Cha-CHING!

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not a fan of businesses taking advantage of a crisis to increase profit. I know that it seems un-American to stand in the way of unbridled capitalism and greed, but it is morally objectionable to me nonetheless.

The wife and I ventured out in search of groceries yesterday. Going out in public puts me in mind of making a supply run on The Walking Dead. Setting aside our apprehension, we set out. Our first stop was to a local chain supermarket. 

We generally like this store because we like the employees. Some we have gotten to know pretty well over the years. This particular grocery store was purchased by the aforementioned local chain during a bankruptcy of the store’s former management company. Notice I didn’t say grocery chain. It was owned by a group of investors who really knew nothing about grocery stores.  The current owner bought a few stores during the bankruptcy, including this one. Maybe this is why I have always felt that the supermarket chain now running this store treats this particular grocery like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.

The first thing I noticed was that many price tags had been turned around on the shelves, so that no price was showing.  We discovered that this was deliberate, since all of those items rang up with a higher price than on the hidden tags. We picked up one of the three packages of English muffins left on the shelf. This was an item with a turned-around tag bearing the original price of $2.59. At the register, it rang up $2.99. Okay, so 40 cents isn’t going to break us.

This trend continued with other items. In all, we paid nearly $5.00 more for our items than we would have two weeks ago. Some items we simply did not purchase. This chain often runs one-day meat sales. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this week’s sale was canceled. We were interested in purchasing a frozen turkey breast, hoping the current cost was at least close to the canceled sale price. Nope! The prices marked on the turkey breasts were 172% higher than the sale price, and 37% higher than their regular price. We left without a turkey breast.

Milk is usually in the $1.49 range at this store, but was $2.49 yesterday. I could go through our entire shopping list, but you get the idea.

It can’t be argued it is simply supply and demand, because for the most part it wasn’t. They had a case full of turkey breasts and a cooler full of milk. This was because they wanted too much for those items, thus reducing demand. I’m guessing folks went to the other local grocers or Walmart for the same items, priced lower. Perhaps this grocery chain felt everyone would go to one store, buy what they wanted, and hurry back to isolation. I’m sure a lot of people are doing exactly that.

While we like the people, our loyalty to this grocery store has flagged. We still don’t like venturing out during the stay at home order, even if it is for necessities. This experience made it just a little more unpleasant.