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Hard-Pressed Consumers Eating In More Often

Spam sales rise; so do store brands

By Truman Lewis
ConsumerAffairs.com

May 29, 2008
High gas prices and an ailing economy are driving consumers to the grocery store instead of their favorite restaurant, a survey finds. Perhaps even more telling, Spam sales are up, Hormel reports.

Sixty percent of respondents to an online survey conducted by Allrecipes reported they were spending more on groceries than one year ago.

In addition, the survey revealed that 54% were more mindful of grocery prices; 32% were preparing more meals at home; and 22% were buying more store brands.

The survey tapped 750 Allrecipes.com households where 90% of the respondents identified themselves as their family’s primary grocery buyer. A third-party research group independently analyzed the data.

Spamalot

If there's any doubt that consumers are hard-pressed to make ends meet, consider this: Sales of Spam are up more than 10 percent.

The canned pork concoction has been the butt of many jokes and satires and is used to describe the masses of unwanted junk email that pile up in computers worldwide.

But even Spam prices are rising. A 12-ounce can now goes for $2.62 in most stores, an increase of 17 cents from last year.

Overall, food prices are rising faster than at anytime since 1990 -- up 4 percent since last year. Many staples are rising even faster, with white bread up 13 percent last year, bacon up 7 percent and peanut butter up 9 percent.

Prices have risen much more than that recently but no official statistics are yet available. The record-high cost of diesel fuel is making it more expensive to transport food to market and the growing use of ethanol is driving up the price of corn, widely used as animal feed and in many human foods.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates food inflation is currently running at an annualized rate of 6.1 percent.

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