Your daily adult tube feed all in one place!
Kroger admits to unnecessarily making your breakfast more expensive
Kroger has admitted to raising the cost of essential items more than was needed to keep pace with inflation during a court hearing.
The grocery chain's top pricing executive testified to a judge on Tuesday that the store raised the prices of milk and eggs more than required.
'On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation,' executive Andy Groff wrote in an email to his bosses in March.
Groff was forced to testify about his email as part of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission in an attempt to stop Kroger's from buying rival chain Albertsons.
The FTC, and several states, argue that the planned $24.6 billion acquisition would eliminate competition, in turn removing a check on prices.
'Greedflation is real,' one Kroger shopper wrote on X in response to Groff's admission.
Kroger has admitted to raising the cost of essential items more than was needed to keep pace with inflation during a court hearing
'I noticed prices rise by more than any other store [than Kroger's], now we know why,' another commented.
Others said they would boycott the store because of the unnecessary price hikes.
'Utterly disgusting,' one X user wrote, 'never been to a Kroger, and now no matter where I end up in life, never will.'
Retail experts, however, were not surprised by the admission.
'This is not at all surprising,' Drew Powers, the founder of Illinois-based Powers Financial Group, told Newsweek.
'Companies across multiple industries have been posting record profits since the Covid-19 pandemic while consumers have faced the highest inflation in recent history.
'The math can only point to companies raising prices above the general level of inflation. As the old saying goes, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."'
Kroger has argued that its planned acquisition of Albertsons would actually lead to lower grocery prices because it would enable them to compete with conglomerates such as Amazon and Walmart.
The company's goal is to 'pass through our inflation to consumers,' Groff said in response to questions about his email.
'This cherry-picked email covers a specific period and does not reflect Kroger's decades-long business model to lower prices for customers by reducing its margins,' a Kroger spokesperson said.
The grocery chain's top pricing executive testified to a judge on Tuesday that the store raised the prices of milk and eggs more than required (Pictured: Cartons of eggs on sale in a Kroger store in Houston, Texas)
The planned $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons would reduce competition, the FTC says
Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, has ramped up the agency's antitrust suits
'What’s missing is the fact that Kroger’s retail prices include the cost to run a grocery store, including labor, transportation, advertising and other costs,' the statement read.
'Many of these costs have significantly increased since 2020. Kroger’s pricing decisions are impacted by factors beyond inflation.
The chain claims it tries to be competitive on 'everyday essentials' including milk, eggs, sugar, bananas and iceberg lettuce.
The company benchmarks its prices on those items against its rivals such as Walmart and Aldi every week, it said.
'Reducing margins to lower prices over time so more customers shop with us is our business strategy, and the strategy we will implement at Albertsons after our merger.'
The incident comes after Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her plans to introduce a federal ban on price gouging across the food industry if she wins the presidential election in November.
Price gouging is when retailers sharply increase the price of necessities, typically to take advantage of an adverse situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kroger is also being investigated over its use of electronic price labels on store shelves nationwide.
US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey announced they were looking into the practice to see if the chain was engaging in surge pricing.
In a letter to Kroger's CEO Rodney McMullen earlier this month, the senators expressed worries that the technology could be used to gouge customers and hike grocery prices during peak shopping times.