Category Archives: food

Does Aldi Stack Up In Terms Of Quality And Taste?

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We’ve recently added Aldi as one of the stores we visit regularly to fulfill our grocery shopping needs.  There isn’t one really close to us (7 miles is the closest), but we found that it was worth it and could offer savings for our family.  Last month, Aldi represented about 20% of the money we spent on groceries.

After buying some items, either once or regularly, I thought it would be interesting to review how the items stacked up against the same items we would buy in a more traditional grocery store.

Here are a few comparisons, with as much information as I can remember:

  • Pineapple – The first week we went to Aldi, we bought a pineapple for $1.49.  The normal price is $3.00, with sale prices available around $2.50, so this was a big discount.  I even posted about it on Facebook, and someone sarcastically replied that the pineapple must have been grown in Kansas (they do not grow pineapple in Kansas, to the best of my knowledge).  The pineapple was fine and we’ve bought it at other times.  Buy at Aldi?  Absolutely!
  • Broccoli – Produce can be found very cheap at Aldi, and one of our favorite veggies, broccoli, is often a good price.  They don’t sell it as a full head of broccoli.  Instead, it’s cut (I think in half) and put in a package.  I’m guessing that this makes it easier for shipping, but it seems you end up with the same amount.  The quality was fine, though we did notice a few more brown spots on the tips than we usually see, and our three year old son refuses to eat those pieces.  Buy at Aldi?  Sure, but give it a good look!
  • Milk – A gallon of milk can be a fantastic find at Aldi.  Sometimes it is cheaper elsewhere, but sometimes Aldi has the best prices, often by 15-20%.  We go through a lot of milk, so this can add up.  The milk tastes exactly the same, and the rumor is that it comes from one of the better dairy companies here in Michigan, but they just put a different label on it. Buy at Aldi?  Absolutely.
  • Canned tomatoes – My wife makes a mean spinach lasagna (a recipie made famous from my mother-in-law), and she adds a few cans of tomatoes.  Each batch usually comes out slightly different.  The version she made with the canned tomatoes from Aldi came out a little more soupy than usual.  It still tasted fine, but we wondered if the tomatoes held a little more water.  Buy at Aldi?  I would buy a can or two and see how you like it.
  • Box mac-and-cheese – I’m still a kid at heart in that I enjoy box mac-and-cheese.  I actually prefer the ‘special flavor’ versions in the same size box, notably Three Cheese and Spirals.  Still, we found a box of the regular variety and decided to give it a shot.  It definitely had a different taste than Kraft or even the store brands.  It wasn’t bad, it was just different.  They have an Aldi version of the specialty types that I still might try, but for the regular brand: Buy at Aldi?  I probably would not buy this again.
  • Yogurt – I like the flavored yogurt cups.  I usually get the low-calorie version of Yoplait or the Meijer brand equivalent.  I don’t like Dannon, Kroger, or WalMart, which are the other three varieties I’ve tried.   Aldi has their version for 39 cents a cup.  The cheapest I see Yoplait is 50 cents (it’s usually 70) and the cheapest for Meijer is 40 cents (it’s usually 50).  So, it’s definitely a good deal.  I bought some and when I tried it, I loved it. The yogurt, to me, tasted better than either the Yoplait or Meijer.  Two caveats: One, they don’t have as many flavors.  Two, they have the low-calorie type and they also have a regular type.  The distinction for Yoplait is unmistakeable, the regular cups are pink and the low-cal cups are blue.  With Aldi, I’ve mistakenly grabbed the wrong type more than a few times.  They just don’t stand out from one another enough in a way that’s perfectly obvious, plus they are often intermixed.  Buy at Aldi?  Yes, but give your cups a second look to make sure you picked out the variety you were looking for. 
  • Gum – I normally hate the impulse buy section near the register of most grocery stores.  Aldi has it as well.  They just have more reasonable prices.  I bought a pack of gum, or rather a package that has six 10-piece packages of gum.  The pieces are the rectangles that you get with Eclipse or others, where you usually have to push them out through a piece of foil.  Aldi packages them in groups of 10 in packaging that looks like the typical stick gum.  They’re not individually wrapped, so once you open the package, you probably don’t want to carry it around in your pocket.  It’s fine for sitting on my desk at work.  And, it tastes very minty, as it should.  Buy at Aldi?  Yes, but not if you want to carry it in your pocket, otherwise it will probably get loose and/or get dirty since they’re not individually wrapped.
  • Tortilla chips and potato chips – We have bought both at Aldi for a pretty cheap price per bag.  In both cases, we served them at various family gatherings.  They tasted fine to me and everybody seemed to enjoy them.  Buy at Aldi?  Certainly!
  • Half and half – I usually buy a pint for $1.10 – $1.50.  Aldi has a quart for $1.49.  I figured even if I didn’t use it all, it would be a good value.  It tastes fine in my coffee, and so far, I’ve not had any go bad.  It’s definitely a cost savings.  Buy at Aldi? It’s the only place I buy it now!
  • Bread – They have a few different types.  My wife loves whole grain bread, and says that the Aldi brand is great, and it’s a great price.  I don’t like real heavy bread, but prefer a more regular loaf of whole wheat.  It’s not a bad value and it tastes fine.  My only complaint is that two of the loaves we’ve bought so far have had slices that have big holes in them, presumably from air during the rising process.  I’m not used to this, and it can be troublesome when making PB&J or egg salad sandwiches.  Buy at Aldi?  Whole grain, yes.  Wheat bread, a yes for now, but if the holes persist, I may turn this to a no, at least for my variety.

