Almost exactly three years ago – back when we thought prices were unacceptably high – Pricewatch looked at the cost of a fairly typical basket of groceries bought by Irish shoppers and assumed we’d reached a low point.
We were wrong. In fact we were living in the good old days but we didn’t realise it and we didn’t realise that prices up and down our supermarket aisles would keep climbing while the prospect of a €5 cup of coffee would soon be upon us.
We would like to say now that since the spring of 2022 when we first filled our virtual basket in the name of research, the price of groceries has been on a rollercoaster ride but we can’t.
That is because the thing about rollercoasters is they go down as well as up. And – as Irish shoppers will know all too well – the costs they face in supermarkets have only gone up and up and up in recent years.
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The price of every single one of the 25 products we priced back then has climbed with some going up by fairly eye-watering amounts.
A loaf Brennan’s bread which cost €1.87 then costs €1.99 now – hardly a massive jump to be fair to old Mr Brennan but it is only one small piece of the supermarket jigsaw puzzle.
Milk, by contrast, – branded and own-brand – has gone up by more than 25 per cent. A bar of chocolate from the Cadbury people almost doubled in price while everything from Captain Birdseye’s fish fingers and to fruit, cola drinks and cornflakes all cost considerably more now than they did then.
In fact a basket of 25 items which would have cost us €87.06 three years ago cost €115.93 in the middle of last week.
Spread over the course of a year, the cost of this basket if bought weekly now comes in at €6,028 compared to an annual cost of €4,527 in 2022.
[ Grocery prices in Irish supermarkets on the way up again, new figures show ]
In percentage terms our basket of goods has climbed by 33 per cent in three years.
While we did not try to over-egg the hikes for dramatic effect and did shop like for like we may have got unlucky in our most recent virtual shop and paid full price for some products that were slightly reduced when we first filled our basket three years ago. But even with that caveat added, the picture is pretty stark.
And the bad news is things are not going to get much better in the months ahead.
Damian O’Reilly is a Lecturer in retail management at TU Dublin and has been charting the course of prices and trends in Irish supermarkets since long before the latest cost of living crisis started to bite.
He says we are living in “a new paradigm” and should not expect to see prices coming down to where they were in 2021. The good old days are gone.
“What we are seeing instead are low levels of inflation,” he says.
His view is echoed by the data from Kantar Worldpanel. A fresh round of figures from the retail experts will be published imminently but according to its most recent research published earlier this month, grocery prices have been inching up again. It put inflation across Irish supermarkets at just under 4 per cent when compared with the same period last year.
The current rate of grocery inflation of 3.7 per cent is – thankfully – a long, long way off the almost 17 per cent recorded by the number crunchers at Kantar at the height of the crisis. It is, however worth bearing in mind that the 3.7 per cent hike comes as well as the savage hikes of times past and not instead of them.
Prices have not fallen, they’re just not climbing as fast as they were.
If a household spent €200 a week on groceries in 2021 they might be spending €240 now, which equates to an annual increase of more than two grand – and that is a net figure with many households needing to earn an additional €4,000 just to stay in the same place financially they were in 2021. The cost of groceries for some will be even more than that.
Many families and individuals will feel the pain much more than others. O’Reilly divides Irish consumers broadly into three categories. There are, he suggests, around 40 per cent who are able to cover their monthly outgoings with money to spare. Just over one third are just about making ends meet each month and one in four can’t cover their regular expenses at the moment.
As O’Reilly points out, that leaves more than 50 per cent of the population particularly vulnerable to food price inflation.
Almost one third of households comprised of one adult and children under 18 went into debt to meet ordinary living expenses last. year with one fifth of these households struggling to make ends meet according to the most recent CSO figures.
That vulnerability has at least in part changed how people shop, he says with people becoming “more frugal and buying per meal, they’re not buying stuff and then wasting it”.
Higher prices have also seen more shoppers seeking out deals, with spending on discounted products climbing by 11.6 per cent and promotions now accounting for 23.9 per cent of all sales going through the tills.
The other big shift in recent years has been the growth in the popularity of own-brand or private label products. Not much more than a decade ago, less than 20 per cent of a typical Irish shopping trolley was made up of own brand product. Now it is around 50 per cent with more and more shoppers lured by the promised of improving quality and prices that are as much as 30 per cent lower than their brand-name equivalents.
It is any wonder then, that O’Reilly reckons Irish consumers are gloomy about what might in store for them in the months ahead.
“Consumer sentiment for the rest of the year is looking pretty negative. It is not just grocery prices that are going up,” he says. “Fuel costs are going up, health insurance costs are going up, broadband is going up, mobile phone costs are going up, postal costs are going up, bin charges are going up. Everything is going up.”
He says the mood of the nation has not been helped by the Government all but completely ruling out any widespread cost of living supports this year.
The story of high prices and a shift to own-brand is being mirrored worldwide and in many countries across Europe the situation is even worse than it is here with the average price hikes recorded in Ireland over the last four years said to be lower than the EU average of 33 per cent.
