Inflation is down significantly from its 9.1% pandemic-era peak in 2022, but the cost of food -- especially groceries -- may continue to puzzle some consumers at checkout lines as new data showed two major categories with slight price increases.
Despite signs of overall inflation on cooling compared to a year ago, the current rate of 2.9% remains higher than the Federal Reserve's target.
The latest Consumer Price Index report for August, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday, showed that while grocery inflation has softened, staples such as groceries are up 1.1% compared to 2023 with higher prices on some common household products like eggs and meat, poultry and fish.
The food index, which is comprised of food away from home and food at home, has increased 2.1% over the last year -- and after rising 0.2% in each of the previous two months, was up another 0.1% in August.
There was a slight 0.3% drop last month for takeout and dining, according to the CPI, but food at home remained unchanged.
"Food away from home slowed a little bit at 3.9% year over year, versus that .9% for the food at home category," Dr. Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo's Chief Agriculture Economist, told ABC News. "So they're both slowly kind of trending back down, but still, that's a big gap and it's been a pretty persistent gap, which really speaks to the wages at the restaurant level."
He reminded that "if you can bring yourself to spend a little time prepping food or cooking food at home, you're going to save yourself a lot of money."
Food at home rose at a slower pace than overall inflation at .09% over the last year, but two of the six major grocery store food groups -- meats, poultry, fish, and eggs -- rose last month and by 3.2% over the last 12 months.
The popular animal proteins went up 0.8% in August and eggs increased 4.8%, as dairy and related products increased 0.5% in August.
"When we see a category like eggs where it came in at $3.20 for a dozen at the national number -- vs. a year ago in August where it was $2.04 and the answer is, why?" Dr. Swanson posited. "We know that we dealt with avian influenza early in the year, barns are being repopulated, but we're not right back to where we were previously. So there's a good, clear story about what happened there."
Egg prices continue to soar by nearly 20%"The big dollar category is meat, poultry and eggs -- of the food at home category -- which had the two worst performers across the entire supermarket," Swanson said. "It wasn't really that the ranchers got more money or the wholesalers got more money this month, we saw the retailer spreads move up."
Swanson likened food price fluctuations to seasonal weather patterns that yield long term benefits: "For example, how much snow did you get in California and will there be enough melt and water to fill the reservoirs to then be able to grow more strawberries."
"We're gonna have the biggest corn and soybean crop ever in the history of United States, according to the USDA," Swanson said, which he explained has dropped the prices "way down from a year ago." He continued, "that's really important to the consumer ultimately, because that's what impacts [the price of] chickens, beef and everything else -- so there's good news, but it's not here just yet."
"No retailer simply gives you money, if they're going to give you lower prices or better value, it's because they went out and fought with their suppliers to get it for you," he explained.
Aldi lowers prices on 250 grocery store items to help shoppers save"What we're seeing in that universe of wholesalers and food manufacturers, they're starting to get a lot more pressure from the retailers to say, 'Help me out here, because I need to do more for our shoppers,'" Swanson said. "It's a slow process, but it's been a complete tide shift in mentality and so all the retailers, to some degree have gone back to say, 'You just have to do better than that.'"
Swanson found in looking at the Federal Reserve Board which tracks capacity utilization in food manufacturing, that "during the peak of the crisis -- they didn't have any spare capacity, so they weren't interested in negotiating with food retailers like Walmart."
Since that's no longer the case, Swanson said we're starting to see "a little bit more and more slack" which makes wholesalers "more susceptible to arm twisting from the food retailers."
