Why your Albert Heijn groceries are suddenly so much more expensive
Do you feel like you’ve started paying more for your groceries? You might be right. Albert Heijn has raised the prices of a lot of A-brands in recent weeks. 1,464 price increases to be exact, compared with 342 price reductions. And the annoying part: it’s our own fault, because we’ve started buying more.
Huh? Things are going incredibly well for supermarkets, aren’t they? Turnover is through the roof. You’d therefore think that price increases wouldn’t be necessary. Yet an analysis by inprijsverhoogd.nl shows that they are.
https://twitter.com/AlainVerheij/status/1269225659672547328
They’re not all doing it, by the way. During the same period, Jumbo introduced roughly as many price increases as price reductions, Dirk and Dekmarkt are also fairly stable, and even Plus and Coop—which normally follow Albert Heijn’s lead—aren’t doing anything unusual. Albert Heijn is therefore the odd one out.
Compensating
How come? “At the beginning of the coronavirus period, supermarkets were actually cautious about raising prices. They didn’t want to come across as profiteers of the crisis,” says Thijs van der Tuin of inprijsverhoogd.nl to RTL. So it could be that they’re now trying to make up for that.
https://twitter.com/Marlies1965/status/1268551331897376772
According to the experts, the fact that people are simply buying more groceries because they’re spending more time at home also plays a role. We’re not going on holiday, we haven’t been able to go out to restaurants or bars recently, and the weather was lovely, so quite a lot of beer, soft drinks and barbecue supplies have been sold. Albert Heijn says that the price increases are ‘a consequence of market developments’, but also points to its ‘attractively priced own-brand products’ and bonus offers.
How to shop cheaply
Want to do your grocery shopping really cheaply? Then you need to go to Germany. To ensure that people keep spending money, VAT has been reduced—from 19 to 16%, while VAT on fresh fruit and vegetables is dropping from 7 to 5%. AD put it to the test and, sure enough, shoppers were genuinely much better off at the German Aldi. Although, of course, you still have to add the cost of petrol.
Photo: Albert Heijn
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