The U.S. grocery slowdown is becoming harder to ignore.

Shoppers are buying fewer items than a year ago, and grocery sales are declining as weakening unit sales are now outweighing rising prices. That is according to new analysis from Bain & Company using NielsenIQ grocery data shared exclusively with CNBC.

Grocery units, which refer to individual items or products sold, fell 1.8% in June from a year earlier, a sharp reversal from the 0.1% year-over-year growth recorded in June 2025. While prices continue to rise about 2% to 3% year-over-year, that inflation cushion for the industry is no longer enough to keep overall sales growing.

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[–] 231 points 3 months ago (9 children)

Food is famously a luxury good so it makes sense people would pull back in order to spend their money on necessities like bombs to drop on foreign elementary schools and shit

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I'm trying to limit my avocado toasts to just 3 times a week.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I use mine to buy necessities like gasoline to make molotov cocktails out of the empty bottles I collect from the trash.

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  • [–] 113 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    this should be the true economic indicator, not the fucking DOW. idc if the DOW is fifty million, if people cant afford food we have a major fucking problem.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    DJIA is not an economic indicator. The index highlights half of the relation between Industrials and Transports (DJTA). The S&P 500 is closer to an economic indicator but still not really. The Dow is usually referenced as a distraction from real indicators like the Capitalization to GDP ratio (aka Buffett Indicator). If one looks at the real indicators, we've been in some real economy ending doom for quite a while now.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    It's a true economic indicator for the top 10%, those that have assets. It doesn't say anything about the bottom 90%. But these days the top 10% drive so much of consumption they're the ones that count for leadership.

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  • [–] 71 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Companies should have thought of the repercussions before shoveling cash into fascism.

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  • [–] 139 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I like the headline:
    "It's a problem for the food companies that the customer don't have money"

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  • [–] 68 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Would someone please think of the companies!?

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  • [–] 56 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I'd buy a lot more food if my job paid me more. Instead, rice and beans baby. Maybe a splurge on champagne every time a key republican dies, but that's it.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Rice and beans are pretty good though, especially if you add in a little salsa or some grape tomatoes and a sprinkle of shredded cheese.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Oh yeah. I throw anything in there. I sincerely enjoy it, in addition to it being cheap. But I used to buy a lot of other stuff too.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    Ya. I'm cooking some ground pork to throw in the leftover beans from yesterday.
    Gonna dump that slop on top of a nuked potato. That will fill the plate.
    Tomorrow I'll do a fresh batch of beans. Or rice. Or both. So much variety!
    And fuk, I still eat pretty good. It's just not very exciting.

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  • [–] 56 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Pressure on food companies? Loads of people not being able to afford much food seems like maybe those people are under some pressure too, and maybe that's the more important part?

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  • [–] 54 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It's becoming harder to ignore the prices are higher and quality is worse than ever

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  • [–] 21 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Hey, don't forget about quantity! Cereal boxes are so thin that they can't stand up on their own anymore, old recipes don't work anymore because cans are too small, and pretty much every non-food item has gotten 25% smaller or more.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago*

    The cereal boxes are just awful I was stocking grocery for a while and you had to rely on tricks of physics to get those boxes fully stocked on the shelf lol. Just more proof they don't think about anyone down the line when they design stuff anymore

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  • [–] 45 points 3 months ago

    That's OK, they'll just raise prices more to make up for the falling consumption! /s

    Remember, the only two nations to vote against food -- FOOD being a human right at the UN a few years ago were... the USA and Israel.

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  • [–] 36 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    This is because of all the people who just got kicked off food stamps because of the big beautiful bill

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    thats not even the worst part, peoples preniums on thier aca plans became unaffordable, although there doesnt seem to be that many using ACA marketplace.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago*

    there doesnt seem to be that many using ACA marketplace.

    I went two years after I got laid off in 2019 having to pay for private health insurance. I got one of those ridiculous catastrophe-only policies with like a $7000 annual deductible and was still paying about $400 a month. I priced policies on the ACA marketplace, with the same shitty deductibles but three times the premium as what I was paying. I just don't get why anyone would buy insurance there. Maybe the ACA policies are more likely to actually pay out in case of illness, I dunno.

    One difference I know is the fact is that my private insurance did not allow me to get out of the mandated fine you supposedly had to pay if you didn't have coverage, whereas the ACA policies do get you out of the fine. But for whatever reason, I never had to pay that fine.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 months ago

    Won't someone think of the shareholders???

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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Have they tried paying people more?

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Probably doesn't help that some of the food can give you weeks long explosive diarrhea.

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  • [–] 46 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    All I know is, I'm 43, when I was a kid in the 90s we'd go grocery shopping and have an overflowing cart that was around $100. Now, the same cart $100 isn't enough to cover the wire mesh at the bottom of the cart. It's absolutely insane. I bet it would be $400 to fill the cart. That's not inflation thats a scam.

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  • [–] [S] 55 points 3 months ago

    It is absolutely a scam. Remember the egg shortage? Eggs were going for $7+ a dozen in SoCal and a few miles across the border the prices had only risen slightly to maybe $2.50/dozen.

