Reddit Is In Shambles Over The Price Of Aldi Eggs
Reddit, aka the bathroom wall of the internet, is the place to complain about everything. While solidly half of it is complaints about the Trader Joe's item Reddit thinks is flavorless or ogling the unusual strawberry that left Reddit disturbed, sometimes the users hit on something a bit more serious: Lately even the graffiti-speckled proverbial halls of Reddit have turned to food inflation.
At this point, you'd basically have to be a 100% self-sustaining homesteader to not be aware of the food inflation crisis. You can't pick up a paper without seeing the words "inflation," or "cost of [insert food of choice here] rising." "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" even just did a whole episode on what the show calls "foodflation." (via HBO). Now, people have taken to Reddit to vent on the rising prices of food items, which can provide a useful tip-off for where to avoid surging prices or where to snag momentary lows. The current outrage on Reddit is about the cost of eggs at the grocery chain Aldi.
Thought it was a pricing error
Redditors are not taking this latest price surge lying down. Aldi is even more affordable than Walmart and is supposed to be one of the cheapest grocery stores around (via Ramsey Solutions). However, recent surges in egg pricing may make shopper second guess that — an August 2 post on the r/Aldi subreddit shows a photo of large grade A eggs with a price of $3.29 perdozen. The top comment is that with the price of these eggs, one might as well pay the extra dollar and a quarter for the premium version. Some commenters even said organic eggs were currently priced the same as non-organic eggs near them.
When Ramsey Solutions evaluated prices at the chain in June 2021, a dozen eggs at Aldi cost $1.10. That's nearly a 200% increase in price over a little more than a year. Sadly, these prices reflect the national averages, as the USDA reported on August 1 that national egg prices are incredibly high across all regions compared to last year. However, a separate USDA report from July 29 fortunately noted that prices for eggs steadied this week and even began to fall. According to the report, "... production is slowly returning closer to last year's more normal production levels," implying prices may begin to stabilize overall.