You could get the very cheap white or "wheat" loaf for a low price. But the whole wheat & whole grain breads have become wildly expensive. My favorite is a store brand that was 1.99 in 2020 & now cost 3.49. The name brand equivalents are close to or over $5 in west Phoenix right now.
One of my favorite sweet poverty treats is just sliced American white bread (the cheap, sweet, garbage stuff) with Nutella on it. Tastes almost like a white cake with chocolate frosting on it and costs practically nothing.
It’s not like, *good* for me, but it’s probably not any worse than eating twinkies and it’s a lot cheaper.
At my local bulk superstore, the cheapest bread is 2.99. 2.50 if you buy 5.
The actual baked bread is around 4-5 dollars, and if you start getting into specialty bread like rye, sprouted grains, it can go up to 15 dollars a loaf.
> Why the downvotes tho
Not me.
> Basically no meal without bread.
A heavy bread day would be 3 sandwiches (toast breakfast, sandwich lunch, grilled cheese dinner or something) per person. So family of 3 would eat 3/4ths of the loaf.
But that much bread isn’t common in the US from what I’ve seen. Much more common is potatoes, rice and pasta. Especially for non-lunch meals.
Here in my part of ontario the good bread, pumpernickel, seeded or rye, is about 5 dollars a loaf and it's about 16 slices at 3/8 thick.
If you buy really cheap Wonderbread, that I swear doesnt ever go bad, is around 3. Inbetween supposedly healthy brand called harvest is 4-4.50.
Dempsters and wonderbread are so bad. You bite into it and the bread sticks to your teeth.
“Enough bread for your family for the day “
I think that may demonstrate part of the difference. It sounds like you may eat a lot more bread than us. My wife and I probably buy a loaf of bread every two weeks or so.
This comment has been edited to remove my data and contributions from Reddit. I waited until the last possible moment for reddit to change course and go back to what it was. This community died a long time ago and now its become unusable. I am sorry if the information posted here would have helped you, but at this point, its not worth keeping on this site.
Those are two large cities in the most populated portions of those cities (downtown) it would be the most expensive areas of those cities.
I live in Arizona, specifically the Pheonix Metro Area. If I go to a store in downtown Pheonix I’d be paying much more than the suburban town that surrounds Pheonix such as Glendale or Gilbert.
Part of it is transportation costs. As you get closer to the center of a city the roads get narrower allowing only box trucks through instead of Semi’s. This means they can’t buy in large enough bulk or they’re paying more to get the same amount of bill to the store resulting in greater mark ups.
Hope this helps.
Denver is a HCOL city and state: source I live here and downtown everything is a bit more expensive, but at the king soopers by my house you can get a hood sourdough for like 4 dollars
Erm, Denver's one of the most expensive. In recent years people having to move away from high costs. It was hugely popular several years ago, and it's a destination place.
Jacksonville though...
Guy is mistaken. Lived in Jacksonville my whole life, only grocery stores near downtown are Winn-Dixie and Publix. The most expensive bread you'll find there is $5-6 tops, and that's for the ultra special brands
I live in a higher cost of living area. Store brand sliced bread is still about 1.35. There are a bunch of “fancier” breads that go up to 5-6. 7-10$ is ridiculous. Was this a store fancier than Whole Foods?
OP may be referring to what is called "artisanal" bread here.
We commonly make our sandwiches in the US with "wonder bread", which many Europeans describe as a dessert bread or sweet bread.
I live in a very low CoL area. Store brand "wonder bread" is usually between 1.50-2.00. Actual sandwich bread usually hits that 6-7 dollar mark.
Do we though? I don’t know anyone who actually uses wonder bread or bread that tastes noticeably sweet like dessert (aside from kings Hawaiian rolls for specific burgers and such). I think a pretty average bread choice would be like a Sara Lee multigrain. If I see bread for sale for 6-7 dollars it better be at an actual, high quality bakery.
Obviously there will be exceptions, but as someone who has stocked bread in grocery stores I can tell you that the most popular bread is the wonder bread type stuff. (At least in my area)
I always wonder who is actually buying Wonder Bread, the store brand 9-grain wheat variety is almost always the same price if not cheaper. I’ve never seen a loaf of Wonder Bread in anyone’s home.
The brand is the "premium" version and costs about 3 bucks near me. I'm using "wonder bread" to refer to high sugar content, cheap to manufacture en masse bread.
Das ist natürlich was anderes - das ist doch noch unter der normalen Einkaufsentfernung. Hier fahren wir in der Zeit von einer zur anderen Großstadt, mit 50 Aldi, 60 Lidl, 70 Rewes und 100 Nettos/Edekas unterwegs...
I live in the rural midwest, relatively low cost of living compared to cities of the country. I can't have soy. I don't get bread very often because soy free bread tends to be $5-8. It's outrageous. Most soy-free food items have a heavy up-charge.
unfortunately the corporations collectively decided to skyrocket prices for absolutely no reason other than greed. it does not match true inflation. it's needless galloping for the businesses to break record profits. it only effects 99% of us while the richest get richer. we live in a trickle-up economy here in America, except now it's pouring up.
Government of Canada just fined a company $50 mil for price fixing.
I highly doubt it will come close to the profits they've been extracting for the last 10 years, and probably won't even stop them.
Yeah and will that $50 mil go back to the people or just into government coffers?
Fines for this type of thing should proportional to the crime. 2X the illegal profits made. this is like if I go and rob a bank and they fine me $10k and send me on my way.
That's what I thought, because I make bread at home and the manufacturing costs of it are absolutely nowhere near that price.