    And now there's this:

    Egg producers will pay $3.3M and donate 53 million eggs to settle price fixing claims

    Forcing U.S. egg producers to pay a minuscule 0.37% fine on $1.22 billion in excess profits sends an unmistakable message to businesses everywhere. With Trump in charge they can fleece Americans without the slightest fear of consequences and they are doing just that.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago

    I genuinely don't know how families are doing it. I spend as much on food as a single person as my parents did with a family in the early 2000s. Granted, we didn't eat much, but we didn't starve, and I don't eat much either. I rarely eat meat, I don't go to restaurants, and maybe once every month or two I'll "treat" myself to a gas station meal or a bagel sandwich from a coffee shop. I'm so glad I don't have children to try to feed.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago

    old man here. I am not exaggerating to say you could have large paper grocery bags full of food using a 20 and get change back. Those paper grocery bags held more than twice the standard plastic ones from today. I keep complaining that places still have signs saying they won't take over a 20 when that was what everything would take when I was a kid. Nobody had signs saying they won't take anything over a 5 or 10.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Im close to your age, I worked in a grocery store when I was a kid. I recall one repeat customer who had several children, and would fill two carts. I remember being blown away that this woman was spending $200 on groceries.

    Now I have one kid living with me, and my grocery bill approaches $200 if I'm not very careful on what I buy.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Shoppers are buying fewer items than a year ago, and grocery sales are declining as weakening unit sales are now outweighing rising prices.

    You maximize profit by raising prices until the units sold fall to the point where prices * units falls below the peak. The peak is where profit is maximized. It seems they've reached it. For the next little while they'll keep on cutting costs to grow profits. Recipe reformulations with fewer and cheaper ingredients, cheaper substitutions, more soy and water in the sausages, and other general quality reductions.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Recipe reformulations with fewer and cheaper ingredients, cheaper substitutions, more soy and water in the sausages, and other general quality reductions.

    I'm wondering when they'll start using recycled paper/cardboard as an ingredient with an innocuous-sounding name like "cellulose gum" or something. It's probably already started.

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  • [–] 41 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    We have scaled back significantly on our grocery purchases within the past month. No snacks, only stuff that's on sale, beef products very rarely (because it's fucking expensive now) and fewer items overall. Even after all that it comes to around $80 per trip. But we are now losing money due to our power and water bills getting jacked up so we are looking into cutting back even more.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    beef products very rarely (because it’s fucking expensive now)

    I was in Acme a few days ago looking through the steak section. There was a porterhouse close to expiration on sale for ... $54 fucking dollars. It was a little over one pound. I'd be astonished to pay that much for a steak at a fucking steakhouse, cooked and brought to my table with sides and drinks.

    If I want the taste of steak these days, I buy bottom round and flatten the shit out of it with a tenderizing mallet.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    My husband wanted a special German stew this week and I went to price out chuck roast for it and it was $10/lb! It would cost us $20 in meat to make a pot of simple freakin stew. Round wasn't even cheaper either! I quickly decided we weren't having that stew right now. The price of beef is insane. Beef roast and stew was the poor meal when I was growing up - the thing my parents made to stretch the budget because you just buy a super cheap cut and cook it all day to make it edible, along with cheap veggies. Now those meals are damn near a delicacy considering the cost of the meat. Chicken isn't much better either at the moment. Grocery shopping has become exhausting.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    My local Shop-Rite still has cheap-ass chicken, at least. They've always had these packs of chicken (breast, legs or thighs) of about 6 or 7 pounds that cost $10 total. Thank god I like hot dogs, too -- stores still damn near give those away.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I suck at math but even I know that stagnation of wages + increase in cost of rent + increase in cost of food = bad times.

    Wages continue to stagnate or people are being laid off left right and center and these knuckleheads are all shocked pikachu face that no one is buying while continuing to raise prices?

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    In Canada we are spending like 120% of our income on groceries and it isnt just the inflation but the compounding shrinkflation with climate crisis causing inclement weather that means crop insecurity...

    It aint looking good and at this point companies are going to have to realize they cant profit if nobody has any money to spend

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago*

    and canada ignoring climate change as is every other country, and you have massive wildifres going on too. shrinkflation was pretty noticble early in the pandemic, in never went away. all toothpastes(crest) were affected, they try to be sneaky by making thier 8.2 to 5.4, or 4.6 to 4.3 oz, plus changing the ingredients enough that they had to use so much mint oil to mask the taste(the mint oil and other ingredients are known allergens to the lips)

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Fuck anyone who makes millions off of basic human rights

    [ drops SM-58 mic ]

    [ the floor breaks ]

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago

    Pressure to bring prices down right? Less demand means lower prices right? The free market is a lie

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  • [+] 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    that's every company. no one looks long term. it's quarter by quarter. they all "live in the now".

    The whole locking up of items or transitioning to self check outs was an attempt to A. blame the price increases on shoplifters and B. encourage people to transition to shopping online. Neither of which worked. you could literally live in a 0 crime society and they'd still jack up the prices.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    You mean those same food companies that literally were found guilty of price fixing and then got a slap on the wrist, which was the best that we could do under the law, for manufacturing scarcity and screwing Americans over?

    Pressure on those food companies?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Starting to think if prices go up ozempic starts to become cost effective

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago

    The same greedy bastard would charge us for oxygen if they could. I am middle of the middle class and my grocery shopping has changed dramatically thanks to the shareholders and executives making life more difficult.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago

    People can't afford to buy food? Please think about poor Nestlé, they might make slightly less profit this year.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    My go-to "relatively easy, quick and cheap" meal is some kind of grilled meat with a side salad.

    Well meat is expensive as hell, and salad components are widely contaminated. FML I guess.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    That's one way to solve the obesity epidemic...

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    That dude in the picture definitely has his pants stuffed full of stolen shit, right?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    yeah. especially those on snap. or I mean used to be on snap. im sure it won't have any knock on effects. hey lets do more farm subsidies rather than subsidizing those disgusting poors food habits.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    And americans will still do nothing about it, just accept it as a new status quo and complain a bit online.

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