Prices for food largely flat throughout 2025
The past half-decade of runaway inflation and the rising cost of groceries have had a serious impact not just on the consumers purchasing them, but on the small, independent grocery stores that sell them.
Doug Sprankle, owner of Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market in Saxonburg, said keeping prices down and profit margins sustainable is a juggling act as factors including, but not limited to, grocery costs impact the price tag people see pasted beside products in the aisles.
“There’s a lot of other independent grocery stores that have closed down this year,” Sprankle said. “Natrona Heights has one of them and Indiana. You’ve got to really make sure that you dial in all those profit centers and make sure that you continue to hire good people to run the stores and continue to reinvest in the community.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the year-over-year price change for food at home sits at 3.2% as of August 2025. This is a far cry from the heights of the inflationary period of mid-2022, when that number soared as high as 11.4% that August. However, Americans are still waiting to see the long-term economic impact of policies implemented by the second Donald Trump administration, which include waves of tariffs.
Despite challenges in the market, Sprankle said the prices for most items — not all, but most — have stabilized over the past few months.
“We have seen shelf-staple items kind of stabilize,” Sprankle said. “Meat, obviously, is continuing to go up in price, and that’s just because of the market conditions. We work with producers to try to find the best value, the best price and then present it to the customers on a daily basis.”
The costs of purchasing goods to stock store shelves aren’t the only price hikes Sprankle’s has to contend with.
“The largest increases we’ve seen are more on the utilities and equipment side, not so much on the food in the last six months,” Sprankle said. “Power supply’s gone up dramatically. Equipment costs have gone up dramatically. Service for that equipment has gone up dramatically.”
Despite its best efforts, he said Sprankle’s works to compete on price with much larger chains, but can’t always do so.
For instance, a 12-pack of Eggland’s Best eggs cost customers $3.99 at Walmart, more than $1 less than at Sprankle’s, the Butler Eagle found when checking grocery prices in mid-September.
“Walmart uses its massive cash reserves to purchase in bulk, whether it’s gasoline or products when they are at their lowest prices,” said Jabari Jones, president of the West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, a Philadelphia-based business association. “The tariffs will eventually affect Walmart as well, but are just slower because of the large quantity of inventory (Walmart) keeps on hand.”
Despite the price gap, Sprankle believes customers are still incentivized to come to independent grocery stores such as his over Walmart due to “ customer service, value, and quality of experience.”
At Walmart in Cranberry Township, price changes from January to September have been mixed.
Some items have increased slightly in price from when they were first tracked by the Butler Eagle in January. The most significant price increases were to coffee, which increased 75 cents for a 9.6-ounce container of Folger’s Classic Roast; and orange juice, which jumped $1.62 for a 46-ounce bottle of Tropicana.
Prices for other items of similar sizes and brands— such as a gallon of milk, shredded cheese, yogurt, potato chips, and ice cream — have remained flat over that time period.
Still other items have dropped in price at that Walmart over the past eight months, including eggs, decreasing by 3 cents per dozen, and butter, dropping by $1.96 for a 1-pound tub.