So, for the most part, buying things at Aldi seems to work out just fine in terms of quality and taste, though you have to assess each item for yourself.  We’ll definitely continue to go there regularly to fulfill at least a portion of our shopping needs.

We’ve bought a lot of other things but those are the ones that pop into my head.  We haven’t bought much out of the frozen food section.  Maybe someday.  We also haven’t bought anything like margarine, butter, or sour cream (my wife will only buy Daisy, which doesn’t have a long ingredient list).  Any thoughts on those or other items? 

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on Money Beagle. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

There Are Always Savings Opportunities

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It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a raise at work.  Quite a long while, actually.  While that in itself is less than optimal (read: it sucks), it gets even worse when you consider that things have gotten more expensive across the board.  Just a few examples:

  • Gas prices have gone up quite a bit
  • Food prices have gone up a lot (or they shrink the packages, which means you have to buy more, so the end result is you pay more)
  • Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed
  • Our mortgage was re-financed.  Even though we are putting over $500 more in principle away each month for a modest $150 increase in the payment, it’s still a cash flow issue.

As a result, we’ve tightened in many areas.  Just a few areas we’ve reduced expenses over the past few years or tried to offset in some way:

  • We’ve updated our insurance plan to include an umbrella policy, which actually increased our total coverage while reducing our costs about 15%.  We also increased our deductible amounts for both home and auto.
  • We combined cell phone plans with my in-laws for a family plan, cutting costs for both households.  Later, I dropped off the plan altogether when my work offered to provide a phone.
  • We’ve called every year to get our cable company to continue to give us a discounted rate.
  • We use a Costco American Express credit card for all gas purchases.  This gives us 3% cash back for gasoline purchases.  Considering that price hikes of 5% in a single day are all too common these days, this extra couple of percent barely makes a dent, but every little bit helps.

Every time there is an opportunity to save some money, it seems that it’s further and further since the last opportunity, and that it usually yields less savings.  In all likelihood this likely means that we’ve done a pretty good job at identifying potential cost savings.  You’re usually going to get the greater returns up front as you hit the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Even so, it’s always fun when you find a new opportunity and we recently did.  I’d always heard that Aldi is a great place to shop and save, but we never took advantage of shopping there.  There are two stores, both about 8 miles away, so it’s not like it was just around the corner.  I’d been in one a few times, but pretty much just walked around, looked around, left, and promptly forgot all about it.

Still, I’d heard enough about it and I guess I read one too many blog posts talking about what a great store it is, so I mentioned it to my wife and we decided to check it out.  And, it was well worth it.

