Food Inflation

[dragon2k]

quote:

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Originally posted by pahoated

A lot of this doesn't have to do with a specific scapegoat store. It is the crazy shopping here and knowing how stuff gets here. The major container ship from the US arrives in Honolulu on Monday, the Young Brothers tugboat it over Tuesday and it's stocked Wednesday. All the stores raise their prices from the 1st to the 5th, the 1st for SS and SSI, the 3rd and 5th for EBT. Then, there are just crazy prices for the same product in different stores. And wild fluctuations in the store. An example, Malama has a regular price for Breyer's ice cream pints of about $5 for a pint. Then, they will have a sale on it, 2 pints for $3 or $1.50 for a pint. So, what will be unbelievably high in one place will be half the price someplace else. That's why Hilo is such a bustling little town, it's everybody going from store to store to get the best prices. Very little percentage is air freighted in, and at an even more premium cost, so of the 92% Hawaii is importing, it's almost all container ships, all floating on oil. The price of a barrel of oil has gone up almost 11% in the past two months, so that gives a rough idea of the shipping cost increase for the next few months.

"This island Hawaii on this island Earth"

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Mahalos for the very astute observation of our pathetic dependency on oil. Seriously though, thanks for the inside scoop on the pricing calendar.