Edit: For those of you asking, this is North San Diego, CA.
Edit2: For everyone commenting about the five pack sale, it’s a digital coupon only; you must purchase 5 AND create an account on their app and add the coupon at checkout.
One of the best deals I ever got was $2 per 12 pack (5 for $10) on the 4th of July weekend in 2009 in a Virginia Wegmans near Bumpass (real place, I swear) central park, va.
I remember this specifically because I got married that month and it was a backyard bbq style wedding where we supplied the sodas and we bought like 40x 12 packs.
I worked for a grocery store from 2002-2005. In 2005 I started working in grocery stores as a vendor for Pepsi, so I'm pretty well versed on this topic haha.
$2 12-packs was indeed a pretty standard deal in 2005. By about 2008 though they were more rare, only occurring a few times a year, with 4 for $10-11 being a more standard sale price.
What is on sale basically just bounces back and forth between Pepsi and Coke every week or two like you said. At Pepsi I worked for commission, around 2% of my sales, so big sales were always a double edged sword. You could make a few hundred dollars more on those weeks, but the retailers get discounted prices on those big sale weeks so you would do twice the back breaking labor for only 50% more money.
Because nobody wants to buy five of them and have to figure out where to put them. People are addicted to their sodas so they know they will still buy them.
I think most people can handle storage of five cases of soda. Even most people in studios in Manhattan can handle five cases of soda. It ain’t like a lifetime supply.
I worked at a local beer distributor during college and a case is forever 24 pack of cans, or 2-12 packs if they were glsss bottles. A 12 pack is a 12 pack.
It's this thing where in different parts of the country or the world, the same words mean different things. Synonyms. I think. Or something like that.
Like a bean in cali could mean an x pill and a bean in detroit could mean a fentanyl pill or a bean here just means just any pill. You get what i mean.
They are weird packs of 35. Usually they barely match up cost wise to buy 2 get 2 free deals. When it gets to buy 2 get 3 usually its betters to buy at the grocery store.
It's pretty much an accepted part of the Costco culture that softdrinks are not the best deal. It's not the worst price, so if you just want to stock up, then go for it, but keeping an eye on the grocery store deals is always cheaper.
They're priced for people stocking office break rooms. It's convenient enough for them not to care about saving 10 cents a can.
I don’t wanna buy 5 of them because I don’t want to have that many sodas easily accessible. I will drink them all 10x quicker if they’re in my pantry vs forcing me to go to the store.
Or if you don't own a car. I was lucky enough to live in an area where I didn't need one and the logistics of buying in bulk while on foot was the one big negative.
Jokes on the store, I would buy all five. Five would cost you $25. Two 12 packs would cost you $26. Just means I won't have to buy soda for a few extra weeks.
Earlier this year, I was buying snacks for a road trip. Doritos were $7/bag, or 4 for $10. Obviously I bought 4 of them. It was at my local grocery store where I already have an account and the app and frequently use their app deals to save actual money (not just artificial higher prices and a "deal" that brings it down to regular price) so I wasn't scandalized.
But it's fucking stupid. Yeah, I eventually ate 4 bags of Doritos, but it's hard to maintain my "don't eat so much junk food" diet when I have four bags of Doritos.
Maybe it’s because soda takes up a lot of shelf space versus other similarly priced products? So getting quicker turnover of inventory is more beneficial.
I used to be a grocery dept. manager at Walmart (when that was a thing) and stores don't really care about that much, in the US at least. Other than store brand soda, all soda is managed by outside vendors who deliver and warehouse the bulk of it. The store may allow them like a pallet of backstock in the back, but that's about it (unless they're having some sort of a feature for special events like 4th of July).
Three twelve packs for $6.99 seems a lot more reasonable than "buy three get three free", which is the kind of thing you see nowadays. I don't even mind storing six twelve packs, I just don't want to have to haul the damn things home and into the house...
Raley's/Safeway/Bel Air are awful about this. You generqlly have to buy a minimum of 4 to get the actual "price". It's frustrating when you're trying to buy groceries on a medium-to-modest budget for a household of 2 people. If I wanted to shop in bulk, I'd go to Costco.
I end up doing most of my grocery shopping at Target these days, of all places, because they don't do this crap and their prices are pretty decent.
