‘I can’t afford to eat’: Baton Rouge shoppers...

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Jada Gabriel goes grocery shopping for her family of four every two weeks. On her last trip, she noticed the price of butter had increased.

“It was normally 98 cents,” said Gabriel, an ophthalmic technician who was on a shopping trip Wednesday at the Hi Nabor Supermarket on Winbourne Avenue. “Now it’s $1.18.”

While Gabriel hasn’t changed her shopping schedule, she has been buying less at the store and is strategizing her family’s meals so each grocery trip lasts longer.

She doesn’t purchase as many snacks and treats, and she only buys meat items like ground beef that she can use to prepare multiple dishes. She buys the smallest tube to avoid high meat prices, and it only lasts a couple of meals.

“Talking about it stresses me out,” Gabriel said. “I can’t afford to eat.”

Gabriel isn’t alone. Baton Rouge area shoppers and grocery stores are shifting their strategies to combat the worst inflation in the U.S. in decades, which is having an outsized impact on food prices.

The Consumer Price Index, a mechanism for measuring how much average consumers are paying for goods and services, was up by 8.6% year-over-year in May, the steepest climb since 1981. Food prices alone have risen by more than 10% from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In Baton Rouge, shoppers are trending toward cheaper brands and they’re skipping some luxuries. Retailers are flattening their razor-thin margins even further to keep their prices competitive in a tight market. The conditions are the worst that some grocery veterans have seen in decades.

“We saw inflation in the mid- to later-70s, but nothing to this degree,” said Clint Caldwell, general manager of Baton Rouge chain Shoppers Value. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime.”

Prices going up, shoppers ‘buying down’
The primary culprits for inflation, grocers said, are escalating transportation costs driven by fuel price spikes and continued labor issues with some suppliers, particularly meat processors.

Even as COVID-induced supply chain woes have improved, supplier prices have trended upward since fall of last year, said Carl Marks, senior vice president of sales and marketing, retail support and business development at Associated Grocers, a Baton Rouge-based grocery distributor.

A shortage of available truck drivers is compounding the issue, Marks said, and grain prices have shot up as Russia’s war in Ukraine has constrained the country’s exports.

Since Jan. 1, Associated Grocers’ 1,500 suppliers have submitted 14,300 cost increases. Pre-COVID, a typical year featured about 2,000 changes.

“Manufacturers first started hitting us with some price cost increases back in the fall. And then after the first of the year, they may have come back on some of those very same items and sent us yet another or maybe even two rounds of cost increases,” Marks said.

Though grocers said price hikes have hit products across the board, some categories have seen bigger surges. Commodities like beef, pork and chicken are up, as are eggs and milk. Cooking oil costs are also elevated.

Sales have not plummeted, Marks said, but that’s because the total price of customers’ baskets has grown.

Pam Cannatella, co-owner of Cannatella Grocery on Government Street, said her store is considering raising prices on its prepared meals, even after implementing a sweeping hike in December.

She said prices have swelled on some products on a weekly basis.

“It’s like a full-time job just changing prices,” she said.

In response, shoppers are “buying down,” as Caldwell put it. That means they’re shunning national brands for cheaper store labels. They’re also skipping “incremental buying,” or picking up unplanned items as they travel through aisles.

Grocers are trying to eat some of the cost so consumers don’t bear the full burden. But retailers’ margins were already hovering around 2% of revenue, Marks said.

“We’re not using the same margins that we did before,” said Jim Crifasi, president of Hi Nabor. “When the price goes up that much, you’ve got to take a hit, too.”

A further drag on profit margins is labor issues, said Tony Matherne, co-owner of Louisiana chain Matherne’s. “It’s hard to find employees right now, and you’ve got to pay them more today than two years ago,” he said.

‘You almost need a second mortgage to buy meat’
At Hi Nabor on Winbourne Avenue on Wednesday, shoppers searched the aisles to find whatever slim deals they could.

Like Gabriel, meat prices are a concern for retiree Kenneth Austin. He said a few years ago, he’d buy more expensive cuts like steak regularly. Now, it’s more of a special occasion.

“You almost need a second mortgage to buy meat,” Austin said. “Occasionally I’ll splurge and get something, but it’s not like what I was buying pre-pandemic.”

Austin, who is lactose intolerant, buys lactose-free milk by the gallon. He used to buy it for less than $5. Now, it’s almost $8. He plans ahead to make his groceries last.

“If I cook Monday and Tuesday, it’s leftovers on Wednesday and Thursday,” Austin said.

Rita Jones Rushing said she has noticed the price increases, but they haven’t changed her shopping habits. A retiree, she only shops for herself, which keeps her receipts low.

“If I had a family of three or four, I would be changing,” Jones Rushing said. “I get the same thing every time.”

Phlebotomist Crystal Burton shops for her two sons twice a week. She sometimes opts for generic products to cut costs. At Hi Nabor, there can be steep differences between store and name-branded products. While a loaf of Wonder Bread is $3.50, the white bread from Food Club is $1.72.

Burton said it’s sometimes worth the money to get the name brand, like with cereal or macaroni and cheese.

“I have to choose one thing because it’s less expensive,” Burton said. “Sometimes you can’t get the generic because it doesn’t taste the same.”

Gabriel said she almost always opts for the store brands, but at some supermarkets, like Walmart, they aren't enough of a bargain. When she checks out, she sometimes ditches unnecessary items at the last minute.


“I’m only 25, and it’s like becoming a real adult,” Gabriel said. “I’m looking at the prices and it’s affecting me.”

Austin said that while he has felt the squeeze of inflation, he feels confident that prices will lower eventually.

“If there was a way in it, there’s a way out of it,” Austin said. “You have to hold onto your pocketbook a little tighter. We’ll make it through.”

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