our stance on “shrink-flation”

I grabbed the carton of whipping cream from my fridge last night to add some to a cream sauce I was making, and it felt weird. Narrower. Lighter. I mean, we use a LOT of cream in our house, so I’m very familiar with those cartons. But something was definitely different. I turned the carton around, and there it was. Instead of 1L, the carton now holds 946mL. I even checked online to see if I was mistaken, but no, I was right - the cartons formerly held 1L.

And… I paid the same price for it. Now I know that food prices are increasing, and there is a very good explanation for that. As a dairy farmer, we see the rising costs of the grains we feed to our cows first hand. In one year they have DOUBLED, and grain makes up by far the largest portion of our monthly farm bills. It makes sense, then, that dairy prices in the grocery stores would be higher to cover this increased cost of production. (We’ll leave the discussion about whether the price increases are adequate on the farming end of things for another day.)

But…I would appreciate transparency, wouldn’t you? If the price has increased, let the shelf price reflect that. Don’t decrease the package size, keep the price the same, and hope the customer doesn’t notice. At least, that’s the feeling I was left with. It felt underhanded and sneaky. This is a company I’ve always supported; it uses milk produced on local farms owned by farm families just like ours. I honestly felt a bit betrayed. And I know that this is not the only company, not the only grocery item that has mysteriously shrunk in recent months.

In the moments that I contemplated this “shrink-flation” phenomenon, I made some mental notes and promises, and I’m sharing them here with you now:

We will endeavour to always be transparent with our customers if the prices for our products are going to increase. We promise to explain why we may need to charge a higher price. And we promise our cheese and milk and beef will never mysteriously “shrink”. Fair?