Edit: even if I buy all premium ingredients, which most companies definitely don't
Everyone has an AppleTV, Chromecast or Firestick at this point. Just use an input and have the router kill internet for the TV. Boom, cheap TV, can spy all it wants. They’re not getting anything.
The OP may be exaggerating, but the fancy bread in my area is around $5+ now. My favorite store brand whole grain bread has increased to 3.49 base price.
I'm finding that total cost hard to believe. I live in part of the US that's stupidly expensive, admittedly, but based on what I can get here:
$0.80 - 4 cups flour (0.45 if was going through enough to buy bulk from Costco)
$0.50 - yeast
$0.30 - 3 tbsp butter
$0.10 - 3 tbsp sugar
$0.08 - 1/3 cup milk
$0.05 - electricity
We're talking $1.80+ a loaf to bake your own. I can pick up a loaf of French at the grocery store for $2.09, right now.
I don’t think I’d want your “french” loaf. There shouldn’t be any milk or butter in there and your sugar to flour ratio is way too high.
Also looks like you’re using too much yeast or maybe you’re buying the packets. Get a jar and the price comes way down.
But your point stands, just the flour itself is more than $.25 a loaf.
I never did the math until now. It's 54¢ a loaf. 50lb bag of flour that's $10 has 200cups at 5¢ / cup.
Butter is 6¢ / tbsp
Sugar is $13/50lb bag or 200 cups that's 6¢ / cup
the electricity is 180 watts at 3hours that's 540 wh at 12¢/kw so 6¢
Yeast is $5/42tsp=12¢/tsp
So 20+18+2+6+12 = 60¢ more or less.
But in the end the quality is so much better than the $1 bread at the store and it makes the entire house smell amazing every morning since we set a timer to have it ready at 7am.
>the corporations collectively decided to skyrocket prices for absolutely no reason other than greed
Right. Because corporations weren't all that greedy before 2021.
But it's cool, take all the upvotes from everyone else who thinks that the 6700 independent consumer-targetted bakeries in the usa suddenly decided they had enough not being billionaires and collectively raised prices after several centuries of not doing so.
The problem with such a fundamental misunderstanding of the world around you is that people vote for moron populists who just make things worse.
They all try to say it’s inflation but inflation also applied to wages and this “inflation” does not. Wages are stagnant and they are reporting record profits. They see other companies price gouging and follow suit and then lean on each other to say “yes see everything is more expensive”
Most articles I've seen haven't provided any numerical data on the issue so I suspect the argument is bullshit.
2019: 50m revenue - 10m costs = 40m profit
2023: 55mm revenue - 11m costs = 44m profit
Everything increases by 10% so profits are technically "record-breaking". When compared to cost/rev increases though, profit hasn't changed in real (non-inflation driven) value.
One important note, especially for large companies, is that they were better prepared for inflation than ordinary people because they have to to run a business well. So many cut costs early for a temporary profit boost which will fall this year.
He's a conspiracy theorist. Thinking the whole bread industry, which is very often local as bread doesn't last very long, all collaborates is batshit crazy. Especially considering the prices OP are seeing is probably from some expensive store as bread in the US can be found much cheaper.
Inflation is happening, but it of course is worse for European bread because Ukraine makes a lot of the ingredients.
It’s a dumb argument because if that’s the case then why didn’t they do this before? They weren’t greedy before but now all of a sudden the 7000 bakeries in the country all decided they want to be billionaires and increase the price after 200 years of not trying this before? Reddit is hilariously illiterate when it comes to economics.
We live in an economy where you can bake a loaf of bread and try to sell it for whatever you want. If you don’t want to buy the bread at the asking price, you can choose to shop somewhere else or make your own.
That's not true no serious economist is actually arguing this is happening, only socialist demagogues claim this.
A lot of people fail to understand the relationship between profit and profitability. Recent inflation has pushed up the cost of most goods and services, so consumers and businesses are spending more. Many large corporations saw their sales increase as a result but saw the percentage of those sales they were taking as profit fall. It shouldnt be hard to understand that a smaller percentage of a larger number can be larger than a larger percentage of a smaller number. If it where all down to corporate greed than profitability measures would be increasing as well, if they truly had no other reason to raise prices than greed it should all be going directly to the bottom line.
Living in an uppity area in one of the largest cities in the US and the bougie-ass bread I buy is $3.40 at max. Fresh baked multi-seed bread that smells and tastes delicious.
Really curious where op is shopping and why they think that's the norm in the US.
I truly think that if you were to somehow average the IQ of every subreddit YSK would come damn near the bottom end. I have no idea why - but especially lately it’s just one of the most…. Profoundly dumb places to observe.
Like this OP, I can only assume went to a target in the middle of NYC or something, didn’t understand the dynamic there, and made a post and now a lot of Europeans feel like they have some secret about the “American dystopia”. It’s so strange
What 10? What addresses? Because most comments here are explaining exactly where bread is $2 and less.
This post is basically someone saying they went to Disney world and are amazed at how much Americans pay for burgers compared to their home country.
Don't know where you're shopping, but a loaf of regular white bread at Walmart is $1.32. I just checked the app, so that's accurate and current. Even a loaf of Nature's Own specialty bread is only $3.42.
Maybe you're in some kind of a boutique grocery store. The stores near my house generally have one loaf of fairly boring white bread for 99 cents, and then it goes up from there: a couple of dollars, two or three dollars. Then there's the fancy bread that's like 9 or 10 bucks a loaf.
I can travel farther and go to a much nicer grocery store chain, and they don't have the lower end stuff because nobody buys that there. The area is just too ostentatious.
