Erika Riffe, a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Library, moved from Florida eight years ago. She considers the Bay Area home and has been thinking of starting a family with her partner. But with the rising cost of living and grocery prices skyrocketing, the pair are digging deeper into their pockets to cover the essentials each month, and starting a family here has begun to feel out of reach.
“I’m almost 30, and I’m thinking of having a family in the Bay Area and growing old,” Riffe said. “But I don’t know how people that aren’t dual-income-no-kids can afford to feed whole families worth of people right now.”
Like Riffe, consumers across the East Bay have noticed grocery bills that are inching upward each month and have begun changing their habits and budgets as a result.
For U.S. cities, the cost of food to eat at home rose 32% from 2021 through July 2026, after increasing 18% from 2010 to 2020, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data (see chart).
A number of factors have contributed to the increase. Conflict in Ukraine has led to higher fertilizer and fuel costs. Disease, like bird flu, pushed egg retail prices to record highs, while weather complications, like hurricanes, drove down production. Tariffs enacted by the Trump Administration raised prices on foreign products like coffee, chocolate and tomatoes. In June 2026, consumers paid 19.5% more for fresh tomatoes due to a 17% import tax the Trump Administration placed on fresh tomatoes from Mexico.
Fresh conflict in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have raised gas prices across the country, leading to higher shipping costs for importers and accelerated food prices to offset these costs. It all adds up to the sharpest increase in grocery prices in 50 years for U.S. consumers, and researchers predict a slow decline.
For the San Francisco Bay Area region, which includes Hayward and Oakland, the consumer price index revealed that food for home use cost 6% more in June 2026 compared to last year, a greater increase than other metropolitan areas like St. Louis where the year-over-year rise in food at home costs is 2%
Nosh interviewed shoppers at six grocery stores across the East Bay to hear how rising grocery prices have changed the way they shop. Some have taken to shopping at multiple stores to find the best deals, while others have swapped name brand products for store brands. Others cast doubt on stores, suspecting shrinking package sizes, while food banks are reporting a surge in clientele.
East Bay shoppers cut back and get creative
To stretch her grocery budget, Riffe now visits different stores across Berkeley to find the best deals, often swapping out name brand products with store brands.
“Just something as simple as crushed red pepper. I was pricing out which one because some of these are ridiculous, so yeah, I’m getting off-brands,” Riffe said. “Sometimes I’ll buy all of my protein at Trader Joe’s and then get all of my produce at Berkeley Bowl, and then I usually don’t come [to Whole Foods] unless I need something in the middle of the week.”
Similar to Riffe, consumers across the country have taken to buying more store brands in the wake of prices rising. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, sales of store brands at supermarkets, drugstores and other retailers grew to a record $282.8 billion last year, a staggering increase of over $9 billion dollars.
Riffe and her partner have also been struggling with the rising cost of protein. The USDA reported that the average retail price for beef reached a record high in April, up 13% from last year.
“I think the biggest thing is actually getting protein, it’s way more expensive,” Riffe explained. “Like the other day I was at Safeway and I didn’t buy ground beef because it was $11.99 a pound, and I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m getting ground turkey instead’. So it’s about making different choices on the fly while you’re shopping.”
Richmond resident Trenda Jefferson, like Riffe, also finds herself visiting different grocers across Richmond to find deals, frequenting places like the Grocery Outlet to grab produce, and Safeway for other items like pastries and meat, but her frustration is rooted in the amount of food she’s going home with after paying the higher prices.
“Then my biggest hiccup when it comes to the grocery store — everything is compact. We’re not getting the quantity of what we’re paying for, you know what I mean? The quantity is just really ridiculous.”
What Jefferson has picked up on is an economic phenomenon that researchers have dubbed “shrinkflation,” when companies reduce the size or quantity of a product while maintaining its price.
“I mean even going to a quick fast food restaurant like McDonald’s. In order to get a halfway decent meal, you’re spending $20, and if you see everything, it’s less portions. It’s not the portion that you’re used to getting,” Jefferson said.
Like others, Oakland resident Michael Anthony often scours different grocery stores to find the best deal, but he’s also started shopping at discount retail spots like The 99 Cent Store, Dollar Tree and pharmacy chains like Walgreens.