Here are some of the things I learned about Aldi:

  • It is a very no-frills store.  Things are stacked up in bulk, similar to Costco.  This means they rarely run out of anything, and I’m guessing means that they minimize the need to have people on the payroll to stock items throughout the day.
  • Their prices on produce are often unbeatable.  My wife does all the shopping for our fruits and vegetables, whereas I would likely not recognize a good deal from a bad deal (at least not as quickly as she can).  She looked through the ad and was amazed at some of the prices.  In many cases, you can get fresh produce for 20-50% less than what you pay at the supermarket.  We’ve bought a variety of different things, including pineapples, oranges, avocados, peppers, and likely other products, and my wife has not complained about the quality of anything.
  • Milk prices are great.  Their milk is a full 70 cents a gallon cheaper than what we pay, and come to find out that the supplier is a company that you typically pay even higher prices for.  In fact, my wife saw the truck pulling away from the store on one trip.  Both kids drink milk, and both my wife and I drink it every day, so this is a big cost savings for our family.
  • Yogurt prices are great, and it tastes awesome.  I get the store brand yogurt which generally runs anywhere from 40-60 cents per cup.  Aldi has theirs available for 39 cents, meaning I’m saving no matter what.  I bought a couple just to see what it was like, and it tastes better than even the national brands.
  • It requires slight tweaks to our budget system.  Groceries are one item that we typically put on our credit card, but Aldi doesn’t take credit cards (another way to minimize costs), so we lose the 1% cash back that we’d otherwise get and we have to front the money instead of floating it a couple of weeks until the credit card is paid.  Minor issues, but still a tweak for a guy like me who has perfected his budget system and is therefore resistant to change.
  • Bagging is do it yourself. They have one person who runs the register, and he/she will simply take the items and place them back in your cart.  Then, you go over to a counter set in the front of the store and you bag it yourself.  That keeps the line moving even more so than you trying to bag it right at the register.  You also want to bring your own bags otherwise they charge you for them.
  • Bring a quarter for your shopping basket.  What’s the one common thing about every grocery store parking lot?  Well, there actually two.  One is that there are cart corrals which annoy you because you think it’s an empty spot until you drive up to it, and second is that there is always a handful of workers out there collecting the baskets and taking them back to the store.  Not so at Aldi, because you have to insert a quarter into the shopping cart to use it (the quarter ‘frees it’ from the other carts it’s attached to).  When you’re done shopping, just push the cart back and once it clicks in place with the other carts, you get your quarter back.  You never see carts all over the lot at Aldi, because even if someone doesn’t want to walk back up and put the cart back, you can bet that there are enterprising customers who would be happy to collect stray carts, and return them to the store to get the quarter(s)
  • They don’t take coupons.  Most brands are not recognized brand names anyways, so there usually aren’t coupons that you could even apply (and I’m thinking that’s why all the brand names are unfamiliar), but even for  the brand name stuff that they do take, you can’t take coupons.  It cuts down on their administrative overhead.

All in all, we are big fans of Aldi.  The distance makes it so that we generally seem to go about every other week, which so far works just fine for us.  And, it shows that there are always opportunities for savings even when you think you’ve done just about everything.  Because, even though we try to meal plan, we clip coupons, we stock up on items, we stack coupons with sale prices, and other tricks to save money at the grocery store, there is still money to be saved on our food bill.

So, even though it’s harder to come by savings (because the fruit isn’t as low hanging), another thing I realized is that it still feels good to come across and take advantage of a savings opportunity.  That part, it never gets old!

Readers, do you shop at Aldi?  What other savings opportunities have you recently found even if you had thought you’d squeezed all the blood out of the savings turnip?

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Get That Bread Out Of Your Refrigerator

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For us, bread use seems to hit spikes and valleys.  I take my lunch to work every day, and while I normally take a sandwich, there are times where I take leftovers or a frozen meal.  If these situations happen for multiple days straight, sometimes bread will sit for a while.  At the same time, there are occasions where you use bread like it’s going out of style.  Toast for breakfast (or better yet, french toast, yummm) or grilled cheese as part of dinner, and you’ll go through a loaf in no time at all.

Even with all this, we rarely ever have any bread go stale.  And, we have learned a big lesson, which is to keep bread out of the refrigerator.

Multiple Loaves At A Time

It’s not uncommon for us to buy multiple loaves of bread at a time. We like the wheat bread available at Costco, which comes in a two-pack (and since the loaves are bigger than those you typically get at the grocery store, it’s probably closer to three loaves).  Sometimes sales at the grocery store (or coupons) will have you buy multiple loaves at once.

Keeping these out for the length of time necessary to use them would likely result in some of it going stale.

