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View Full Version : Small Containers, and what they used to be....



David Weaver
10-28-2013, 7:53 PM
Admittedly, I don't do much grocery shopping because my wife doesn't trust me to - I usually come home with whatever is cheapest, and not what's good for us. When I got sent out the other day, I noticed a few things - and I've noticed them over time. One is that even the old holdouts (like the local generic ice cream named for local dairies) are now going with smaller packaging.

All of the ice cream is 1.5 quarts, used to be 2
The coffee is all over the board, from 10 to 13 ounce, used to be 16
Bacon is 12 ounces, unless you buy something premium, used to be a pound
Flour in some brands is 4 pounds in a bag instead of five

Some of these are not particularly expensive products, especially stuff like all purpose flour.

What else is there that I've missed?

Brian Elfert
10-28-2013, 8:07 PM
This isn't new. Smaller containers and higher prices have been going on for a number of years now. I think there is as much food that has gone to smaller containers as food that is still the same size. Pepperoni is now 6 or 7 oz instead of 8 oz. Sliced cheese is sometimes 7 oz instead of 8 oz. I hadn't noticed smaller packages of bacon.

I would prefer they just raise prices instead of making packages smaller and smaller. Brand name potato chips now cost at least double per ounce than they did 5 or 6 years ago. One year Frito-Lay makes the bag smaller and then the next year they raise the price is how it has been working. (I never buy Frito-Lay chips unless on sale which is often.)

Mark Bolton
10-28-2013, 8:16 PM
Many things in a jar. Look at the bottom. The jar will be depressed into the volume much farther. Jar is the same size but holds much less, and even bigger is much lighter to ship.

Just imagine.. A company raise the prices, coupled with a reduction in quantity ( while maintaining the identical packaging by appearance), AND they reduce their trucking costs on every facet (weight, fuel, tires, maintenance, etc.).

A bit of creative ingenuity can add up to millions in profits.

Not food related but we are seeing a bank at this very moment paying a record "billions" in fines which is only a modest percentage of their profits. And we are in the ditch!!?! Who is "we"? Billions! Willingly!

Mike Henderson
10-28-2013, 9:26 PM
We have no one to blame but ourselves. One company reduces the size of it's ice cream container (for example) and can sell it for a lesser price than the companies who have the bigger container. A shopper can easily tell the difference because every grocery store I've been in puts the price per ounce on the price label. But does anyone look at that? Not very many shoppers.

So the company who reduced the size increases their sales, which forces the other companies to do the same.

So if you don't like it, start checking the price per ounce and buying what you want. The companies will respond to what the shopper does (what product is purchased).

Mike

[I think some of the purchases of the smaller packages are intentional. Not everyone wants the larger package.]

Stephen Tashiro
10-28-2013, 9:33 PM
If it's a purely mercenary trend, why have portions at fast food places gotten larger arnd larger? Is it only because the general population is getting fatter and fatter?

Smaller packages of food are useful to people who aren't feeding big families - that's more people as the population ages. Big packages of things often spoil before they are eaten.

David Weaver
10-28-2013, 9:43 PM
This isn't new. Smaller containers and higher prices have been going on for a number of years now.

Yeah, at least 20 that I can remember. It used to be really something that people took as an insult when coffee went to 13 ounces in a bag and ice cream went to 1.75 quarts. That seems like it was 15 years ago or so, maybe earlier for the coffee.

Reminds me, tuna is 5 ounces instead of 6.

David Weaver
10-28-2013, 9:44 PM
If it's a purely mercenary trend, why have portions at fast food places gotten larger arnd larger? Is it only because the general population is getting fatter and fatter?

Smaller packages of food are useful to people who aren't feeding big families - that's more people as the population ages. Big packages of things often spoil before they are eaten.

I don't think the stuff that has gone to, for example, 12 or 13 ounces for pasta is of much benefit. It's still too large for one person, but if you have a recipe that takes a pound of pasta, you're left short. If you have one that takes half of a pound, then you're left over with an odd amount.

The obnoxious thing about a lot of it is that the raw cost of the food is often a pretty small part of the product price, especially for stuff like noodles.

Frederick Skelly
10-28-2013, 10:38 PM
+1 David. Ive always assumed they were trying to drive me to buy more. For example, if the recipe calls for 2 cups of broth, and 1 can is just shy of a full cup, you have to open 3 cans to make that recipe. But maybe Im too suspicious. ;)

Rich Engelhardt
10-29-2013, 6:28 AM
If it's a purely mercenary trend, why have portions at fast food places gotten larger arnd larger?On that same theme....
What bugs me to no end is when you look at a menu and it lists smaller sized portions as - - healthy sized - - or something similar.
Ohhhhh that irritates me..grrrrr

Brian Libby
10-29-2013, 7:17 AM
+1 to what Mike Henderson said - I always check out the price per ounce!