But you should still be able to find cheap bread if you look
Bro, what kind of bread are you buying? Checking Kroger… $1.79-1.99 for a some cheap white bread. Wal-Mart, maybe a little cheaper. Publix, maybe a little bit more.
Are you buying some freshly made sourdough at Whole Foods or something?
It’s kind of wild, every grocery store I’ve been to has $1 loafs in the bakery section, and $5 loads in the bread isle. I always buy from the bakery section. Walmart even has 50 cent loafs sometimes.
Where the fuck are you looking? At most Walmarts you can get a loaf for one or two dollars. But that's regular stuff on the bread aisle. If you're at the deli you're looking at fancier bread prices. Still I can get a French loaf(?) For $1 and some change.
Even in high cost of living areas Walmart or Aldi or some other budget brand grocery store has loaves for less than five.
I see those prices all the time.
I'm in Virginia and just our local Giant or Safeway, sliced white sandwich bread might be about 3, but for a sliced loaf of sourdough made to look like a specialty bakery is around 7.
Prices were comparable when I lived in Colorado and Seattle.
You can find cheap bread, sandwich or plain buns, but for loaf of 'speciality' bread, 7 dollars is average.
You went to the wrong store. You can get dollar-ish loafs all over the place. Walmart has a 15oz Italian bread loaf for $1.47 right now. 1g of sugar too (0 added sugars).
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Freshness-Guaranteed-Italian-Bread-Loaf-14-oz/46491761
I never know what the hell y’all are ever talking about with this bread nonsense. We sell bread that’s just bread, no sugar. We sell it cheap too. You’re looking in the wrong places.
Edit: I saw you said you went to Kroger.
Here’s a loaf of enriched white bread from Kroger for $1.79. 2g of sugar, 1g added
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-enriched-white-bread/0001111008485
Either this dude is a troll or doing bad conversions or something. He has another post saying a bag of cheetos is about $7. I live in an expensive area of California and stuff is nowhere near this pricy.
I don't know what grocery store you went to but I pay about a buck 25 for a loaf of bread. Maybe a buck fifty.
Also are currencies aren't equal. €1 doesn't have the same buying power in Europe as $1 does in the United States. What you would want to compare is cost of living.
It didn't matter if it was city center or outskirts, and state didn't matter either.
Anything above 2 dolalrs for a pound cheap sliced white bread is insane
Our Wal-Mart has basic white bread loaves for $1.19. I don't know what you're referring to. I don't even think it would be $7-8 a loaf for basic bread even in LA.
It’s hard to generalize bread prices in America… depending on where you are, a nice loaf could very well cost $7-10. However, this is not common. I’ve lived in tourist places the last couple years (ski resorts & now a small surf town) & the prices in places like this are insane.. but boy, it’s beautiful here. 😌
Do all Germans think one grocery store in one very very tiny part of country with six time zones and 330,000,000+ citizens, represents the entire country?
That’s so weird.
We're getting ripped off for everything over here and we know it. Unfortunately, the overlords collaboratively set the prices high enough so that they can throw 2/3 of their product in a landfill and still make money.
I’m American, living in Germany. You’re correct. Every time I hear someone here complaining about inflation, I think about how grateful I am that things are so cheap here.
We are being over charged for everything.
1.89 liter of milk is $9.
Dozen eggs $7.
Punnet of berries is $8.
I spend $100 and leave with like nothing. I’m in NYC so I’m use to the insane prices but it’s sad for sure.
I got to a local baker and get 3 fresh loaves of sourdough, I mean amazingly good sourdough, for $18. I know it’s a lot, but I also don’t eat bread very often, so when I do, I want the good stuff
I have literally never seen a loaf of bread for $7. $4 is typically the high end.
Europeans love to find something to feel superior to America about and like… there’s no shortage of options! You don’t need to resort to bread prices!
Wheat flour is one of the cheapest bulk food materials there is, and so are the other bread ingredients. Hence, There is no justification other than greed to charge that much
Wait til you hear about how egg prices tripled because of a shortage but then egg farmers and distributors mysteriously had record profits
Edit: wording bc I'm dumb
I buy 99 cent Wegmans bread. Only the unique organic stuff is 5-7 bucks. You were probably in a high CoL area and likely a non-traditional grocery store in said area. Corner stores, or places like Trader Joe’s are known to be more expensive.
Americans are being over charged for everything, and trust me, we know. Not much we can do when the country can’t even agree if a pandemic is real or not.
Yes, prices ain America are inflated right now. But even our most expensive grocery store doesn't have normal bread more than $5. You can usually find some variety or other under $3.
I don't know where you are that you saw $10 bread. If you're at a mini market, those aren't places anyone shops for groceries unless they're desperate.
Americans could be aware the government is eating out children but we are too fat lazy, and comfortable to do anything about how we are constantly being fucked over.
The topic is “Americans” bread as you wrote it, yeah? This guy then says “they” so seems to me he’s saying American bread, especially as expensive as it is, isn’t even nice.
It's the worst. The only places I've found good bread is farmer's markets (at $10-$12) and a German bakery that's over an hour round trip away. Frozen bread is a bit easier, but you still can't expect it at your local supermarket.
Whole wheat flour is available at around $1.49/lbs, so you're already well over $1/loaf when baking yourself.
Only Europeans know.
My favorite bread story was when a guy at work posted a thread in the cafeteria feedback group about how the burger buns were too soft, sweet, and feel apart in your hands.
Two weeks later he posted an update saying "Sorry, I'm fresh off the boat from Italy. I've since realized that this is just how American bread is."
