Burn The Playbook
Groceries Up 25%. The FTC Knows Exactly Why.
Food companies raised prices beyond inflation and bragged to investors about it. The FTC documented the whole thing. Nothing happened.
WASHINGTON: Grocery prices have risen roughly 25% since 2020. Supply chain disruptions eased. Input costs moderated. The prices stayed high. And the FTC knows exactly why.
▶ Watch the 60-second version of this story on my YouTube Shorts.
The FTC's March 2024 report on grocery supply chain disruptions found that large food retailers and wholesalers used pandemic-era disruptions to accelerate and widen profit margins. Revenues rose above costs by a wider margin than before the pandemic. The companies did not just pass along higher costs. They added a premium. And then they kept it.
Kroger's former CEO was paid $15.6 million in 2024. The company's median associate earned $34,213. Kroger reported that ratio to the SEC as 457 to 1. The person who set the prices and the person who stocked the shelves live in different countries within the same company.
Read the FTC's report yourself, the one that documents exactly how grocery chains widened the margin.
Quick break before The Receipts, and this one is about who reads your email.
The Receipts
1. 25% cumulative increase: Food-at-home prices rose 3.5% in 2021, 11.4% in 2022, 5.0% in 2023, 1.2% in 2024 and 2.3% in 2025, about 25% compounded, with another 2.5% forecast for 2026. Supply chains recovered. Prices did not come down. Source: USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook, August 2026, built on the BLS food-at-home CPI.
2. FTC: margins widened, and stayed wide: Retailer revenues ran more than 6% over total costs in 2021, above the 2015 peak of 5.6%, and reached 7% in the first three quarters of 2023. The FTC wrote that some grocery firms "seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today." Source: FTC, "Feeding America in a Time of Crisis," March 21, 2024. The investor-call admissions, General Mills crediting "getting smart about how we look at pricing" and PepsiCo's CFO saying margins could rise as costs fell, are from Groundwork Collaborative, January 2024.
3. 457:1 pay ratio: Kroger disclosed a CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio of 457 to 1 for fiscal 2024, Rodney McMullen at $15.6 million against a median associate at $34,213. The prior year's ratio was 502 to 1. Source: Kroger proxy statement filed with the SEC May 15, 2025, via Grocery Dive, May 19, 2025.
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The Dispatch
They told investors they raised prices beyond costs. They told consumers inflation did it.
That is the sentence. That is the whole story. The FTC documented companies that raised prices above their actual cost increases, kept them elevated after costs fell, and then told their shareholders, on earnings calls, in investor presentations, in SEC filings, that they had successfully "managed pricing." The same companies told consumers through advertising and PR that rising prices were caused by inflation, supply chains, and forces beyond their control.
One audience got the truth. The other got the bill.
Sources
Federal Trade Commission: "FTC Releases Report on Grocery Supply Chain Disruptions," retailer revenues 6% over costs in 2021 and 7% in 2023, March 2024. source
USDA Economic Research Service: Food Price Outlook, annual food-at-home CPI changes 2020 to 2025 and 2026 forecast, August 2026. source
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index, food at home up 2.1% over the year ended January 2026, February 2026. source
Groundwork Collaborative: "Inflation Revelation," executive earnings-call statements on pricing and margins, January 2024. source
Grocery Dive: Kroger proxy statement, McMullen $15.6 million, median associate $34,213, 457-to-1 ratio, May 2025. source
— Michael Starr Hopkins · Washington, D.C.
Burn Notice
The FTC found the evidence. The companies admitted it on earnings calls. The prices stayed high. Nothing happened.
That is the playbook. Raise the price. Blame inflation. Tell investors the truth. Tell consumers the cover story. Pocket the difference. Repeat.
Your grocery bill is not a market outcome. It is a margin decision made in a boardroom and protected by a lobby.
They bragged to Wall Street about raising your prices. They blamed the economy when you noticed.
— MSH
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