The same cart of groceries that cost American families one price in 2020 now costs $741 more per year — and about $41 of that increase never showed up on a price tag. It just quietly disappeared inside a smaller bag.
That’s according to a new analysis by InvestorsObserver, published Wednesday, which tracked the price and package size of America’s most popular grocery brands from 2020 to 2026 using archived retail data from Target.com and Walmart.com.
What’s Happening: The practice has a name: shrinkflation — when a brand doesn’t just raise the price, but also puts less product in the same package, hoping shoppers won’t notice. Every brand that shrank its package between 2022 and 2024 kept the smaller size in 2026. Not one restored the original amount.
What’s Important: M&M’s Peanut Milk Chocolate Candy Family Size posted the largest combined hit in the dataset — a 90% price increase since 2020, plus a package that quietly shrank from 19.2 oz to 18.08 oz in 2024. A bag that cost $4.99 in 2020 now costs $9.49, according to InvestorsObserver.
By the Numbers: Price increases and package changes across tracked brands since 2020, per InvestorsObserver:
- Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Family Size: up 36.81% in price, package shrank 9.58%
- Honey Nut Cheerios Family Size: up 21.98%, package shrank 3.59%
- Post Fruity Pebbles: up 32.18%, package shrank 4.88%
- Reese’s Miniatures Family Pack: up 51.87%, no size change
- M&M’s Peanut Family Size: up 90.18%, package shrank 5.83%
- Skittles Original Sharing Size: up 43.89%, no size change
- Doritos Nacho Cheese Party Size: up 22.96%, package shrank 6.45%
- Cheetos Crunchy Party Size: up 39.67%, no size change
- Lay’s Classic Potato Chips: up 22.96%, no size change
How This Affects Real People: A family of four buying the same brands at the same rate as 2020 is spending $741 more per year, with $41 of that increase coming from packages that contain less product at a higher price, according to the InvestorsObserver household consumption model.
The two-step: InvestorsObserver identified a pattern in which brands raised prices first, then quietly reduced package sizes the following year. Doritos raised its price from $4.79 to $5.99 in 2022, then shrank the bag from 15.5 oz to 14.5 oz in 2023 — keeping the higher price. The bag now costs $6.69 at 14.4 oz. Frosted Flakes did the same: price hike in 2022, then the box shrank from 24 oz to 21.7 oz in 2023. “Frosted Flakes and Doritos both shrank in 2023, a year after their largest price hikes,” the InvestorsObserver report states.
Coca-Cola’s can math doesn’t add up: The price gap between Coca-Cola formats has grown sharply since 2020. A 12-pack of cans jumped from $4.89 to $8.89 — an 82% increase. Shoppers buying the 10-pack of 7.5 oz mini cans now pay $0.09 per ounce, compared to $0.04 per ounce for a 2-liter bottle — a 126% per-ounce premium for the smaller format, according to InvestorsObserver. Coca-Cola expanded the individual mini can to convenience stores nationwide on January 1.
Tired of The Corporate Greed?: You as a consumer actually do have the power to reverse this trend. Find out how.
From The Book:
Maybe CEOs can start using their Texas-sized bonuses to hire someone to explain to them what happens when the customers they’re squeezing can’t afford their own shrinking products. Hint: It’s not another yacht.
B.T. Clark
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