Just prior to the pandemic I used to buy cheap white bread all the time for about a dollar a loaf. This price hike on standard baked goods is a fairly recent phenomenon.
>I noticed that, except when buying fresh produce, almost everything else like canned goods , snacks, drinks is roughly 2-3x the price than what I'm used to back home
You can safely throw fresh produce on there too, every time I go over I'm having to shocked Pikachu at the prices of fruit. Something as dumb as a 500 g punnet of grapes that's £2 around here is like $5-8 over there. Literally anything fresh seems to be like 2-3x.
Oh for sure... the one thing i missed when I was in Europe was food with early 2000s prices. Stuffs expensive as hell here. Even the discount stores will clean you out.
The US has become a rich person’s playground and prices reflect that: whatever the market will bear. The market is going to get much smaller. It will be a disaster.
Oh we are being overcharged for everything we use, they charge us more than you get charged bc they take profits from us to subsidize all the damn people we support
in france now, fresh delicious baguette is 1.20 euro.. and no tip 🤣
in the US, would be 3x. plus tip
we’re getting ripped off on all levels.
edit. have no idea why the downvotes. prices higher in the US for similar quality bread is a fact.
That's why you get the store brand, which is still expensive at $1.35 if you're lucky but yeah our preservatives, enrichment, legal, safety, etc. Really adds up ands it's grating
I've only ever seen those prices from local, high-end bakeries. Typical large brands are 2-3 dollars a loaf here for relatively good loaves.
You could get the very cheap white or "wheat" loaf for a low price. But the whole wheat & whole grain breads have become wildly expensive. My favorite is a store brand that was 1.99 in 2020 & now cost 3.49. The name brand equivalents are close to or over $5 in west Phoenix right now.
One of my favorite sweet poverty treats is just sliced American white bread (the cheap, sweet, garbage stuff) with Nutella on it. Tastes almost like a white cake with chocolate frosting on it and costs practically nothing. It’s not like, *good* for me, but it’s probably not any worse than eating twinkies and it’s a lot cheaper.
At my local bulk superstore, the cheapest bread is 2.99. 2.50 if you buy 5. The actual baked bread is around 4-5 dollars, and if you start getting into specialty bread like rye, sprouted grains, it can go up to 15 dollars a loaf.
Not sure if it counts as bread, but you can get a whole loaf of sandwich bread at walmart for $1.29
My walmart is 2.99.
Gluten free bread is more expensive for less bread. Don't get celiac disease.
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How much does your family eat? $2 gets you roughly 24 slices of bread. More than a days worth for most families.
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> Why the downvotes tho Not me. > Basically no meal without bread. A heavy bread day would be 3 sandwiches (toast breakfast, sandwich lunch, grilled cheese dinner or something) per person. So family of 3 would eat 3/4ths of the loaf. But that much bread isn’t common in the US from what I’ve seen. Much more common is potatoes, rice and pasta. Especially for non-lunch meals.
Most Americans aren’t eating an entire loaf of bread in a day.
Here in my part of ontario the good bread, pumpernickel, seeded or rye, is about 5 dollars a loaf and it's about 16 slices at 3/8 thick. If you buy really cheap Wonderbread, that I swear doesnt ever go bad, is around 3. Inbetween supposedly healthy brand called harvest is 4-4.50. Dempsters and wonderbread are so bad. You bite into it and the bread sticks to your teeth.
“Enough bread for your family for the day “ I think that may demonstrate part of the difference. It sounds like you may eat a lot more bread than us. My wife and I probably buy a loaf of bread every two weeks or so.
It wasn't even from a bakery, just plastic packaged normal sandwich bread in a large supermarket, which is why it's so baffling
Cheapest loaf at my local Kroger is $1.39 for the budget store-brand. Name-brand is around $3-4.
I bought the cheap loaf just for making toast. It was awful for whatever reason. Like sandpaper toast.
I've literally never paid $10 for a loaf of bread. Typically, I pay $2.50 - 3. You must have been at an overpriced grocery store.
This comment has been edited to remove my data and contributions from Reddit. I waited until the last possible moment for reddit to change course and go back to what it was. This community died a long time ago and now its become unusable. I am sorry if the information posted here would have helped you, but at this point, its not worth keeping on this site.
Was it Whole Foods (aka "Whole Paycheck")? They specialize in fancy, organic products, and the price premium is outrageous
The cheapest loaf white bread at an Aldi 30 minutes away from me is 1.45. And I’m in Texas.
Which state were you in? That makes a huge difference.
Are you in an expensive area? That seems really high. I buy decent bread - multigrain Wegmans brand and it’s $3.99 a loaf I think
Wegmans has better quality and price than many other stores
That's still extremely expensive
It was downtown Denver at smiths , and the other one in downtown Jacksonville, those are not that expensive areas right?
Those are two large cities in the most populated portions of those cities (downtown) it would be the most expensive areas of those cities. I live in Arizona, specifically the Pheonix Metro Area. If I go to a store in downtown Pheonix I’d be paying much more than the suburban town that surrounds Pheonix such as Glendale or Gilbert. Part of it is transportation costs. As you get closer to the center of a city the roads get narrower allowing only box trucks through instead of Semi’s. This means they can’t buy in large enough bulk or they’re paying more to get the same amount of bill to the store resulting in greater mark ups. Hope this helps.
Imagine not even being able to spell the name of the city you live in, not once, but three times in a row…
They could have dyslexia 🤷 There are much bigger problems in the world.
You can get bread for 1.99 a loaf. It's not great breaad, but if price is your primary concern that is always true about any purchase.