Retailers don't actually set the price of soda, or chips, or bread for that matter. They have an outside supplier that buys up all the space and sets the pricing for that product in the store--that provider even stocks the shelves like they own the store. In my area not a single store has a different price. It's the same price at Kroger, Albertsons, save Mart, Walmart, and even Amazon. That's because one corporation controls all the shelf space and has set a minimum price standard.
That's not true. Stores still have pricing autonomy, but they have to stay competitive with one another so they tend to fall within similar margins. It's a lot more complicated than what you're suggesting.
They're trying to maintain lower prices by having you buy in bulk. Kroger is doing this a lot now. You can get prices comparable to like 2022 so long as you agree to buy a ton at once
I am glad I’m not a regular soda drinker. If I bought 5 of these they’d expire before I drank them. So I guess the high prices for individual boxes is good for my health because I simply won’t buy them
I feel like it's really because soda is so addictive. Almost like a crack dealer saying they will lower the price if you buy a certain amount of crack because then they know you'll be smoking crack for several days in a row and then when you run out it will be such a deeply ingrained part of your life you are practically gaurenteed to buy again.
They do the same with hot Cheetos and other chips and stuff that's designed to be addictive.
Heavy shit got expensive a couple years back when diesel went up. Heavy shit never got cheaper. Pet food, cat litter, detergent, soda, etc. All went up, never came down.
My wife buys them for a non-profit location. I asked why she doesn’t get the normal cans for the same price. She said she used to, but the vast majority of their visitors would take a couple sips and leave almost a full can. It made cleaning them up a hassle as she can’t just toss them into the recycling bins full of soda and has to drag them all to the communal kitchen or a bathroom somewhere on the same floor first. So they have their uses, but what a money grab by Coke and Pepsi. They’re rarely on sale too, unlike the regular can which always have some special.
Wait till the actual food shortages start. This is just increase in transportation costs.
Iran themselves told Americans to start stockpiling food for the coming months. Now I’m not saying I believe the Iranian government is actually concerned about Americans, but what I am saying is that I trust their regime to tell the truth over ours.
Fertilizer shipments have fallen and El Niño is about to devastate the globe. These are 2 catastrophes hitting a world that depends on constant production and trade to function.
You don’t need to panic buy the entire canned goods section, but maybe toss a couple in your cart on each trip. And get a rice maker.
Safeway is being sued by Washington state for this practice. They inflate the price of a single item and push for the multiple sale to get shoppers to spend more. They don’t expect people to buy just one and the margin at $5 is enough. It’s a predatory practice to drive sales and charge more.
I’m glad to hear they’re getting sued. The fact that you have to have an app on your phone to get a coupon price is ridiculous. Last night soda was $11.99 a 12 pack. In some offer to get three at a lower price. I walked on by. I was buying ice cream in many different flavors for my grandchildren who are visiting from out of town. Ben and Jerry’s pints were $6.99 or $3.50 if you use the app. I asked the cashier to give me the app price. They said they weren’t supposed to, but they did it. (They always do). Putting up a small fuss about it saved me $24 on the ice cream I bought. I avoid Safeway like the plague, but it’s only a few blocks from me and quick in a pinch.
So I’m not sure if the majority of people understand the implications of this. This means that they’re essentially willing to pay $3.49 to collect your data. Per transaction. Same exact transaction, same item, same everything, just one provides them with data, one doesn’t.
Or, in reverse; You have to pay them not to collect your data.
This is part of it, but not the whole thing; 3.49 is not necessarily the dollar value of your data. The rest is simple supply and demand economics. If you have a certain price point that maximizes profit, great—but if you ALWAYS sell at that price, you miss a market segment who would never be willing to buy at that price, but would be willing to buy at a lower (but still profitable) price.
This is where sales, promotions, coupons, and rebates come in. If you occasionally drop the price, you can capture some more price-sensitive customers, and still extract the most profit from your less price-sensitive customers the vast majority of the time.
In this regard, coupons and rebates and promotions that require an app/membership are better than simple sales (in terms of profit for the seller), because they require effort. Rich, price-insensitive people won’t bother with that and will still pay full retail, which is better for the seller than a simple sale where everyone pays the same price, because then you’re losing value from those price-insensitive customers who weren’t necessarily shopping for the sale, they just happened to walk through the store at the right time.
