Carrefour exposes “shrinkflation” in stores

Next Monday, Carrefour will place a label on products in its French shops that it accuses of shrinkflation. The retailer says it wants to inform consumers, but manufacturers call the action hypocritical.

Well-known brands affected

“This product has seen its weight decrease and the price charged by our supplier increase”: that is the text on the label that Carrefour will put on products from Monday when there is so-called “shrinkflation”. The poster also states that the retailer is committed to renegotiating the tariff. Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard announced the initiative himself on French television: “This way we have the most reliable information possible for consumers, because it is unacceptable to do this to consumers.”

According to BFMTV, 122 products from well-known brands would be affected. A pack of Lay’s crisps went from 150 to 135 grams, while the price per kilogram went up by 32 %. A pack of Doritos – also from manufacturer PepsiCo – shrank by 10 grams while the price per weight went up 19 %. Magnum, Findus, Dolce Gusto, Lipton, Pampers and Pedigree are also said to have indulged in this practice.

Legislation

Jean-Philippe André, head of the French food federation ANIA, reacted furiously to Carrefour’s action. “It is very hypocritical to say that it is a scam. Distributors have accepted these products as such”, he raged in Le Figaro. According to him, shrinkflation remains an uncommon practice. “There are some 20,000 food references in a supermarket, so we are talking about 0.2 %”.

But Alexandre Bompard does find an ally in Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire: for him, shrinkflation is a “scam” and “scandalous”. Le Maire is working on a bill that will, among other things, enforce manufacturers to make the reduction in content of a package “highly visible”.