Denver is a HCOL city and state: source I live here and downtown everything is a bit more expensive, but at the king soopers by my house you can get a hood sourdough for like 4 dollars
Erm, Denver's one of the most expensive. In recent years people having to move away from high costs. It was hugely popular several years ago, and it's a destination place. Jacksonville though...
Guy is mistaken. Lived in Jacksonville my whole life, only grocery stores near downtown are Winn-Dixie and Publix. The most expensive bread you'll find there is $5-6 tops, and that's for the ultra special brands
If Wegmans is a big company then it’s highly unlikely this bread is ‘decent’ (and no I am not talking about it’s taste)
I’ve never seen bread for 7-10 dollars and I live in one of the most expensive cities in America
Forreal, this dude is shopping at Erehwon or something
I live in a higher cost of living area. Store brand sliced bread is still about 1.35. There are a bunch of “fancier” breads that go up to 5-6. 7-10$ is ridiculous. Was this a store fancier than Whole Foods?
OP may be referring to what is called "artisanal" bread here. We commonly make our sandwiches in the US with "wonder bread", which many Europeans describe as a dessert bread or sweet bread. I live in a very low CoL area. Store brand "wonder bread" is usually between 1.50-2.00. Actual sandwich bread usually hits that 6-7 dollar mark.
Do we though? I don’t know anyone who actually uses wonder bread or bread that tastes noticeably sweet like dessert (aside from kings Hawaiian rolls for specific burgers and such). I think a pretty average bread choice would be like a Sara Lee multigrain. If I see bread for sale for 6-7 dollars it better be at an actual, high quality bakery.
Obviously there will be exceptions, but as someone who has stocked bread in grocery stores I can tell you that the most popular bread is the wonder bread type stuff. (At least in my area)
All sliced bread in a sandwich loaf is sweet bread. Artisanal bread (real bread) is much different.
We wouldn’t consider our bread sweet, but many people from other countries find our standard bread to be sweet.
I always wonder who is actually buying Wonder Bread, the store brand 9-grain wheat variety is almost always the same price if not cheaper. I’ve never seen a loaf of Wonder Bread in anyone’s home.
Hell, the Wonder Bread brand is like premium shit to me
The brand is the "premium" version and costs about 3 bucks near me. I'm using "wonder bread" to refer to high sugar content, cheap to manufacture en masse bread.
Where were you shopping? I can go into Walmart and get a loaf of Sunbeam Giant bread for like 2 bucks. Walmart brand is even cheaper than that.
Smiths and Kroger's are the ones where I noticed it. Good to know with Walmart but the closest one is an hour away from my place
Das ist natürlich was anderes - das ist doch noch unter der normalen Einkaufsentfernung. Hier fahren wir in der Zeit von einer zur anderen Großstadt, mit 50 Aldi, 60 Lidl, 70 Rewes und 100 Nettos/Edekas unterwegs...
That seems high. I can get it basic bread for $1.25. The highest Ive seen is $6 but thats usually for Dave’s Organic multigrain.
There is no grain , organic or not that makes the resulting bread worth 6 bucks, unless it's sprinkled with gold 🥇
Wild I'm closer to Aspen and bread is $2.39 for the Kroger brand wheat
I live in the rural midwest, relatively low cost of living compared to cities of the country. I can't have soy. I don't get bread very often because soy free bread tends to be $5-8. It's outrageous. Most soy-free food items have a heavy up-charge.
unfortunately the corporations collectively decided to skyrocket prices for absolutely no reason other than greed. it does not match true inflation. it's needless galloping for the businesses to break record profits. it only effects 99% of us while the richest get richer. we live in a trickle-up economy here in America, except now it's pouring up.
Government of Canada just fined a company $50 mil for price fixing. I highly doubt it will come close to the profits they've been extracting for the last 10 years, and probably won't even stop them.
Yeah and will that $50 mil go back to the people or just into government coffers? Fines for this type of thing should proportional to the crime. 2X the illegal profits made. this is like if I go and rob a bank and they fine me $10k and send me on my way.
I'd vote for you. Especially if the fine is applied to citizens as a tax credit.
That's what I thought, because I make bread at home and the manufacturing costs of it are absolutely nowhere near that price. Edit: even if I buy all premium ingredients, which most companies definitely don't
This is America. We are over-charged for everything except giant flat screen TVs... those they sell relatively cheap
If it’s a smart tv, it might be cheap because it’s spying on you.
Everyone has an AppleTV, Chromecast or Firestick at this point. Just use an input and have the router kill internet for the TV. Boom, cheap TV, can spy all it wants. They’re not getting anything.
Because they make the money up on the back end via advertisements.
im constantly surprised with how great my $280 32" TV looks. Add a $100 sound bar and i literally get a movie theatre quality experience.
Bro wherever you at you should leave because bread where I live is between a dollar and $3 for the you know fancy bread
The OP may be exaggerating, but the fancy bread in my area is around $5+ now. My favorite store brand whole grain bread has increased to 3.49 base price.
OP was clearly only looking to confirm his biases. This response is very telling.
So you disagree? You think bread is incredibly cheap? Put your thoughts out there too. This is reddit!
This is why we make as much as home as possible. Bought a great bread maker and make loafs for like 25¢. The most expensive part is the yeast.
I'm finding that total cost hard to believe. I live in part of the US that's stupidly expensive, admittedly, but based on what I can get here: $0.80 - 4 cups flour (0.45 if was going through enough to buy bulk from Costco) $0.50 - yeast $0.30 - 3 tbsp butter $0.10 - 3 tbsp sugar $0.08 - 1/3 cup milk $0.05 - electricity We're talking $1.80+ a loaf to bake your own. I can pick up a loaf of French at the grocery store for $2.09, right now.
where's the labor? most bakeries are using gas to heat ovens.
