Had the thought this evening - we placed our first order with Instacart (with Meijer, if ya care) in September of 2020. Instacart makes it very easy to place the same order over again, so hey, here is a super-easy way to see how much grocery prices have increased since 2020. So (though I didn’t submit it) I placed in my “cart” the exact same order as in 2020 over again and compared the prices.
Two caveats - one, it is now July, that was September. So if you think any of these products vary in price seasonally, in either direction, that will affect the comparison. As you’ll see, nearly everything is more expensive now, in 2024, sometimes quite a bit more expensive.
Two, sale prices I included on both sides. If it was on sale before, that’s the price. If it is on sale now, that’s the price. Felt like I had to this since, as you know, sometimes the “sale” price is the real price. But it seemed to balance out anyway, about the same number of things on sale then and now.
SO HERE YA GO.
An order that cost (before taxes and fees) $213.67 in 2020, would now cost $288.06, a price increase of 34.82%.
The calculation of the change in purchasing power for the dollar from the government's own tool shows that the cost would be at least $257.83 now. About a 21% increase. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
The method and basket they use to calculate is of course ripe for critique.
I suspect the inflationary impact also hits far harder as you get to more cheap and "base" goods. The bougie already-expensive items at say Whole Foods can absorb more of this hit than tight margin common staples.
Considering how inexpensive oil and its refined products were in summer 2020, I'd guess that the biggest price increases from then to now might be in heavy/bulky low-priced commodity foods, such as flour, milk, rice, potatoes, that are transported long distances. The spreadsheet shows some evidence pointing that way, but not an enormous amount.