Many people will combat this by putting their bread in the refrigerator, and I admit, I used to be guilty of this, but as it turns out, bread really shouldn’t go there.  I’ve read multiple notes indicating that keeping bread in the fridge actually speeds up the process of the bread going stale.  Also, what I’ve noticed is that when bread is refrigerated, it just feels different even after it’s brought back up to room temperature.  It has a different consistency, and not one that I would consider enjoyable.

Where To Put Bread

So, the question becomes, where do you put bread that you’re not going to eat for a while?  The answer is simple: Keep out what you need and put the rest in the freezer.

The freezer will keep your bread intact and will stop the clock on the time that your bread has before it goes stale.  You don’t want to keep it in the freezer for more than a couple of weeks because it will start to attract ice crystals and such that will ruin the bread, but if you keep a loaf or two in there, and get to it in a reasonable amount of time, you’ll enjoy the bread a lot more.

But It Gets Wet When It Thaws

I had tried freezing bread in the past but it always freaked me out that, during the thawing process, the bread and the bag seemed to get wet.  As it so happens, this is natural, and once the bread is thawed and returned to room temperature for awhile, this will go away and you’ll never notice the difference.

Oops, I Too Soon

One of the things I wondered about was whether you could re-freeze bread.  From what I’ve seen on the Internet, it looks like it’s perfectly acceptable to change your mind.  So, if you take a loaf out, but then realize you’re going to go a few days before you actually get to it, don’t be afraid to put it back in the freezer.  I wouldn’t do this too many times, but from what I’ve seen, one re-freeze seems to do no harm.

What do you think, readers? Do you put your bread in the freezer or the fridge or do you go through it so fast that you never have this issue?

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Be Honest With Yourself About Your Financial Situation

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A few months ago I wrote a post about a nearby restaurant that quibbled with us about the cost of a salad.  Long story short, they charged us more for a salad attached to the ‘Special of the Day’ menu versus the price that was listed as the attached price of an entree.  I felt that the specials were entrees but the restaurant felt otherwise.

As it turns out, maybe they quibbled because they needed every dollar that they could get, because the restaurant recently shut its doors.

On the note they put on the door, they listed a couple of factors, most notably citing road construction in the area as a primary reason that they could not manage to stay in business.

Now, there has been a lot of road construction in the area.  The main road that the restaurant fronts has been the focus of a major widening project that has been spread out over a few years.  They could only go so far, then had to wait for another government agency to widen a bridge.  When that finally happened, they were able to continue along, but they had to split that up over two additional years.

So, I get the road construction piece.

But, that doesn’t tell the entire story.

There are a couple of reasons that I think the restaurant owner had their head in the sand:

  • They knew about the construction when they opened - The restaurant opened right around the time that the project to widen the bridge was started.  They knew full well that the bridge construction was happening, and they knew that the road would be continued further following completion of the overpass.  Now, as far as I know, many businesses conduct feasibility studies and demographic studies, and also focus on environmental factors that could impact their business, and I would have to guess that road construction plans are factored in.  Either their consultants did a bad job or they didn’t bother, figuring they could get it handled along the way.
  • The construction finished – The last of the construction wrapped up a few months ago.  I always find it interesting when a business closes after construction completes.  I have no doubt that road construction impacts businesses, but I’ve seen more than a few examples of a business that will suffer through the construction, then when it wraps up and seemingly the business levels would return to normal, they call it a day.  I would expect to see businesses close during the construction, but there’s apparently a lag time that doesn’t make sense.
  • There were other reasons – When this was announced on Facebook via a local online news media source, many people immediately started commenting.  While a few agreed that road construction had to be killer, most people indicated that there were other reasons why the restaurant wasn’t frequented.  These included the fact that the restaurant was closed on Sundays, prime days to head out to the bar, grab a bite, and watch a game.  They were closed on holidays.  More than a few people said that they went on New Years Eve to go eat, and found a closed restaurant.  They never stepped up to the competition.  Another restaurant opened over the summer practically across the street.  They are similar enough that there had to be competition.  The new restaurant came in with a storm. They are all over Facebook.  They send out fliers.  They really get themselves out there.  The restaurant that closed never advertised, never did much in the way of social media, and never really built a word of mouth network.

Add this all together, and it tells me that the restaurant had a lot more problems, many of which were created by their own policies.  If other restaurants are open on Sundays and they can handle the crowds, maybe this isn’t such a great policy.  If other places offer specials and promote the heck out of themselves via social media, maybe you need to step up your game as well.