TL;DR Not saying that the data collection isn’t part of this, but even if there were zero data collection and it was just an arbitrary hoop to make people jump through to get the discount, it would still be an economically sound business strategy.
I can't vouch personally, but I've been told that Safeway now allows you to use either the digital clipped coupon OR the physical coupon without an app. I don't usually do to Safeway cause I live in a raley's part of town. But that's what I've been told.
Safeway is such a trash establishment in Washington. Tries to position itself as a premium grocery but has shit quality produce and meat at +25% price over everything else in the area.
My local grocery has been doing this more and more. I don’t want 5+ boxes of cereal, bags of chips, cartons of ice cream, etc. I don’t have room for all that food and don’t want to spend $200+ just to pay a reasonable price.
I almost bought 5 bags of family sized chips about a month back because the deal was like $6 per bag or 5 for $10. I was looking at the bag and noticed the expiration date was like 2-3 months out. I was a bit surprised, figured chips would have a long shelf life so I thought maybe this deal is to move soon expiring inventory. I didn’t buy them because no chance I eat this many chips by then.
I looked around to see what the other chips not on sale had as an expiration date and it was about the same. Turns out all chips have about a 3 month expiration date. I had no idea because I never checked the expiration date on these as they’re highly processed dry foods, I just assumed it would last a very long time.
For a large family sure great deal, not so much in this case.
A sealed bag of chips is not going to go bad. The expiration date is mandated based on laws that are decades out of date. The bag is filled with nitrogen. As long as it's puffy it's good.
Grocery stores are just deciding to price stuff like they're a gas station or convenience store now. Outrageous single prices basically guarantee you buy multiples at the "discounted" price. Same reason a single 20oz at the gas station is $3.29 but they're 2/$4.
Sure it sucks if you only wanted one, but just stock up on things that don't expire quickly and enjoy the relatively normal prices.
I don't recall seeing 12pks at my Costco, just the 35pk flats or 36pk cubes. I'd rather get the 5 12pks and get a variety of flavors personally, but if you're just a one soda person Costco/Sams is probably the best bet.
My local grocery store fairly regularly runs a "$3 bag of chips (when you buy 3)" sale and it drives me nuts. I don't need 3 big ass bags of chips, and the regular price is like $6/ea.
Yeah my Kroger has Doritos for $5.49 a bag, but currently but 2 get 3 free. I didn't exactly need 5 bags of chips, but I've started keeping a pretty well stocked storage room in the basement of all those extras. Keeps my kitchen pantry less cluttered and I can just walk downstairs to restock the pantry. It's kinda fun having my own little "free" corner store in the basement.
Usually though, you can pick different flavors as long as it's from the same company, Coca Cola in this case. So Coke, Fanta, and Barq's Root Beer will probably be on sale as well and you can mix and match.
back in like, 2009-2011, i used to make bank reselling soda at my high school, as the vending machines didn't cut on until 2PM, (after lunch) i'd swing by the harris teeter and take advantage of the "Buy 2 get 3 free" deal theyd run. sell each can for 1 buck each, and it was roughly 45 bucks profit per run.
They're trying to force volume because they can't compete with beasts like online only grocery discounters and The WalBeast.
Either play the game, order from said discounters, or go to Aldi and get what you get there. Or a high end place and pay through the nose in other ways.
Even more infuriating that you have to sign in, scan the coupon, and clip it onto your account in order to get the deal. Would be so much easier if the deals applied automatically if you have an account. Looks like this is an albertsons and a lot of the times these tiny barcodes to get the coupon don't even scan properly.
My local grocery store does this and it's more than mildly infuriating to me. Everything is so expensive unless you buy a ridiculous amount of that brand, and then the cost justifies the amount of product bought, but you didn't want to spend that much money to begin with!
Been going to an employee owned grocery store and it's not like this at all. Product just goes on sale, so you can still buy just 1 of an item at the sale price. That's how it should be!
Kroger used to do "buy 2 get 2" sales. But this year they decided to bump it up to "buy 3 get 3" and raise the regular price from $9.99 each to $11.99 each. So it's essentially $1/can, or half off if you buy 6 at a time.
