking our bagels. But we’re just letting them rise til they’re the same volume as before and reducing the mass.
A loaf of bread at our local has gone from $1.49 to $1.79 in the past week and a half. Last year it was $1.09. At least they’re honest, though.
The place where I’ve noticed it the most is ice cream (…sadly). Edy’s and Beyer’s et al. have been smaller for a while, but Blue Bunny must have changed their cardboard cartons very recently, because the one I bought last week was 2 qt, and the one I bought last night was 1.75 qt.
Bugger.