You are mentioning accurate points, but I suspect that the real change is caused by trying to handle the fact that they now compete with dollar stores. Traditi

You are mentioning accurate points, but I suspect that the real change is caused by trying to handle the fact that they now compete with dollar stores. Traditional math on supermarkets is that the green grocer's, meat and milk aisles end up being relatively unprofitable because of inventory losses: Way too many of the items spoil, and more has to be spent just preventing the spoilage of what they do sell. Most of the profit typically comes from the middle of the supermarket, where almost nothing spoils fast enough that the inventory cannot be moved, even if it takes a sale or two. Thus, historically people are brought to the supermarket by good prices on french toast components, but many of them are being subsidized by big margins elsewhere. But that cross-section subsidization is how dollar stores attack the business: They avoid the expensive sections, and just sell the middle parts of the supermarket at very low margins, outcompeting then there. As the supermarket loses sales there, they have to rely on the least safe sections to stay afloat... sections that used to be straight out unprofitable. So of course prices have to go up, as each section has to carry its weight, instead of being cross-subsidized.