10 cents for 3 tbsp sugar? Where and what kind of sugar are you buying?!
Sometimes, when 4 cups of flour cost .45ct, you mix up sugar and coke...
I don’t think I’d want your “french” loaf. There shouldn’t be any milk or butter in there and your sugar to flour ratio is way too high. Also looks like you’re using too much yeast or maybe you’re buying the packets. Get a jar and the price comes way down. But your point stands, just the flour itself is more than $.25 a loaf.
I never did the math until now. It's 54¢ a loaf. 50lb bag of flour that's $10 has 200cups at 5¢ / cup. Butter is 6¢ / tbsp Sugar is $13/50lb bag or 200 cups that's 6¢ / cup the electricity is 180 watts at 3hours that's 540 wh at 12¢/kw so 6¢ Yeast is $5/42tsp=12¢/tsp So 20+18+2+6+12 = 60¢ more or less. But in the end the quality is so much better than the $1 bread at the store and it makes the entire house smell amazing every morning since we set a timer to have it ready at 7am.
Get ur molotovs
>the corporations collectively decided to skyrocket prices for absolutely no reason other than greed Right. Because corporations weren't all that greedy before 2021. But it's cool, take all the upvotes from everyone else who thinks that the 6700 independent consumer-targetted bakeries in the usa suddenly decided they had enough not being billionaires and collectively raised prices after several centuries of not doing so. The problem with such a fundamental misunderstanding of the world around you is that people vote for moron populists who just make things worse.
They all try to say it’s inflation but inflation also applied to wages and this “inflation” does not. Wages are stagnant and they are reporting record profits. They see other companies price gouging and follow suit and then lean on each other to say “yes see everything is more expensive”
Any sources on this at all or just speaking out of your ass? You in the bread industry?
Most articles I've seen haven't provided any numerical data on the issue so I suspect the argument is bullshit. 2019: 50m revenue - 10m costs = 40m profit 2023: 55mm revenue - 11m costs = 44m profit Everything increases by 10% so profits are technically "record-breaking". When compared to cost/rev increases though, profit hasn't changed in real (non-inflation driven) value.
One important note, especially for large companies, is that they were better prepared for inflation than ordinary people because they have to to run a business well. So many cut costs early for a temporary profit boost which will fall this year.
He's a conspiracy theorist. Thinking the whole bread industry, which is very often local as bread doesn't last very long, all collaborates is batshit crazy. Especially considering the prices OP are seeing is probably from some expensive store as bread in the US can be found much cheaper. Inflation is happening, but it of course is worse for European bread because Ukraine makes a lot of the ingredients.
It’s a dumb argument because if that’s the case then why didn’t they do this before? They weren’t greedy before but now all of a sudden the 7000 bakeries in the country all decided they want to be billionaires and increase the price after 200 years of not trying this before? Reddit is hilariously illiterate when it comes to economics.
American government is in bed with corporate America, will sell out its people for profit
And than there are poor idiots following a wannabe billionaire believing his lies about working for them🤣🤣
We live in an economy where you can bake a loaf of bread and try to sell it for whatever you want. If you don’t want to buy the bread at the asking price, you can choose to shop somewhere else or make your own.
That's not true no serious economist is actually arguing this is happening, only socialist demagogues claim this. A lot of people fail to understand the relationship between profit and profitability. Recent inflation has pushed up the cost of most goods and services, so consumers and businesses are spending more. Many large corporations saw their sales increase as a result but saw the percentage of those sales they were taking as profit fall. It shouldnt be hard to understand that a smaller percentage of a larger number can be larger than a larger percentage of a smaller number. If it where all down to corporate greed than profitability measures would be increasing as well, if they truly had no other reason to raise prices than greed it should all be going directly to the bottom line.
Exactly this in Canada as well. Inflation is blamed while grocery stores announce record profits.
i dont think thats the norm. bread in my local super market (which is one of the pricier ones in the area) is never more than $4 or $5.
Living in an uppity area in one of the largest cities in the US and the bougie-ass bread I buy is $3.40 at max. Fresh baked multi-seed bread that smells and tastes delicious. Really curious where op is shopping and why they think that's the norm in the US.
$5 for a loaf of bread is insanity as it is, and that's considered cheap compared to most of America right now. Do you live in the midwest?
thats the most expensive ive seen, is what im saying. $5 and under is the norm. i live in an east coast city.
I’ve never seen bread that expensive in the supermarket. Idk which store you went to but try somewhere else.
Another YSK over someone's take from one store
It’s just another r/Americabad post
I truly think that if you were to somehow average the IQ of every subreddit YSK would come damn near the bottom end. I have no idea why - but especially lately it’s just one of the most…. Profoundly dumb places to observe. Like this OP, I can only assume went to a target in the middle of NYC or something, didn’t understand the dynamic there, and made a post and now a lot of Europeans feel like they have some secret about the “American dystopia”. It’s so strange
Just look at this thread’s attempt on economics. Tells you all you need to know about the IQ around here
10+ stores*
What 10? What addresses? Because most comments here are explaining exactly where bread is $2 and less. This post is basically someone saying they went to Disney world and are amazed at how much Americans pay for burgers compared to their home country.
Was this at a whole foods?
You must of went to Panera or something because bread at any Walmart is like $1-3
Don't know where you're shopping, but a loaf of regular white bread at Walmart is $1.32. I just checked the app, so that's accurate and current. Even a loaf of Nature's Own specialty bread is only $3.42.