Yup. Plus, I think something that's core to the whole conversation is that the list price of these drinks has almost doubled in the last couple of years. The sales don't hit as hard now. I just don't think junk food is worth this lol
COVID just completely broke pricing and it will never recover because businesses saw they can 2x or more all their prices and people will still buy because when every single company 2x their prices, where are you supposed to go.
So instead of it being like McDonald's just 2x their prices but Burger King didn't, every single fast food place did it because why would they turn away that much more money.
Yes, capitalism worked / works in terms of stability AS LONG AS the market as a whole prices things reasonably for the average person... Basically 'common decency'. But if every company jacks their prices up like this together, and with no government restrictions, the average person is screwed. When you hear "late stage capitalism', make no mistake. THIS is what it looks like. People act like America is infallible, as if many great civilizations didn't fall before us... It's bonkers to me.
The economy is fucked up and everything is expensive. Yea they can simply just not get this item but everything else will have the same problem so they have the right to complain.
Yeah I will stop buying food and drinks. I will stop buying my favorite food and drinks. I will be miserable in my corner with the cheapest grub I can find, thank you for your words of wisdom. Thank you for blaming the average consumer and pretending there is a ton of competition in the American food and drink industry.
Is that supposed to be expensive? $1.10 per can is about what you'd pay for a can in my corner of the EU and we're definitely getting lower salaries that in the US.
I really don't see an issue here, unless you entire liquid intake consists of canned soda.
Yeah remember Redditors always go on about how expensive healthy stuff is. Well soda is probably one of the most unhealthy things you can consume. And it’s now expensive as hell.
Yes. I'm sure you don't have a single treat or vice that's become more expensive that you complain about.
I'll give you a hint, it's not about the pop. It's about people being frustrated that their hard earned money is worth less and less and less than it used to be.
It motivated me to drastically curtail my Coca-Cola habit three months ago. I was spending a hundred dollars a month and drinking far too many each day. I bought three 24 packs for $9.80 each on sale three months ago and I just cracked open the third case. I lost 12lbs without changing anything else, my heartburn and acid reflux vanished, and my water intake has improved…and I’ve saved $300. Working on quitting altogether next. Coca-Cola got greedy and they tipped a life-long loyal customer over the edge and now I am never going back.
You are missing the point, the price will stay this high because people are willing to pay it. You can't complain about the price if you continue to purchase at that price, that is smooth brain behavior
Called "inventory push pricing" or "loss leader bundling." The grocery store (or the vendor) has way too many of these in their warehouse or inventory and is looking to taper their inventory a bit by incentivizing you to purchase a very large quantity at the market demanded price. It is obviously bad for people who just want 12, but folks who are addicted to aluminum can sodas will shell out $30-40 for 60 cans. In this case, $5.00 is basically a steal, especially in Southern California.
I used to never even consider store brand versions of soda. Brand name can kiss my ass with these prices. Every grocery store brand is still around $5 for a 12 pack without any minimum purchase needed and they're sometimes on sale (HEB and Kroger currently have theirs on sale for $4.48, Walmart $4.89). I have told my family that I'm completely done buying any of the name brand sodas at the grocery store. I've actually found a few different sodas I prefer to their name brand counterparts (Walmart's Twist is a current favorite)
I don't understand why a lot of people don't know about Dollar General's soda sale/hack. Occassionally, you can get 6 12pks for $25 when on sale and use the $5 off coupon on saturday making them $20 minus tax and deposit. Essentially $3.33 per 12pk making each can less than $0.28. It has been like this for as long as I can remember.
its been like this in AZ where I am too, around a dollar per soda in 12 packs, maybe a little less. Big name cereal is $6 a box, lays chips almost $5 a bag. Those are the three worst offenders I've seen.
This is this way for people like my mother. Don't care much about the price, but 5 cases is "too much". Same reason why we have mini containers of everything are 4-5x the per Oz price of the large. People who don't care much about price tend to hate "bulk".
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u/ThePickleistRick 11h ago
The real question is why all retailers seem to now be pushing a minimum purchase of 4-5 cases in order to get the actual, reasonable price.
Is it really that more cost effective? Are there really that many people who will spend almost as much for two as they will for five?