The Price is a Lie.

How supermarkets, not inflation, are rinsing us all—and getting away with it.

Jul 19, 2025

Let’s talk about inflation.

Not the economist-on-television kind. The real kind. The one where you pop down to the shops for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk and end up taking out a second mortgage for a bag of cheese, three bananas and if you’re lucky, maybe eggs.

This isn’t your nan misremembering what things used to cost in the 90s. This is today. You were just in that same shop a month ago and swear blind the olive oil was $11.00, not $16.90. You’re not crazy. You’re being robbed. Slowly. Repeatedly. With a barcode scanner.

So here’s the thing: this isn’t just inflation. This is the carefully orchestrated, quarterly shareholder-pleasing, dividend-maximising art of corporate daylight robbery, and your local supermarket is the getaway car.

It’s Not Inflation. It’s Just Taking the Piss.

Governments love to talk about “headline inflation”. But here’s the truth: the Consumer Price Index (CPI) doesn’t reflect your actual weekly grocery bill. Why? Because it’s an average. Like calling the Atlantic “mostly dry” because parts of it don’t have sharks.

In the UK, for instance, watchdogs have exposed pricing irregularities at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda—including outright price-fixing in the dairy sector. In 2007, they were collectively fined £116 million for secretly conspiring to hike the cost of cheese and milk.

Nothing said “family values” like colluding to gouge parents buying their kids Weetabix and Nappies.

In the US, a 2024 Federal Trade Commission report noted that grocery chains used pandemic supply chain disruptions as cover for price hikes—profit margins rose sharply even as supply stabilised. Lawmakers urged President Biden to use executive powers to rein them in. Didn’t happen.

Meanwhile, in Australia, two Supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths control over two-thirds of the grocery market. After a parliamentary inquiry, even conservative news outlets described the duopoly’s pricing practices as “blatant profiteering”.

But the kicker? Many governments secretly love this grift—because in most Western countries, they earn VAT or GST as a percentage of the price. The more you pay for your cereal, the more money they rake in. It’s not like they work for us. Why would they stop it?

Phantom Brands.

It gets sneakier.

Supermarkets don’t just overcharge you. They trick you into thinking you’re getting a better deal. One of their favourite tactics is flooding the shelves with what the industry call “phantom brands”—products made by, or for the supermarket, disguised as independent labels.

In the UK, Tesco’s “Boswell Farms” beef isn’t from any actual Boswell farm. It’s just Tesco beef. In the US, Kroger has more ghost-brand names than a mattress store during a recession—Simple Truth, Heritage Farm, Psst…, and HemisFares are all Kroger-owned. Good luck figuring that out mid-aisle with a toddler screaming about crisps.

These fake brands are designed to look artisanal, premium, or hip—anything but “house brand”—and they’re used to quietly replace well-known producers. That’s not competition; that’s shelf-space hostage-taking.

The Forgotten Fix: Manufacturer Price Printing.

Back in the day—picture smoky factories, stern men in overalls, and chocolate bars for tuppence—some brands took a stand. Cadbury (and I think Quaker) began printing prices directly onto their packaging. Why? Because rich people were being charged more than poor people for the same bar of chocolate.

Manufacturers didn’t want their products turned into class markers. Price transparency protected consumers, built trust, and kept retailers in check. It’s a simple idea: if the chocolate bar says “£1.20”, then that’s what it bloody well costs. End of.

Today, that sort of price clarity is ancient history. Manufacturers now have virtually no control over how their goods are priced. Supermarkets not only dictate the retail price—they also decide when and how often to promote it, how much shelf space it gets, and whether it even stays on the shelf. Meanwhile, major brands are being squeezed out by phantom competition that reports back to the same boardroom.

So Who Can Actually Stop This?

Governments? They’re addicted to your grocery tax revenue.

Watchdogs? Mostly toothless, or politically restrained.

Consumers? Only if we all boycott at once—good luck with that.

Supermarkets? You’re joking.

But manufacturers? They have leverage. Especially the really big FMCG brands like P&G, Unilever and Nestle. If they collectively started printing recommended prices on packaging again—like RRP for groceries—it could force transparency back into the system. It wouldn’t stop inflation, but it would shine a floodlight on who’s doing the gouging. Currently the tails wagging the dog, supermarkets are dictating to these huge manufacturers how they want the product. For example many supermarkets will dictate the size they want (let’s say) Kellogg’s, to sell their cereal to them, keeping it different to their competition and so you can’t do a like for like price comparison. Another little trick is that they’d get “Kellogg’s” to put a smaller volume of cereal into a huge box, so the customer thinks they’re getting a better deal than they are. You see this a lot with Crisps / Chips. But here’s the thing, the three big fast consumer moving goods companies: Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Nestlé are bigger than the supermarkets. These companies produce and sell products across every continent in the world. If just these three brands work together to make this in international standard, supermarkets would have to conform and no supermarket are going to completely squash out heritage brands that these huge monopoly’s own. In the world of retail it’s the retailer that makes the most profit, so this also allows these big companies to make a little more profit themselves. I’m never gonna defend companies the like of Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, but in this instance your enemies enemy is your friend, and they are the ones that really hold the power and also stand to gain something from it. It just takes a bit of collective action.

And it’s time for that floodlight.

Because right now, your local supermarket is smiling at you with one hand on your wallet and the other quietly slapping a “premium” sticker on your toothpaste.

Final thought:

The next time someone smugly tells you “that’s just inflation”, remind them that inflation doesn’t decide shelf placement. It doesn’t invent fake brands. And it certainly doesn’t explain why your bog roll now costs as much as brunch.

Someone is getting rich off your grocery bill—and it isn’t you.

The Meme Lords: How Two Kiwis Shitpost Their Way to Power

James Macleod

December 20, 2024

The Meme Lords: How Two Kiwis Shitpost Their Way to Power

Topham Guerin: proving that in the battle of clicks, quality doesn’t matter when you’ve got memes.

Read full story

The Price is a Lie.

How supermarkets, not inflation, are rinsing us all—and getting away with it.

The Meme Lords: How Two Kiwis Shitpost Their Way to Power

Discussion about this post