At the supermarket, prices are finally falling, but for how long?

The prices of many food products are falling at the supermarket checkout. A good thing after a long period of inflation. But this drop remains too little perceived by consumers.

Will the French finally be able to breathe relief when going to the supermarket checkout? Certain prices are in any case falling and inflation is doing less damage. There would be an “improvement” in prices according to the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir, which ensures that the receipt for a shopping cart is down 1.6% compared to January 2024.

Concretely, this means that, on an average trolley, you spend 76.79 euros compared to 78.05 euros last year at the same time. The reductions concern products consumed on a large scale. This is the case for basmati rice (-15.69%), breaded fish (-8.44%) and even cordon bleu (-10.5%).

Just a few cents

“We have to bow to the figures, for 6 months we have been in a drop in prices and it is going in the right direction”, welcomes this Tuesday on RMC and RMC Story Olivier Dauvers, specialist in consumption and mass distribution .

But he has several reservations: “We may not have the perception, everyone has different perceptions. And these drops of a few cents on a few products will never make a perceptible trend”, he continues on the set ofEstelle Midi.

And this perception is not helped by the increases which continue on certain products in tension, in particular those based on cocoa and butter: chocolate bars are still more expensive (+8.88%) as are the jar of Nutella (+10.22%). Olive oil and orange juice always increase too.

“The decline will not deepen”

And we will never return to the labels of January 2022. Distributors and manufacturers alike are unanimous on the subject. “Consumers don’t see the difference, as prices remain high” on the average price of a shopping cart, admits Grégory Caret, director of the UFC-Que Choisir Consumer Observatory.

“The decline is not going to get any worse,” says Olivier Dauvers. “Unfortunately there will still be increases which will erase the micro-drops which exist but which we do not feel”.