This was a really good place to go eat, but with all the policies and lack of real attempt to develop a following, they really gave the impression of wanting to have a restaurant, but didn’t maybe have the same level of interest in actually running the restaurant.  Big difference and I can see why it led to their closing.

Fooling ourselves

This speaks to me because I know that some of these same principles apply to how we see our personal financial situation.

How many times do people blame variables that they feel they can’t control for financial issues in their lives?

I’ve seen it countless times where people stay in a job that they’re unhappy with because they’re just happy to have a job.  When someone says that, I often just want to rip my hair out.  The fact is that you could be right, there might in fact be no other jobs and you have to stick it out with the one you have unless you want to take on a new career.  But, did you try?

The restaurant didn’t try.  When they had a competitor open up across the street, did they change anything?  Did they adjust their hours?  Did they follow the lead or try to carve out a new social media list?  No.  Instead, they did nothing, and with predictable results.

The fact is if you don’t like your job or you don’t like the way something is going, simply waiting around and expecting it to get better is not going to work.

The fear of the unknown

The problem is that many people simply don’t want to take the opportunity to jump in the water and see what else is out there.  Looking for a new career or going down a different financial path is scary, and people simply don’t like change.

So they’ll put up with something that clearly makes them happy.

The unhappiness paradox

What I’ve seen far too often is people who are unhappy stay in unhappy positions without making a change.  On the flip side, you  have people who seem perfectly happy in their career suddenly make a move.  Why?  Because being happy wasn’t enough. They wanted to be even happier.  They wanted an even bigger challenge.

This often leads to the unhappy person seeing this and getting even more unhappy.  Yet still they do nothing, when in fact they should be the ones pounding the pavement and at least seeing what else is out there for them.  As I sad, the answer might be nothing, but I think that’s far often not the case.

The simple truth is that there are variables that attempt to separate you (or the nearby restaurant) from fulfilling the maximum potential possible.  Don’t let that happen.  Take charge.  Who knows?  If the restaurant had made a few changes and taken a real, honest look in the mirror, they could still be in business.  And if you go and take an honest look and re-assess what really is in your control, you could find what you’re looking for.

What are you waiting for?

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Eating Fresh Vegetables Has Gotten A Lot More Costly

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Our family isn’t ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ by any stretch of the imagination.  My wife tries to cook healthy in the sense that:

  • We don’t avoid processed foods but we do try to keep them to a minimum
  • Every meal includes some fruit
  • Every meal (outside of breakfast) includes a vegetable
  • Limit consumption of red meat to once a week or so
  • Eat yogurt

These work good to keep us healthy and happy, and one of the things we do is try to eat as many of our vegetables as possible from the ‘fresh’ variety.  We try to avoid canned vegetables as often as possible, and we will eat a mix of frozen and fresh vegetables.

Broccoli and cauliflower are two vegetables we eat somewhat regularly that we prefer to purchase fresh.  The frozen type generally gives you mostly stem and very little of the ‘top’ so while the prices is cheaper, you’re definitely missing out.

I’ve been alarmed to see the price increase in these two vegetables over the last few weeks.  Last week, I was looking over the grocery bill and I pointed out that I thought $1.79 was a lot for a head of broccoli.   It’s usually $1.29 – $1.49.  While 30 to 50 cents isn’t going to break the bank, I look at it from a pure percentage increase standpoint.  A 20-30 percent increase is pretty huge, and if you carried that across all the items in your grocery bill, that bill is going to increase in a big hurry!

So, imagine my reaction this week when my wife sent me a picture on her phone with the price of $2.49!  That’s another almost 50% increase in just over a week, and practically doubled since just over a month ago.  I had to find out what was going on, so I posted about it on the Facebook wall of our grocery store.

Within a few minutes, they actually responded, linking to an article stating that fresh vegetables definitely are going up in price, due to a shortage caused by the recent cold / freezing snap out west.

Many of the fresh vegetables that are grown in California and such sustained heavy damage, and wouldn’t you know it, broccoli and cauliflour are two of the big ones.  The other more common vegetables include lettuce and spinach, which especially has gone up a lot in price (I don’t like spinach so the fact that we may be priced out of spinach is actually welcome news to me *lol*).

It just goes to show that there are a tremendous number of variables which factor into the price of our food.