David Weaver
10-29-2013, 7:26 AM
I may be imagining things, but when I was little. Snickers bars were 2.2 ounces, and changed to 2.08. I don't eat them much, but wonder what they are now.

And then there's the whole " air crisps" marketing thing where you put half as much product in a bag and market it as low calorie (and at least at work, that seems to work well with the ladies who frequent the vending machine.)

Brian Tymchak
10-29-2013, 7:38 AM
...why have portions at fast food places gotten larger arnd larger...



My experience is quite different. Nearly every burger, burrito (with the exception of Chipotle), egg mcmuffin, donut, bagel sandwich, etc that I've had over the last few years is considerably smaller than they used to be 10 years ago.

Adam Cruea
10-29-2013, 7:41 AM
It's the whole thing of Americans eat in excess coupled with things are just more expensive now.

I find portions and packages are either too huge or not big enough. Wasn't a problem back when I was swimming. . .everything was just too small. :-D

Dick Adair
10-29-2013, 10:43 AM
Dave, have you looked at a gallon of paint lately. At least at True Value.

David Weaver
10-29-2013, 10:51 AM
No, I haven't gotten paint anywhere but sherwin williams in the last couple of years. is it like 3.5 quarts now instead of 4?

I was right above about the snickers, off a hundredth in what I remembered the weight being (it's 2.07 and not 2.08). But the hunch that they would do it again or already had was a correct hunch, too. Mars says they are reducing the size of the snickers bar and mars bar so that all of their candy bars are 250 calories or fewer. They also said (courtesy of wiki) that they reduced the UK bar to 53 grams (originally was 62 and then 58, which is similar to what the US bar has changed by) to "fight the obesity epidemic in the UK", but later restated that the reason was to control costs.

If you're counting calories, maybe a snickers bar isn't the way to go, whether it's 250 or 280 calories.

Jeez...just be honest about it the first time a statement is made. Let finance make the press release instead of marketing.

Brian Elfert
10-29-2013, 12:37 PM
I look at the cost per ounce or per item all the time. It irritates me that sometimes one brand will show per ounce pricing and another brand will show per pound pricing. Sometimes I don't buy the cheapest per ounce because I know I'll never use the larger size before it goes bad.

I recently bought a "5 gallon" bucket of roof coating and it was really 4.75 gallons. I knew before I bought it that it was not a full five gallons.

Doug W Swanson
10-29-2013, 12:45 PM
Same goes for 20lb propane tanks. Most of those 'tank exchange' places only give you 15lbs in them while the price stayed the same. That's why I try to use a place that refills the tanks whenever possible....

Pat Barry
10-29-2013, 12:52 PM
The price per ounce labels that the grocery store does are the ones that are useful. Even so, I don't buy products based on the price per unit except to buy the same brand in a size that has a better value. For example, I am not buying Skippy no matter what the price per ounce is because I will only buy JIF. Likewise, with ice cream while I can get something cheap I want something good tasting - its a treat after all. I like what I like and I am willling to pay extra for it.

Phil Thien
10-29-2013, 12:55 PM
The price per ounce labels that the grocery store does are the ones that are useful. Even so, I don't buy products based on the price per unit except to buy the same brand in a size that has a better value. For example, I am not buying Skippy no matter what the price per ounce is because I will only buy JIF. Likewise, with ice cream while I can get something cheap I want something good tasting - its a treat after all. I like what I like and I am willling to pay extra for it.

+1. My first choice is taste or quality. Then I economize from there. Economizing often means finding less expensive sources, watching for sales, clipping coupons, etc.

Mike Chance in Iowa
10-29-2013, 3:25 PM
Check out mouseprint.org and you'll see all sorts of items that have been downsized ... and lots of other interesting reads.

Tom Stenzel
10-29-2013, 4:11 PM
I remember when Dannon reduced the size of their yogurt container from 8 to 6 oz. They said it was due to "customer demand". The 15% price reduction didn't last 6 months either.


I've eaten yogurt for 40 years, they sure didn't ask me if I wanted less and pay more.

When was the last time someone saw a real 3 pound can of coffee?

John Pratt
10-29-2013, 5:12 PM
A bit of creative ingenuity can add up to millions in profits.