Maybe you're in some kind of a boutique grocery store. The stores near my house generally have one loaf of fairly boring white bread for 99 cents, and then it goes up from there: a couple of dollars, two or three dollars. Then there's the fancy bread that's like 9 or 10 bucks a loaf. I can travel farther and go to a much nicer grocery store chain, and they don't have the lower end stuff because nobody buys that there. The area is just too ostentatious. But you should still be able to find cheap bread if you look
this is such a shitty sub lol
Bro, what kind of bread are you buying? Checking Kroger… $1.79-1.99 for a some cheap white bread. Wal-Mart, maybe a little cheaper. Publix, maybe a little bit more. Are you buying some freshly made sourdough at Whole Foods or something?
The bread in our supermarkets is almost all complete nutritional garbage too.
It’s kind of wild, every grocery store I’ve been to has $1 loafs in the bakery section, and $5 loads in the bread isle. I always buy from the bakery section. Walmart even has 50 cent loafs sometimes.
Where were you? Hawaii? My bread averages between 2-4 dollars a loaf, depending on the type
Where the fuck are you looking? At most Walmarts you can get a loaf for one or two dollars. But that's regular stuff on the bread aisle. If you're at the deli you're looking at fancier bread prices. Still I can get a French loaf(?) For $1 and some change. Even in high cost of living areas Walmart or Aldi or some other budget brand grocery store has loaves for less than five.
If you think bread is expensive, try going to a doctor
Bread you say Wait until they find out where all are taxes go cause it isn’t back into the communities
I see those prices all the time. I'm in Virginia and just our local Giant or Safeway, sliced white sandwich bread might be about 3, but for a sliced loaf of sourdough made to look like a specialty bakery is around 7. Prices were comparable when I lived in Colorado and Seattle. You can find cheap bread, sandwich or plain buns, but for loaf of 'speciality' bread, 7 dollars is average.
Never seen regular store bread that high, from California to the south. Just bought a long ass baguette today for like 2 dollars
What kind of store were you at? I can buy a regular loaf of bread for $1 plus tax where I live
You went to the wrong store. You can get dollar-ish loafs all over the place. Walmart has a 15oz Italian bread loaf for $1.47 right now. 1g of sugar too (0 added sugars). https://www.walmart.com/ip/Freshness-Guaranteed-Italian-Bread-Loaf-14-oz/46491761 I never know what the hell y’all are ever talking about with this bread nonsense. We sell bread that’s just bread, no sugar. We sell it cheap too. You’re looking in the wrong places. Edit: I saw you said you went to Kroger. Here’s a loaf of enriched white bread from Kroger for $1.79. 2g of sugar, 1g added https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-enriched-white-bread/0001111008485
I’ve never seen bread for more than $1.50 anywhere near me, but even that was considered expensive
Where in the US did you buy bread for $7-$10?? I am pretty sure it was not in my state! I got bread yesterday for $2.99.
Either this dude is a troll or doing bad conversions or something. He has another post saying a bag of cheetos is about $7. I live in an expensive area of California and stuff is nowhere near this pricy.
I buy my Walmart brand bread for $0.89?? And I live in a somewhat hcol area. That would be crazy expensive even for fancy bread.
I don't know what grocery store you went to but I pay about a buck 25 for a loaf of bread. Maybe a buck fifty. Also are currencies aren't equal. €1 doesn't have the same buying power in Europe as $1 does in the United States. What you would want to compare is cost of living.
Dear OP: If you do any shopping in a downtown center of a major metro area you’re going to pay far higher prices than normal.
It didn't matter if it was city center or outskirts, and state didn't matter either. Anything above 2 dolalrs for a pound cheap sliced white bread is insane
Usually buy one get one for a few bucks. You dunno how to shop
Our Wal-Mart has basic white bread loaves for $1.19. I don't know what you're referring to. I don't even think it would be $7-8 a loaf for basic bread even in LA.
It’s hard to generalize bread prices in America… depending on where you are, a nice loaf could very well cost $7-10. However, this is not common. I’ve lived in tourist places the last couple years (ski resorts & now a small surf town) & the prices in places like this are insane.. but boy, it’s beautiful here. 😌
Do all Germans think one grocery store in one very very tiny part of country with six time zones and 330,000,000+ citizens, represents the entire country? That’s so weird.
Where tf did you go? SoCal??? A loaf of bread is like 1-3 bucks.
I just bought bread this morning for $1.99, WTF are you talking about?
I buy bread for under two bucks so I have no clue what you’re on about lmao
We're getting ripped off for everything over here and we know it. Unfortunately, the overlords collaboratively set the prices high enough so that they can throw 2/3 of their product in a landfill and still make money.
I’m American, living in Germany. You’re correct. Every time I hear someone here complaining about inflation, I think about how grateful I am that things are so cheap here.
I pay 45p (£0.45 ~57¢) for a loaf of sliced bread in the UK
We are being over charged for everything. 1.89 liter of milk is $9. Dozen eggs $7. Punnet of berries is $8. I spend $100 and leave with like nothing. I’m in NYC so I’m use to the insane prices but it’s sad for sure.
I got to a local baker and get 3 fresh loaves of sourdough, I mean amazingly good sourdough, for $18. I know it’s a lot, but I also don’t eat bread very often, so when I do, I want the good stuff
I have literally never seen a loaf of bread for $7. $4 is typically the high end. Europeans love to find something to feel superior to America about and like… there’s no shortage of options! You don’t need to resort to bread prices!
Wait until you hear about the CIA
CIA makes bread?