I remember a few months ago there were big shortages in two other staples around our house: Coffee and peanut butter.  The prices of both of these items went up noticeably, and took a bigger chunk than normal of our Costco budget for awhile.  However, I’ve recently noticed that the big increases have steadily gone down.  Coffee, it seems, is at the same price it was a year ago, and peanut butter is still a little higher than it was before it started going up, but it’s still gone down a couple of bucks a jar.

I guess it just goes to show that there’s probably always fluctuations in prices due to variables outside of our control such as weather, transportation costs, and other things that lead into the price.

All we can hope is that the number of items affected in your typical household budget is kept to minimum as far as happening all at once, and that in many cases, we can try to find workarounds.

For us, we’ll still try to eat as many vegetables as possible, and will still try to lean more toward the spectrum of fresh vegetables, but we could always grin and bear the frozen variety of broccoli for awhile, or we could try substituting in other vegetables whose prices haven’t gone up as considerably (or at all).

Readers, have you noticed the rapid price increase in vegetables?  Do you have any suggestions other what I put forth about ways to combat the (hopefully) short term spike in the cost of these veggies?  What are your favorite vegetables?

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Combat Smaller Size For Same Price Gimmicks

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It’s no surprise that manufacturers like to raise the price of products whenever they can, with one of the most common ways as of late being to shrink the amount of product you receive, all while keeping the price the same.

This effectively raises the price of the product by allowing them to receive more for a ‘batch of product’ than they would have otherwise.

Ice cream. Use ice cream as an example.  I love ice cream so I will take any opportunity that I can to talk about it.  And eat it!  Anyway.  A few years ago, you used to be able to get what was commonly known as a ‘half gallon’ for around $3.00.  Since there are four quarts to a gallon, this meant that a half gallon container consisted of two quarts of ice cream.

While many people still refer to the most commonly sold size of ice cream as a ‘half gallon’, it’s no longer true in most cases.  If you have a carton in your freezer, go look at it.  Now, the most common size of a ‘large’ container of ice cream is 1.5 quarts.  If you still paid $3.00, you’re still paying the same for a container of ice cream, but you’re getting less.  Even a pint is no longer a pint, as most in this size range have shrunk from 16 ounces (an actual pint) to 14 ounce sizes.

To keep it in whole numbers, let’s pretend that you had a party coming up and you knew you needed six quarts of ice cream to satisfy everybody.  In the old days, you would need three half-gallon containers, so your total cost would be $9.00.

Now, however, you would need to buy four of the 1.5Q containers, so your overall cost is now $12.00.

This represents a full 33% price hike in the per-unit cost of ice cream.  Pretty sneaky!

Why Do They Do This?  The first question that comes to mind is ‘Why not just raise the price?’  This would save the hassle of having to come up with new packaging (a ploy that they use to ‘hide’ the smaller sizes), and would also save them having to reprogram the machines.  In the case of ice cream, they could have just raised the price of the two quart (real half gallon) to $4.00.

But the problem is that people don’t want to pay more.  People get conditioned to paying the same price for an item, and if it goes up, they will look harder at finding a better deal, or in the case of ice cream (and other discretionary items) they may just avoid the purchase altogether.  Companies obviously don’t want to risk this, so instead of size being the constant unit, they use price as the constant unit, and adjust the amount you receive to fall into where they want the ‘price per unit’ cost to be.

How Often Does This Happen?  It happens more often than you probably think.  I’ve been pointing out this trend for a long time, with Kirkland Baby Formula as one of the more sneaky maneuvers I’ve ever seen.  The Consumerist recently pointed out that Walmart changed their packaging on instant mashed potatoes, and got rid of over 5 ounces of product at the same time.  Even CNN got in the game recently, finding ten products which have recently shrunk in terms of what you get.

Will Sizes Shrink Forever?   One of the more common areas where they’ve done this is with boxes of cereal.  A box of cereal has always remained roughly the same price for quite a number of years, but the amount you get has been whittled down to where they *had* to shrink the size of the box to avoid being absolutely absurd.  I’ve always joked that if they keep doing this, eventually the cereal aisle will be filled with small boxes, like the kind you see at hotels or on airplanes, as this will be the ‘standard’ size.

That’s funny to think about, but it really doesn’t work out that way.  I’ve watched how companies handle this and they will shrink the size a couple of times, but then they’ll introduce a ‘newer’ bigger size (which is often the same size as they used to give you for the lower price point) and will charge more.   They’ll offer it as the ‘Jumbo Pack’ or ‘Family Size’.

