Food Prices at Walmart Are Out of Control

Well, I have to rant for a moment.  I walked into a Wal­mart the oth­er day, and hon­est­ly, I don’t like doing that.  I went through the food sec­tion, think­ing I would pick up a few items, and I was appalled.  What hap­pened to the prices there?  They went through the roof.  The yel­low smi­ley face guy was there, and I guess he was smil­ing because the prof­it mar­gin went way up.  Seri­ous­ly?  This was in a rur­al town where the cost of liv­ing is less than where I live in north­ern NJ, one of the most expen­sive places to live in the coun­try.  This is in a town, where a good por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion lives at or just above pover­ty lev­el.  Real­ly?  I could­n’t believe it.  I usu­al­ly shop at Stop & Shop in NJ and they are expen­sive, so when I go gro­cery shop­ping, I look prices up and down, and I am pret­ty famil­iar with the prices on the food brands I buy.  This inven­to­ry was 20 — 25% more in price.  What is going on Wal­mart?

I know the econ­o­my is bad, and com­pa­nies need to con­tin­ue mak­ing prof­it, but the food costs have not increased that much, have they.  Please some­one chime in if you think I am a lit­tle crazy here.  I real­ly would like to know.  Is Wal­mart (Chi­na­mart) the evil empire for food now?  Is it across the board at your reg­u­lar gro­cery store?  Please let me know.

After a few min­utes of research, here is what I found:

• Wal­Mart super­center: the new low-price food retail­er in town
• New York Post:  Report: Wal-Mart food prices going up
• Pota­to Pro:  Report: Wal-Mart food prices going up
• Reuters:  Wal­mart to slash gro­cery prices
• Busi­ness Insid­er:  Food Infla­tion Com­ing To A House­hold Near You, As Wal-Mart Hikes Prices At Fastest Pace Since Ear­ly Jan­u­ary

Where is the truth, it sure does not look like it is between the lines when I was walk­ing though the isles…

Oh, and those few things I was look­ing for were items such as dried beans, rice, etc. for my food stor­age.  Need­less to say, I walked right out.  It’s okay though, because I found Cor­rado’s Restau­rant Whole­sale in Clifton NJ, now for a good por­tion of my dry stor­age goods, as well as veg­eta­bles that I can dehy­drate myself, etc.  No more food at Wal­mart.  That is for sure.

Please com­ment on this, as I would like to hear more about what your thoughts are since Wal­mart has per­me­at­ed our soci­ety.