KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The KSHB 41 I-Team is working to answer how much more consumers are paying at the grocery store and whether that varies from store to store or depends on specific items.
Through the team's efforts to monitor inflation in the metro, it noticed one item fluctuating in price is cereal.
"Everything about growing things, about harvesting them, about packaging them, transporting them, storing them and even handling them in retail stores, like grocers, is more expensive," explained Larry Wigger, University of Missouri-Kansas City economics professor.
He says when stores pay more, that means consumers do, too. And not just on cereal.
"Yeah, the trip itself is a little bit more," shared shopper Katie Zeeck.
As theI-Team previously reported, economists say this isn't just a product of the pandemic.
Instead, this is the result of a multitude of issues that have been building for years, which prompted some companies to announce even last year that price hikes were coming.
"I know if you look at grain products like cereal, General Mills announced late last year in November, they telegraphed very transparently that they intended to increase the price of their cereals in mid-January," Wigger said.
This is what he says the metro is experiencing now, as is evident in the tracking the I-Team has done the past four weeks.
Cereal at Hy-Vee has gone up $1.51 since the team's tracking first started.
At Sun Fresh, after first increasing in week two then decreasing in week three, it's now back to where it was in week one.
And at Price Chopper, cereal increased by $1.30.
However, at Walmart and Aldi, the prices stayed exactly the same.
As a reminder, tracking is not meant to compare prices from location to location, since the size or brand of cereal chosen at each location varies. Instead, the team is tracking overall price increases.
Last week, Wigger shared instances in which consumers won't see price changes at larger chains.
He explained it as bigger stores like Walmart being able to buy more in bulk, locking in prices for a longer period of time.
But for smaller chains or mom and pop stores, they have to make smaller purchases more frequently, making them more susceptible to inflation, at least short-term.
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