OCTOBER 2023
A French Supermarket is Publicly Shaming Food Manufacturers
Carrefour is affixing stickers to products accused of “shrinkflation,” calling out food manufacturers in a way that would make 19th Century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne proud.
I’m not a law-talking guy, so I’m not really sure if what French supermarket chain Carrefour did in Europe last month would fly here in the U.S.: The chain placed stickers on certain food products noting that the amount of product in a package has reduced but still costs the same, otherwise known as “shrinkflation.”
I gotta admit, it’s a pretty gutsy move, and it came ahead of negotiations with food manufacturers like Nestle and PepsiCo that were to have ended by publication time (October 15). Consumers are clearly still paying higher prices due to inflation, and Carrefour is arguing that the cost of raw materials has come down, so the price at the shelf should reflect that. But I think the play by the supermarket chain goes deeper than that.
Since most of these editor’s notes are simply thoughts that have crossed my mind in the last month, I haven’t done a lot of research into this (or any research), but my guess is that Carrefour is trying to deflect the responsibility back to the manufacturers. It’s my assumption that retailers are often the ones to take the brunt of consumer ire at high prices, and the chain is taking the Han Solo approach of, “It’s not my fault!” It’s also blatantly obvious that this is a negotiating tactic trying to sway public sentiment against food and beverage manufacturers.
Any manufacturer would clearly be miffed if a retailer did that here in the U.S., but what if that retailer was Walmart or Target? Would manufacturer's response be to pull product off the shelves at two of the largest retailers? We all know the level of power such giants have when it comes to getting their way and, barring any legal issues that are sure to crop up, they’d most likely get away with it. But would any of it be worth the strife caused?
Yeah, okay, this is all a little hypothetical, but I’m curious to see how it plays out in Europe. Will everything kind of disappear once the negotiations are done, or will there be some acrimony left behind after some manufacturers were called out with what amounts to the retail equivalent of a scarlet “A” attached to their products? FE
Cheers,
Derrick
october 2023