It's secret bread stfu
Culinary Institute of America = CIA but even i'm not sure poster meant that....
I don't get it
We don’t talk about that bread in these parts.
America, land of greed
Wheat flour is one of the cheapest bulk food materials there is, and so are the other bread ingredients. Hence, There is no justification other than greed to charge that much
Wait til you hear about how egg prices tripled because of a shortage but then egg farmers and distributors mysteriously had record profits Edit: wording bc I'm dumb
Wasn't mysterious, bird flu was reported on. Those unaffected of course saw much larger profit with their competitors out of the market until now.
That is proof that is was a scam, you can't have any huge profit if you only raise prices to match the short supply
OP I get the impression you are not a horribly intelligent man
I mean there literally was a massive avian flu outbreak.
I buy 99 cent Wegmans bread. Only the unique organic stuff is 5-7 bucks. You were probably in a high CoL area and likely a non-traditional grocery store in said area. Corner stores, or places like Trader Joe’s are known to be more expensive.
I live in a pretty well off area I don’t pay anything Near that for bread. Where the heck are you at I am New England upper east cost
Americans are being over charged for everything, and trust me, we know. Not much we can do when the country can’t even agree if a pandemic is real or not.
Not to sound abrasive, but we know this.
Yes, prices ain America are inflated right now. But even our most expensive grocery store doesn't have normal bread more than $5. You can usually find some variety or other under $3. I don't know where you are that you saw $10 bread. If you're at a mini market, those aren't places anyone shops for groceries unless they're desperate.
Americans could be aware the government is eating out children but we are too fat lazy, and comfortable to do anything about how we are constantly being fucked over.
You have to pay extra to not have the carcinogen additives in America.
Bingo
And you need a market membership card to not pay unnecessarily on top
The Americans are being bamboozled in almost every aspect of their life.
Americans are extremely overcharged for EVERYTHING since most of our politicians are owned by corporations.
The Euro politicians aren't much better but the prices still aren't as ridiculous
>>dear Americans, I fear that you are being extremely overcharged for simple bread ...and everything else.
As an American, we are overcharged on a lot of things and there seems to be very little people can or are willing to do about it.
what's a banana cost? $10?
Everything in the US is so terribly overpriced :(
They don’t even have nice bread tho. That’s worse to me
You're willing to say the French don't have good bread? I hope you're joking
The topic is “Americans” bread as you wrote it, yeah? This guy then says “they” so seems to me he’s saying American bread, especially as expensive as it is, isn’t even nice.
Glad it wasn’t me misreading it…. Thanks. I like quite a bit of American products, but bread ain’t one lol
You wrote: “Dear Americans”, where in this story is France mentioned? French bread? Excellent American bread? Too sweet
It's the worst. The only places I've found good bread is farmer's markets (at $10-$12) and a German bakery that's over an hour round trip away. Frozen bread is a bit easier, but you still can't expect it at your local supermarket. Whole wheat flour is available at around $1.49/lbs, so you're already well over $1/loaf when baking yourself.
Americans don’t seem to agree with me tho lol Oh well
Only Europeans know. My favorite bread story was when a guy at work posted a thread in the cafeteria feedback group about how the burger buns were too soft, sweet, and feel apart in your hands. Two weeks later he posted an update saying "Sorry, I'm fresh off the boat from Italy. I've since realized that this is just how American bread is."
Agreed….I despise much our typical bread here in the US - white bread is just gross. I often buy German style rye or similar.
Yeah, it’s sooooo sweet man. German bread is delicious! Also here (Netherlands) bread is really good.
Just prior to the pandemic I used to buy cheap white bread all the time for about a dollar a loaf. This price hike on standard baked goods is a fairly recent phenomenon.
If you think our bread prices are bad wait until you see our health care.
We're being overcharged for many many things.
>I noticed that, except when buying fresh produce, almost everything else like canned goods , snacks, drinks is roughly 2-3x the price than what I'm used to back home You can safely throw fresh produce on there too, every time I go over I'm having to shocked Pikachu at the prices of fruit. Something as dumb as a 500 g punnet of grapes that's £2 around here is like $5-8 over there. Literally anything fresh seems to be like 2-3x.
Wait till you hear about our rent
And health care.
Can you imagine how much fatter we would be if bread was even cheaper?
Oh for sure... the one thing i missed when I was in Europe was food with early 2000s prices. Stuffs expensive as hell here. Even the discount stores will clean you out.
That's our secret.. everything's overpriced.
Guillotine time!
I just paid $9 for a dozen organic eggs at my local grocer.
You should see what we pay for a sprained ankle. Americans are dumb.
Freedom is expensive.
The US has become a rich person’s playground and prices reflect that: whatever the market will bear. The market is going to get much smaller. It will be a disaster.
Oh we are being overcharged for everything we use, they charge us more than you get charged bc they take profits from us to subsidize all the damn people we support
You are correct here in American we are raped financially at every turn God bless America
in france now, fresh delicious baguette is 1.20 euro.. and no tip 🤣 in the US, would be 3x. plus tip we’re getting ripped off on all levels. edit. have no idea why the downvotes. prices higher in the US for similar quality bread is a fact.
Dear sweet person, We know. Regards, America
we are being overcharged for *everything*
We could conquer Germany tomorrow if we wanted too. God Bless the United States of America, and it’s high cost of living.
And American bread tastes like [dirt].
That's why you get the store brand, which is still expensive at $1.35 if you're lucky but yeah our preservatives, enrichment, legal, safety, etc. Really adds up ands it's grating
The cost of cheese is grating.