It’s no secret that filling your shopping cart today is much more expensive than it was a few years ago. This is said by INE, which has seen a 32.1% increase in CPI between January 2020 and 2024, and by the pockets of those who frequent the supermarket to stock their home fridges. But neither one nor the other prevents studies devoted to periodically analyzing price deviations from creating surprises.

The latest example comes from OCU, which launched an analysis with two clear conclusions: First, food has become 38% more expensive in just three years; This is an increase that far exceeds the increase in salaries during that period; Secondly, in Spain there are very popular supermarket chains where the price increase is even more pronounced.

We tell you what they are.

A general rise… and unbalanced. The OCU study is making a splash. Its technicians devoted themselves to analyzing the prices of 122 commonly consumed items (food and pharmacies) across seven major supermarket chains in Spain and found significant increases in all of them. However, just because everyone has increased interest rates does not mean that the increase is the same.

As a general rule, wherever you go, whether Alcampo, Carrefour, Condis, El Corte Inglés, Dia, Eroski or Mercadona analyzed by OCU, the cost of filling the shopping cart is much higher in December 2023 than in the same period. The month of 2020. Increases can be quite different from one company to another. OCU based its analysis on 55,000 prices from online supermarkets corresponding to 10 cities spread across the country.

Who has become more expensive? OCU is seeing an overall increase, with increases ranging from 32% to 40%, at least across the seven chains it studied. But the prize goes to Alcampo and Carrefour, where technicians recorded a 43% and 45% increase in purchase prices respectively. This latest situation for Carrefour is interesting because it slightly blurs the final picture in the widespread increase scenario.

“They followed a similar evolution in all chains […]. However, their relative positions have changed little in these three years. The cheap ones are still cheap, the expensive ones are still expensive, with one exception: Carrefour goes from being one of the cheapest establishments to the second most expensive, just below El Corte Inglés,” explains the consumer organization.

At the opposite pole, the smallest increases are Dia (+32%), Condis (+33%) and Eroski (+34%). If we go beyond percentages and focus on where it’s cheaper to fill the fridge, OCU points to Alcampo and Mercadona.

So how much does it cost in euros? Evolution percentages help to clearly understand the thing, the evolutions, but ultimately what matters is how many euros we have to give at the time of exit. To give a clear idea, OCU uses two incremental examples: Alcampo and Carrefour. In the first case, the basket costing 248 euros in 2020 already required the payment of 355 euros after three years. In the second case, Carrefour, this increase was 122 euros.

At a general level, OCU estimates that a purchase that cost 100 euros three years ago requires a payment of almost 140 euros today. And he insists that in both cases the customer left the supermarket with “the same things”. “And food has increased by 38% since 2020. It is noticed almost equally across all foods and in all stores,” the association emphasizes. In fact, his analysis shows that of the 122 products he examined, all but four of the most commonly consumed goods have become more expensive. And the decreases in the number of cases counted were quite timid.

Oil, sugar and juice. If small differences are seen when the price increases of supermarket chains are examined, these differences are directly brutal when it comes to products. For example, the 5% price increase detected on disposable razors has little to do with the 225% private label light olive oil that tops the OCU list. Technicians estimate that a bottle of 2.35 euros/l will cost 7.66 euros in three years.

This increase is notable for white sugar (91%), orange juice (81%) or M eggs, round rice and carrots, all of which are above 60%.

Are margins getting fat? That’s the question OCU techs ask themselves: “Has anyone increased their margins?” Is there any stage in the production chain that explains such a marked increase in prices? To clear up any doubts, they analyzed the prices of 13 fresh produce, looking at how much they cost at source and the prices displayed on the shelves. Its first conclusion is that public sale prices can be up to six times higher than the prices farmers and ranchers receive. Secondly, it is very difficult to determine whether enrichment is occurring or not, and if so, to determine exactly at what stage it is.

Prices are rising… and costs are rising. “The prices demanded by producers are starting to increase, there is no doubt about that, but this does not mean that they are making more profits because the costs of fertilizers, fuel… are increasing,” he points out. In fact, their study shows that products become proportionally more expensive at origin than at supermarkets and others where the opposite occurs. For example, apples and bananas saw larger increases in stores.

The association is clear about its demands: Extending the VAT reduction beyond June and extending it to meat and fish products, which more than 50% of families have difficulty obtaining; More controls for households with fewer resources and “extreme attention” to the Food Chain Law.

Pictures | Atoms (Unsplash) and OCU

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