With multiple sizes, some people will choose the larger box at the higher price point, especially if they offer it at a good price point per unit, or if the stores position it at the most commonly selected area on store shelves.  At a certain point, they will start to get people used to the idea of paying more at which point they can phase out the smaller size packaging, then start the whole process over again.

Seems like a lot of trouble, but look what that does.  It does eventually get people to pay more for the product (which as I said is a big off-putter), but the fact is, people will pay more for products as time goes on, they just don’t want to do it that often.  The reduce->reduce->repackage->repeat cycle allows for companies to raise their revenues multiple times before actually raising prices.  So, to go back to my joke, cereal shelves will never be filled with mini boxes (though that is fun to think about).

What Do You Do?  One of these is what I happened to notice: Kirkland Paper Towels.  On a recent shopping trip to Costco, we grabbed a package of twelve rolls, which was priced, as it normally seems to be, right around $15.00.  This meant it was $1.25 per roll.  When I got home and started unloading the paper towel on the storage shelf, the new design of the plastic sleeves surrounding each roll caught my eye.  This was an immediate flag, and sure enough, the old rolls that we hadn’t used up contained 90 sheets, and the new rolls now contained 80 sheets.  That cuts out a full 11% of the product that you receive, all for the same price you were paying before.

What a deal, right?

I was pretty annoyed by the whole thing, and it instantly prompted the idea of writing an article, but I started thinking that maybe instead of just pointing out the increase, I would give a little background about how the process works (which I did up above), point out this increase, and then spend a few moments thinking about ways I could combat this particular increase, points which I believe can be used not just for paper towels at Costco, but for any product which may fall prey to these types of hidden price increases.

  1. Become aware – As I mentioned, I was able to spot the paper towel size decrease because I’ve trained myself to notice changes to packaging.  When a company introduces a new design, or revamps a logo, puts a new picture on the box, or changes the shape of a bottle, these are all red flags that they’ve changed what’s inside the packaging.   As you start becoming more aware of these changes, you’ll automatically start looking at the sizes.
  2. Take advantage of the transition – This is only a temporary solution, because one of the things I’ve found is that if one company does this for a product, their competitiors will take notice if they ‘get away with it’ and if so, they’ll copy the strategy.  Going back to the original example of ice cream, it took a couple of years before all of the ice cream companies made the switch from two quart containers to their smaller replacements, but in the meantime you could often search out a company that hadn’t yet made the switch, and get more bang for your buck.
  3. Don’t be automatic – Companies brazenly undertake this strategy because they know that people are creatures of habits, and therefore will often reach for the same product on the same shelf, not paying much attention (at least in the store) as to what’s inside the package.  This means that they get away with it.  If you notice this, maybe it’s time to start looking around.  In our case of paper towels, maybe it means that we start looking for sales that we can stack with coupons at different stores.  It’s always been nice to just go to Costco, hit up the back of the store, and know that we have enough paper towel for a few months, but you can often get that better price back by shopping around.
  4. Reduce your consumption if possible – If you notice yourself getting less of something, see if it’s possible to use less to offset the difference in what you receive.  Sometimes, like in the case of when we first noticed this with baby formula, there’s no way you can reduce the amount of formula you give to your baby to offset the cost.  Other things, you can.  Paper towels are probably one of the more wasteful things that we as human beings use.  I’ve read stories where some people don’t even have paper towels in the house.  I couldn’t imagine this, but is it possible to offset the 11% reduction in what we bring home with a reduction in what we use? When we wipe Baby Girl Beagle off after a meal, maybe we could use half a sheet instead of a full sheet.  Instead of some of the cleaning we do with paper towels, grab a rag from the closet instead.  If you start to focus on what you use, you’ll often see that you can easily reduce consumption just by putting a little extra effort into thinking about what you need versus what’s right there.

Overall, I was disappointed by Costco’s decision to reduce the size of the paper towel rolls.  But, I wasn’t surprised.  It’s a strategy that product manufacturers have used and will continue to use.  The best thing you will have to combat this is awareness.  Simply noticing that you’re now getting less and paying the same will often trigger action.

Readers, how often do you notice these hidden price increases? Would you rather see the product sizes shrink and prices stay the same or would you be OK with more frequent price increases than we have today but with less frequent product size changes?

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