MILWAUKEE — For the last year, TMJ4's I-Team has committed to bringing you real-time price updates on your typical grocery items. This week, grocery stores across the Milwaukee region have been declining.
Check out the TMJ4 Price Tracker here.
When you walk down most grocery store aisles, shelves are stocked again with multiple options for one product. However, a year ago things didn't look like this.
In the last year, the I-Team's tracked prices of milk, eggs, shredded cheese, potatoes, ground beef and bread, household essentials we've checked at stores like Walmart, Piggly Wiggly and Pick N' Save.
"Shoppers have learned a lot since the pandemic started. They've learned to manage their menus and what to make at home, they've learned to manage which products in the store are there," Brandon Sholz explained.
Sholz, president of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, said flexible shoppers are a new trend since prices on items have climbed while supply has fallen. All of this, Sholz said, is a product of inflation, fueled by a lack of workforce.
"The cost of production, the cost of transportation, the cost of materials, if you could get them, all went up, and not just in one sector, in every point along the way on the chain," Sholz explained.
You can see that price fluctuation on the I-Team's Price Tracker.
For example, the lowest ground beef price we tracked was in March 2022, at Piggly Wiggly, for $3.49/lb. The highest, $6.29/lb in January 2023, also at Piggly Wiggly.
That high price, Sholz said, typically forced shoppers to substitute for turkey, chicken or pork. However, the rising cost of eggs over the last few months, is a different story.
Typically, eggs are priced around $3.00/dozen. When Avian Flu took over birdhouses in late 2022, we saw prices scraping the $6.00 mark at the beginning of this year at Piggly Wiggly.
"When they had to destroy all of those birds that laid the eggs, they wiped out the inventory, and not for a week, for a significant amount of time," Sholz explained.
Now, the I-Team's price tracking shows eggs are on the decline and Sholz said that could be the case for most food prices moving forward. However, he said it's not going to happen overnight.
"You are going to see shelves continue to be full and fuller as the supply chain continues to improve, as we're able to bring more products online into the store," Sholz said.
The I-Team is committed to tracking those real-time prices on household essentials. If you'd like to keep up with the progress, click here.
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