Don’t Mess With My Morning Coffee
I’m old enough to remember when coffee came in a can…not a plastic container, not in a recloseable bag…but a real metal can complete with sharp edges.
Back then, you got a three pound can, with a smaller one pound can also available. Those so-called three pound cans have been down below 40 ounces for some time, and the pound cans similarly shrunk…the price did not, of course.
That’s the background for this latest lesson in shrinkflation. Due to price, for coffee I tend to shop at Sam Walton’s place. The store brand comes in 12 ounce foil bags for about $4. But for variety, we also keep a name brand on hand, even though their plastic container only held 11.5 ounces and cost more than $5.
That name brand is “mountain grown”, or as Iowa native “Mrs. Olson” used to say, “the richest kind”.
On one recent store trip, the flavor I favor was on sale, and some of the other varieties had new packaging. That’s not uncommon, sell the stuff with old packaging for less to get the new on the shelf sooner.
Last week, time to get some more mountain grown coffee, complete with new labeling…and a new higher price, $6. But when I got it home, I noticed that while the label had changed, and the price went up…the amount of coffee went down.
It was 11.5 ounces, now only 9.6 ounces for $6. Here’s the tricky part…the container is the same size, so any consumer seeing the familiar red plastic container would be led to believe it was full as in the past.
So let’s see…Sam’s brand at $4 for 12 ounces, and “mountain grown” at $6 for 9.6 ounces after some trickery.
Mrs. Olson would not approve. It’s stuff like that that wakes you up without that morning cup of coffee.
