There's no pony in here, but there IS an ambitious little weasel name Tong
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After 18 months of harassing grocery retailers and finding nothing, CT expands food price probe to distributors, acknowledges no retail gouging
[Math R hard, and so is trying to successfully discover price gouging in an industry where the average net profit is 1.6%.]
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is asking to meet with executives from food distribution companies that serve the state as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged price gouging by supermarkets.
Tong said Thursday he has sent a letter to executive with five of the top food distributors serving the state. His request to meet with the leaders of food distributors in the state comes 18 months after he launched his investigation by looking into the operations of grocery chains in Connecticut after a a Federal Trade Commission report that found supermarket profits had remained elevated even after pandemic-related supply chain issues had eased.
Tong acknowledged Thursday that his office has found no immediate evidence of illegal pricing at the retail level. But he said more work need to be done to investigate potential price gouging behavior.
"The evidence reviewed indicated the need to expand our inquiry to other parties further up the food supply chain to determine whether anyone in those roles inappropriately realized outsized profits during the last state of emergency," Tong said in a statement.
Meaning, “finding nothing to support our initial claims of price-gouging, we have to keep the charade going, instead of wrapping up the phoney witch hunt and acknowledging we were wrong”. We can be confident that Tong won’t be looking into the state’s role in higher grocery prices: raising the minimum wage; doubling the cost of diesel fuel; adding “green” regulations and taxes that sent the cost of all energy skyrocketing, affecting businesses and consumers alike; etc., nor the federal government locking down the country, Bidenomics wild spending that drove inflation to 9%, and certainly not natural phenomena like avian flu; there’s no political profit for a Democrat in bringing any of those up, so this one won’t.
Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, said he thinks it is unlikely that Tong's investigators will find any evidence of price gouging among food distribution companies.
"There was no smoke found on the retail side and I don't know that this is happening any place else in the country," said Pesce, whose organization represents both food retails and distributors.
In addition to seeking to meet with food distributors in the state, Tong sent a letter to Connecticut legislative leaders detailing what his investigation has found this far and the next steps his office plans to take.
“No one needs a report to see that grocery prices are way too high and that Connecticut families are getting squeezed," Tong said. "Our inquiry has found no obvious evidence to date of price gouging by Connecticut retail grocers, only that they are likely getting squeezed by the same unsustainable market forces hurting consumers. This includes supply chain disruptions due to conflicts abroad, bird flu outbreaks, rising costs of business, and now the needless added pressures of Trump’s illegal and unconscionable suspension of SNAP benefits, tariffs wars and immigration raids that will only make all our lives more unaffordable."
“Trump’s illegal and unconscionable suspension of SNAP benefits, tariffs wars and immigration raids” — The investigation was supposed to be about claimed price gouging during the government shutdown, but sure, finding nothing there, let’s bring Trump into this and actions he’s taking five years later because, well, he’s to blame for everything. Our base certainly believes so, and we’re here to feed the base.
Some of the information Tong is seeking from the state's food distributors relates to another factor contributing to price increases, known as shrinkflation. The term refers to strategy used by manufacturers which involves reducing the size or quantity of a product while keeping the price of the product the same.
Oooh, shrinkflation! That’s something that’s never happened before.
Two famous,or infamous examples of the phenomenon both of which happened long before Little Tong was angling for higher office:
AI Overview
Hershey bar prices have decreased significantly in terms of "time price" since the early 1900s, though the bar sizes have fluctuated due to factors like rising cocoa bean, labor, and packaging costs. In the 1960s, a standard bar shrank from 1 ounce to 3/4 ounce while its price remained 5 cents until 1969, and later, the size was reduced again while prices were raised.
Hershey bar size and price over the years
1900: A Hershey bar was 5 cents and weighed about 1 ounce, costing an unskilled worker about 33 minutes of labor.
1960s: A Hershey bar weighed 1 ounce, but it was reduced to 7/8 ounce in 1966 and 3/4 ounce in 1968. The price stayed at 5 cents until 1969.
1969: The 5-cent bar was discontinued, and a new, larger bar weighing more than twice as much became the standard at 10 cents.
1977: In response to rising cocoa bean, transportation, and labor costs, Hershey raised prices by 7% and reduced the size of most standard bars by 16%.
1980: A Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar weighed 1.05 ounces and cost 25 cents.
Today: A Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar weighs nearly 1.5 ounces and costs around $1.15 in big-box stores.
And then there’s The Mystery of the Disappearing 5 lb Bag of Sugar
AI Overview
The standard 5-pound bag of sugar was primarily reduced to 4 pounds in the U.S. by major brands and retailers between approximately 2009 and 2014, though some consumers reported seeing the change as early as the mid-1980s. The transition was a form of shrinkflation, a response to soaring global sugar prices during that period.
Key details of the transition:
Reason: To keep the per-bag cost seemingly consistent for consumers despite a sharp rise in raw sugar prices on the global market, manufacturers reduced the package size instead of significantly increasing the price of the 5-pound bag.
Timeline: The change was a gradual process rather than a single, universal date. Consumers reported seeing the smaller packages from various brands and retailers appearing between 2009 and 2012.
Major brands: Brands like C&H and Domino Sugar confirmed they made the switch during this time, with C&H citing the change in a 2011 social media post.
Retailer variations: Kroger, for example, began transitioning its store brand to a 4-pound size in 2014 and fully discontinued the 5-pound version in July 2020.
Historical context: While the main shift happened in the late 2000s/early 2010s, some isolated reports suggest the change may have occurred at certain regional grocery stores as far back as the mid-1980s.
The move caused frustration for many consumers and bakers, whose recipes often called for the traditional 5-pound quantity. [Show me a “consumer” who requires 5 pounds of sugar for her recipes, and I’ll show you a 5-ton Tessie very much in need of shrinkflation herself— Ed]
