The Amazing Shrinking Product

Went to the local Harris Teeter yesterday and bought a pound of ricotta cheese. At least I thought it was a pound. Got it home and upon closer inspection discovered the one pound container is now 15 oz. Now as near as I can tell every friggin recipe since the Mayflower landed that calls for ricotta uses 16 oz. or some multiple thereof. I realize that it's a small difference, but ****! I'm supposed to buy two pounds, use one oz. from the second container and feed the rest to the dog?

And what about the time honored seven oz. can of tuna that's now a whopping five oz? And the half gallon of ice cream that morphed into 1 1/2 qts., and the makers have the audacity to tell me it's a "more convenient size"? More convenient for who?

The list goes on...:curse:

It's all about cut backs.... very rarely is it in the consumers best interest "more convenient size" bull****.

It's deception, pure and simple.

They chose an decrease in size over an increase in price. Will end up the same either way, except for the size fitting into food directions. Can definitely view it as deceptive (I agree), but it has been well published.

I'll never understand the reasoning behind reducing product size. Everything has to be retooled, recalibrated, relabeled, basically everything redone. All this has to cost money and time. Why don't they just leave everything alone and just raise the price. Everybody should understand that as time goes along, stuff cost more to make and prices rise. So just sell me a pound of coffee or ricotta cheese, as in this case, and just charge me more. What are they going to do, shrink everything down until, poof. No packaging, no product, just give them money for nothing.

I guess you've seen those little Coke cans??? I wonder if 12oz cans of Coke will eventually shrink to 10 or 8 oz?

Inflation

99Limited said:

I'll never understand the reasoning behind reducing product size. Everything has to be retooled, recalibrated, relabeled, basically everything redone. All this has to cost money and time.

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That's part of the equation that doesn't make any sense to me but apparently the corporate number crunchers feel otherwise. May they spend eternity in hell trying to stuff seven ounces of tuna into a five ounce can. :devilburn:

And how much can that extra ounce of ricotta cost? I'm begging you, just raise the stinkin' price a few cents; I'll gladly pay it. No one seems to be shy about raising the cost of meat; priced a pork butt lately?

Saw seven ounce pepsi cans in an 8 pack today.

[video=youtube;_4e8iAofnrw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4e8iAofnrw[/video]

99Limited said:

I'll never understand the reasoning behind reducing product size. Everything has to be retooled, recalibrated, relabeled, basically everything redone.

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Not really. In many cases, the space that once held a volume of product can simply be replaced with air. In other cases, the changes happen through multiple suppliers, all of whom are operating flexible production methods. Believe me, they wouldn't be doing this if they weren't totally sure they were making more money. Entire fields revolve around making these determinations.

99Limited said:

I guess you've seen those little Coke cans??? I wonder if 12oz cans of Coke will eventually shrink to 10 or 8 oz?

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I know a buddy who bought the little diet coke cans from costco for cocktails, the funny thing was they were more expensive than the regular size cans.

Reminds me when in my home country where normally two sizes of butter were available (large 250g and small 125g) and then suddenly there were 100g butter packs everywhere. People were so much annoyed, that eventually this 100g size disappeared. What helped was the EU regulations, that pricing on every product has to have price per weight or per volume (with few exceptions).

Of course it is just a marketing trick, and yes, it sucks most of the time - in particular when the recipe says "use 1/2 a pack of XXX and 1 whole pack of YYY" - often some ingredients are assumed to have always the same size (vanilla sugar or baking powered comes to my mind)

Matus said:

the recipe says "use 1/2 a pack of XXX and 1 whole pack of YYY" - often some ingredients are assumed to have always the same size (vanilla sugar or baking powered comes to my mind)

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Don't read any recipe where anything solid is not in grams and anything liquid not in ml at worst (preferably grams for liquids too). (or whatever the equivalent insanity under the Imperial)

This is all about keeping the product below a price point. It's stupid to do on a product that is commonly used in recipes. Doesn't bother me as much on other products.

Each issue Consumer Reports used to (they may still I just haven't seen one in a while) have a section that dealt with this. They would even contact the manufacturer to get their reasoning.

Could this be part of the trend?

i'm cool with it.

heck, i've gone thru life thinking "this"(holding fingers apart) was six inches hahah.

It is about $. In 1800's world had all these cool large silver dollars, the older colonial dollars and Pieces of Eight were even larger still. In 20th had Peace dollars after that it was all downhill cladded dollars then no silver at all small cheap metal coins, not popular in circulation, the state of the dollar coin had sunk so low.

Of coarse you can buy Walking Liberty silver dollar large 40mm for over melt value and quite a bit more than face value. Nobody spends those.

Chifunda said:

Could this be part of the trend?

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It would be better with two wheels in the front and one in the back. The single wheel in the front gets you this :
[video=youtube;QQh56geU0X8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8[/video]

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