"Who stole all the Cheetos?"
Posted on 02/12/2024 6:09:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
“I’ve had enough of what they call shrinkflation," Biden said. "It's a rip-off.”
President Joe Biden has a message for snack companies: Knock it off with shrinkflation.
On Sunday, just ahead of the Super Bowl, Biden posted on X (formally known as Twitter), sharing a video aimed at snack companies, saying that they are shrinking the size of their products without also reducing costs to consumers. It’s a practice the president bluntly called a “rip-off.”
“When buying snacks for the big game, you might have noticed one thing,” Biden said. “Sports drink bottles are smaller, a bag of chips has fewer chips, but they’re still charging just as much. And as an ice cream lover, what makes me the most angry is that ice cream cartons have actually shrunk in size but not in price.” He succinctly added, “I’ve had enough of what they call shrinkflation. It's a rip-off.”
The Gas Stove Debacle Is Finally Over While Biden didn’t specifically call out any companies by name, brands that were shown on the snack table beside him took note.
"We appreciate that the President has to deflect attention away from inflation that has lingered during his administration," David Chavern, president and CEO of the Consumer Brands Association, shared in a statement with Reuters. According to Chavern, his organization is eager to work with the president and his administration on "real solutions that benefit consumers."
However, a December 2023 report published by Pennsylvania’s Sen. Bob Casey, shows the issue to be much deeper than mere deflection. According to the report, General Mills decreased the size of its “Family Size” offering across multiple products without reducing cost, including reducing the size of its Family Size Cocoa Puffs from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces. It then doubled down by increasing the cost for the lighter product in 2023. The report also called out Frito-Lay, which reduced the size of a bag of Doritos from 9.75 ounces to 9.25 ounces. Though the company noted the change was due to the pandemic, it still posted a 9% increased operating profit between 2021 and 2022.
Other household goods appear to be suffering through shrinkflation, including Charmin Ultra Soft Mega rolls of toilet paper, which decreased from 264 double-ply sheets a roll to 244 sheets, while the company’s other offering, Ultra Soft Super Mega rolls, has decreased from 396 sheets to 366. It’s not alone in the toilet paper shrinkage either, with the report noting Cottonelle’s one-ply mega rolls went from 340 to 312 sheets while its two-ply sheets went from 284 to 268.
“There is no denying that shrinkflation is real and that it is having a measurable impact on family budgets,” the report noted, adding, “but there is still much to learn about the tactic and its full effect on American consumers.”
This may not be the last time the President makes an effort to call out brands for practices like this. In early February, Jared Bernstein, the chair of President Biden's Council of Economic Advisers, shared with Reuters, "Our message is a very clear one that the president has and will continue to lean into, which is, if you're a company whose input prices have come down and you're not passing those savings along to the consumer, he will call you out.”
Shrinkflation? How about our paychecks after Bidenomics?
“. . . and another thing, when did they stop putting good prizes in the Cracker Jack box?”
-POTATUS
“”I used to wear an onion on my belt, which was the fashion of the day, a big white one, not those little yellow ones . . .”
Abe!
Cheating business execs expect us to line their pockets. Their business expenses are theirs to bear, not their customers’.
Commodity prices-sugar and chocolate are going up. Prepare accordingly
Buy you Easter candy now
I’ve been around for a long time. Before we get to when did they stop, when did they ever start?
Brandon was reported to end his remarks with, “Try me. Keep it up an’ it’s gonna be ‘aloha snackbar’ fer everbody.”
"Who stole all the Cheetos?"
Suggestion…buy the store brand. Cheaper and often just as good (or better) than the national brand.
There is no way that this SOB has any idea of what the every day consumer has to deal with. Why do the White House babysitters have to act like this personally comes from Biden?
We better not laugh, there are a lot of people out there that will get angrerer about shrinking candy bars than they do about our military system shrinking around the globe.
Exactly - that SOB has never personally pulled out his wallet to pay for a GD thing.
He doesn’t know JACK.
Ok, either the price stays the same and the quantity is reduced, or the quantity stays the same and the price rises. Either or, no other way out.
So your agree. Either way the problem is corporate profiteering.
What a senile jackass.
Biden should just keep his mouth shut. The Leftists running things probably see it as a fun diversion, like the prestidigitation of a magician who hides what he does with misdirection.
In anyone had any underestimation of what vile people the Bidens are, look at how they throw him out there. Absolutely disgusting.
EFF Joe Biden, his handlers, and his supporters.
To hell with all of them.
We could solve this. Just establish a regulatory agency with rules to regualate, say, a standard candy bar and a standard bag of potato chips. Make the companies track and file monthly compliance reports, with huge fines for lying or fudging. Shirley that will fix the problem and we can buy the same old potato chips at the same old price.
Fixed.
Just to, you know, add facts to Biden’s little outburst, the price of cocoa has doubled this past year. Cocoa now sells on the commodity market for $5,599 per metric ton (as of today) passing the previous recorded high in 1977 of $5,379 per ton. So yeah, the price of chocolate bars have increased in part because of raw product costs.
no, the problem is inflation. When a company pays out more money for raw materials, and pays more in wages to keep their employees whole, they have to raise prices. Or go out of business. Which, based on your post, you think is Ok.
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