In Australia, food and grocery prices have increased by about 25 per cent while in the US Americans have been consumed by the price of eggs but prices up and down the supermarket shelves have been climbing and are likely to climb faster if and when the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs dubbed “the dumbest trade ware inn history” by the Wall Street Journal.
A couple of weeks ago, people in Sweden declared that they had enough of rising prices and a weeklong boycott of the state’s main supermarkets took place.
They were prompted to act after the annual cost of groceries climbed by close to €3,000 since the beginning of 2022.
Consumers blamed a handful of supermarkets and big producers for the climbing prices. The retailers and big producers blamed war in Ukraine, Trump’s tariffs, commodity prices and the climate crisis.
There have also been boycotts in Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia. Irish consumers have proved to be more docile to date.
So what is driving prices higher here and there? O’Reilly does not believe supermarkets are ripping people off and suggests their margins are razor thin.
That assertion appears to been borne out by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission which carried out an investigation into supermarket prices in the summer of 2023 as concern about rising prices mounted.
It largely exonerated the Irish grocery sector of charges that it was artificially inflating prices to maximise profits. The analysis found that there was no evidence of excessive price hikes and noted that food inflation in Ireland has actually been the lowest in the EU in recent years. Similar research carried out in other countries has also largely cleared the supermarkets of gouging.
Farmers certainly are not making any extra cash off the back of hard-pressed consumers either.
Higher input costs continue to be a factor with the cost of energy, labour, fuel and fertiliser climbing recently. The climate crisis is playing its part too
Canada produces 40 per cent of the world’s durum wheat and drought there in recent years put pressure on global prices of pasta while wild storms in the south of Spain a couple of years ago saw peppers all but disappear from our shelves while those that were there climbed significantly in price. The climate crisis has also put pressure on cocoa and coffee bean growers in Africa forcing them to move to higher land to find a more temperate climate which has seen the price of the raw ingredients for coffee and chocolate go through the roof.
“You are going to see €5 lattes in Ireland by the end of the year,” O’Reilly warns. “And when it comes to chocolate you will see more shrinkflation as manufacturers look at the options available to them in the chocolate and confectionery area.”
He says that more broadly grocery price inflation for the rest of this year will be around 2 per cent. And while that might not sound like a lot, it will still add another €250 a year on the cost of keeping food on the table for many Irish families.
How have grocery prices impacted you?
Last week we took to X – or Twitter as it was called in the old money and asked users how much their weekly grocery shop has climbed by over the last three years? We also asked if there were any products in particular that they had noticed climbing more than others? The responses were not slow in coming in.
It’s gone from around €150 to around €230 and we have less people in the house as 1 daughter is away at college. Big increase in cereals, butter, coffee. And washing detergents and dishwasher tablets (though they were always a little pricey anyway) – Olivia Finuncane
From under 200 to 270. Diary products really spiked. What we are getting for increased cost is less product also – Nicola Rowntree-Carroll
At least 25 per cent increase [in] bread, vegetables, meat & fish – Mary Harris
Approximately €50 per week. Dairy products I have seen the most increase in price. I find shrinkage to be hugely on the increase recently with supermarkets decreasing the volume with a price rise on top of products – Jason Sheridan
I’d say about 80 per cent higher gone from around a hundred quid to close to €200 and that’s now using the €10 off €50 vouchers in Dunnes which we never bothered with a year ago. Spuds up from about €6 for a bag of roosters to €8.50 now – Alan La Casse
From €100 to €150 a week, we are careful but that’s for a family of 6 -Alex Langheld
From €130 to about €200. Basics, bread, milk, butter, fruit & veg definitely the biggest increases! Higher priced goods I’ve seen less of a percentage increase but still gone up – Conor Kearney
Up by about 20 per cent And butter ... A huge increase – Pádraigín Ní Mhurchú
About 40 per cent and that’s with bargain hunting. It’s not long ago that a non-branded butter was €2.19 not €3.79 including three price increases in the last 5 months -Craft Beers of Ireland
40 per cent at least, everything from toiletries, food, treats. 24 pack diet coke used be €10 now an 18 pack is €16 before you add the levy. Olive oil has almost doubled -Siobhán Bennet
30 per cent increase. Dairy. Paper products. Minerals. Tinned stuff. Bread -Ivan Coreless
Easily €50 more a week. Everything has gone up, dairy definitely most noticeable – Úna Ní Ifearnáin
Butter, meat, bread just about everything. It’s not increased by 5 cent, there is always a minimum of 10 – 20 per cent – Iris O’Connor
Riddle me this, one stick of chewing gum was 85c and now €1.45 – Sian Cullen
Bread, tins of anything like beans, frozen foods, meat, dairy, nappies (these can get crazy expensive- one week €20 for 2 boxes the next week €28). Pricey when you’ve twins! Everything is so expensive – Noelle White
