ALLENTOWN, Pa. – At what couldn’t be a worse time for many, grocery prices are on the rise.
“The last two months with the restaurants closing and everything else like that, it kind of – you know – more people had to come out shopping because they were cooking at home,” said Gus Elias, the manager of Elias Food Market on Tilghman Street in Allentown. “You do business a certain way for 30 years, one way, and then in one night you had to kind of do a whole 180.”
U.S. food prices rose 2.6% in April, the largest increase since 1974, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s a classic supply and demand problem.
Demand is up since most of are still staying home and keeping stocked. Meanwhile, the food supply chain has been struggling.
“We keep our prices as low as possible. When it comes to the meat section the prices have just skyrocketed. One day the price was doubling and tripling,” Elias said.
Not only have some meat processing plants been shuttered from coronavirus, but produce farmers are having difficulty getting their crops from the farm to the shelves.
“You’re kind of fighting to get everything. It’s not like before you know you pick up a phone hey I need this this and this,” Elias said. “it’s not just a one or two hour thing. It’s all night thing, all morning thing. All day thing.”
Egg prices are up 16%. Soda 4.5%. Meat is up 5%.
“It’s starting to relax a little. But there’s still gonna be a lag now because you know a lot of overseas are not shipping,” Elias said.
New data does suggest shoppers are starting to spend less and buy less as our economy remains shut down and more people get on unemployment.
If that demand slows, prices should start to come down.
