A warning has been issue to shoppers at Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s as price inflation has risen for the first time in over a year.
As the cost of living crisis raged, shoppers became used to seeing the price of their weekly shop constantly going up, as retailers and manufacturers alike slapped ever higher prices on key staples like milk, bread, and cereal, at a time energy bills and petrol were also going up.
But after brief period of calm, grocery analysis firm Kantar has today announced that supermarket price inflation has gone up, the first time since March 2023.
It means supermarket prices were 1.8 percent higher than a year ago, up from 1.6 higher July.
So not only have prices increased substantially over the past three years, but prices at supermarkets are still going up on top of previous rises – because inflation slowing doesn’t mean prices have gone down, just that the speed of the increase is reducing.
Kitchen towels and baked beans beat the trend and are on average 7 percent and 5 percent cheaper than last year.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said: “Having reached its lowest rate in almost three years in July, August saw inflation nudge up again slightly. While this is noticeable following 17 straight months of falling rates, it actually marks a return to the average levels seen in the five years before the start of the cost-of-living crisis.
“With this kind of pricing spread, shoppers will find that the type of product they’re putting in their baskets will really dictate how much they pay.”
Sainsbury’s recorded its largest year-on-year market share gain since July 1997, rising by 0.5 percentage points over the quarter compared with the same period last year.
It was again the fastest growing of the traditional supermarkets, with sales increasing by 5.2 percent.
Tesco maintained its streak of winning market share every month since August 2023, rising to 27.6 percent while increasing sales by 4.9 percent.
Sales rose by 11.3 percent at online-only retailer Ocado, too.
Aldi was named cheapest retailer for the second month running by consumer magazine Which?, as Lidl came second and Asda third.