It is not only profits. The vendor may be just trying to maintain a consistent profit margin (which in some cases is pretty small) and due to rising transportation costs, production costs, taxes, etc, they had to make a change to stay profitable.

ray hampton
10-29-2013, 5:48 PM
How can anyone read the price per ounce when the sticker are too high or too low for the shopper to see ? reducing the size of cans or boxes do not made sense unless the new size will divide even ,16 ounces divide by 6.5 are stupid , make the size container either 8 oz or 4 oz

Mark Bolton
10-30-2013, 7:10 AM
It is not only profits. The vendor may be just trying to maintain a consistent profit margin (which in some cases is pretty small) and due to rising transportation costs, production costs, taxes, etc, they had to make a change to stay profitable.

It's a slippery slope but the question becomes profitability. Companies like P&G, General, and the like, posted record profits shortly after this trickery was implemented. Its public information. Mind you this all really got rolling right when the US was hurting the most. Corporations, and business in general for that matter, are there to make profits. That's a given. What is a little off about it is when their customers and country are hurting the most, they see it as opportunity to grind a bit harder.

In and around the time all this was getting slight media coverage, back when gas was 4+, I watched an episode of This Week in Agribusiness (one of my favorite shows) and they had a mock box of ceral (corn flakes) produced by the corn growers association which labeled the costs on the box. Sort of an informational piece. It was released because at the time the food industry was blaming the substantial increases as well as quantity reductions on increased corn costs. The corn growers were getting the word out that there is $0.10 worth of corn in a box of corn flakes.

No one is saying costs didn't increase. Costs increased (and still have) for all of us. Yet most I know in my business and around me are lucky to be making the same (some less) and some only marginally more with cost of living increases, because we are in "tough times".

I have a well deserved reputation for corporate bashing, and of course they are the smartest ones so they deserve the spoils, but they are not living with less, the same, or mere cost of living increases. They have more because of an unwavering focus on profit, at any cost (and we've seen that cost may even include the welfare of their beloved country, so they can have "more")

I'm all for profit but we sit here in one breath defending them and increased operating costs and the next breath bashing them for private jets, paying no taxes, muli-jillion dollar packages, and so on. As always the answer is likely somewhere in the middle. That said I have little sympathy for big business who post record profits and whines all the way through "the worse economy since the Great Depression" but that's the economics of it. Major gains are made in the worst of times.

Jim Rimmer
10-30-2013, 1:14 PM
No, I haven't gotten paint anywhere but sherwin williams in the last couple of years. is it like 3.5 quarts now instead of 4?

There was a post here about this a while back that the can is not quite full and it is to leave room for the tint that is added. I don't remember how much it was but it makes since that paint stores have tint bases rather than pre-mixed colors and they will need room to add the tint.

Mark Bolton
10-30-2013, 4:19 PM
There was a post here about this a while back that the can is not quite full and it is to leave room for the tint that is added. I don't remember how much it was but it makes since that paint stores have tint bases rather than pre-mixed colors and they will need room to add the tint.

And the fact that many of the newer colors and tints require much more volume of tint. I never gave it a lot of thought but I suppose if you want white and the home center tells you to just use the base, you'd be best to go over to the color chips and pick a white and tell them to mix you that color. Ill bet the machine fills the gallon.

Myk Rian
10-30-2013, 5:03 PM
I'm all ticked off because Twinkies are smaller.

M Manlove
10-30-2013, 5:45 PM
I can agree with most everything said here. What seems to bother us all is not that prices go up or sizes go down. It is the deception that companies use to try and hide it from us. We are a very gullible people. If something is perceived as " a deal", 99% of the people in this country are all over it. We make our own problems. Just an additional note here. On my desk is a box of cookies. I faithfully tried to use the lift here flap, but actually the whole lid is ripped off. It isn't just boxes. It is everything that is packaged. Now I am 66 and sometimes my hand will shake like a dog passing a peach pit. Can any of you open anything?

Kevin Bourque
10-30-2013, 6:06 PM
The economy is bad, so companies "downsize" their packaging as a way of disguising price increases.

The other trick they play is using a large bag , but filling it with a smaller amount of stuff. Potato chip makers are notorious for doing this.

Mark Bolton
10-30-2013, 7:15 PM
The economy is bad, so companies "downsize" their packaging as a way of disguising price increases.

The other trick they play is using a large bag , but filling it with a smaller amount of stuff. Potato chip makers are notorious for doing this.

The chip industry has always attributed this to "settling" and in their defense, I have been in a frito lay facility and seen the bags filled to the top when they are sealed. The progressive handling and trucking settles, and arranges, the chips more densely in the bottoms of the bags.

If you ever have a chance do a little research on packaging and sorting. Many items are arranged and sorted using vibration/resonance and the same thing occurs with anything shipped or run down conveyors.