“For the little stuff that I need, I go to the 99 Cent Store, the dollar store, and I buy my little mustard, my seasoning, and all that stuff. And then I come to the big stores and buy my main entree,” Anthony said. “I’m retired, and my wife died seven years ago. It’s just me and my dog. I don’t got no kids, but these prices, man. You know, sometimes I got to buy what I need and not what I want.”
Anthony suspects that it’ll take some time for the price inflation to go back down, and researchers agree. Just like shrinkflation, economists have created a term for the tendency of U.S grocery prices to soar upward, and slowly decrease, if at all — rockets and feathers. Rockets represent when the cost of food eaten at home rose in the aftermath of the pandemic. Feathers is what happens when prices are slow to come down — especially when grocers have little incentive to do so.
Corporate consulting firm Bain & Company, analyzing data from market research company NielsenIQ, found that the number of products consumers bought at grocery stores and the amount they spent has been falling since February, with the West region showing the biggest shifts. Comparing June 2025 to June 2026, the west region had both the largest increase in grocery prices, 2.7%, and the steepest drop in products sold, 3%.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Jared Bernstein, senior policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy, explained that retailers are reluctant to lower prices on inventory they ordered when wholesale prices were high, further detailing how, in an effort to maximize profits, stores and food companies were reluctant to give up some of the sales gains they saw post-pandemic. For example, PepsiCo hiked its prices by double-digit percentages for eight straight quarters in 2022 and 2023, citing higher ingredient and packaging costs. After customer demand faltered, the company began lowering prices on some snacks last year.
“So it’s just a bunch of garbage, man,” Anthony said. “You know I don’t know when it’s gonna get better, but I believe it’s gonna get a little bit more worse before it gets better. We must learn from all this stuff, man.”
More people fall into the food safety net
Bay Area food banks have seen an increase of people seeking their services as grocery store prices continue to rise. According to Liz Sommer, communications coordinator for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, that need could grow as federal cuts leave an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people in Alameda County without SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as CalFresh in California) benefits this year.
“I spoke to a few teams at ACCFB and while the current information we have about an increase in need is anecdotal, virtually everyone I’ve spoken to when I visit distributions cites high and increasing grocery prices as a reason they’re seeking food assistance,” Sommer told Nosh in an email.
Caitlin Sly, president of the Food Bank of Contra Costa & Solano, also told Nosh that the number of people seeking her organization’s services is rising as grocery prices continue to creep upward.
“You know, you could previously have attributed that to COVID area inflation, but no, not anymore,” Sly said. “The prices have stayed high. They have kept climbing, and it hugely impacts the people we serve.”
As Sly suggests, the impact of the rising grocery prices is not evenly felt across the economic spectrum and is hard to capture by comparing food costs to the rate of wage growth. The average weekly earnings of people with full-time jobs have increased slightly faster than the cost of groceries since 2019, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But grocery shopping is so routine that consumers tend to notice quickly when costs rise rapidly.
“People have a well-honed sense of those prices, just as much as gas and maybe more so,” Bernstein, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Joe Biden, told the Associated Press. “You need groceries to live.”
Additionally, a figure like national median wages fails to capture the larger scope of how price hikes impact family budgets. U.S. consumers spent roughly 13% of their pretax incomes on eating out and at home in 2024, but for the one-fifth of U.S. households with the lowest earnings the share spent on food grows to a third of their income, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The increase of grocery prices has also placed pressure on food banks like Sly’s, which often utilize monetary donations to purchase food.
“It also means things are more expensive for us. So food prices, you know, groceries are not just at the grocery store. We buy a large percentage of the food that we distribute, and so grocery prices impact us as well in the fact that we pay more for the food that we purchase,” Sly said. “It makes delivering our mission more expensive, and it means that we need more from our community.”
Last year the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano served over 65,000 households each month on average, but this year Sly estimates the organization is serving upwards of 79,000 households each month, a 22% increase.
“We are in a high cost of living area. We have families with children, seniors. You know, folks that are working two, three jobs just to try to make ends meet. Seniors that have worked their entire lives and contributed to our society, and now are struggling to afford food, and making basic choices between paying for food and paying for medical care,” Sly said.
With the increase in clientele, communications director Jeremy Crittenden said that the food bank is also seeing more first-time visitors, and encourages those in need to continue to reach out, noting that the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano offers services to help newcomers navigate the system.
“You know, I spoke to one of our clients recently and she was so excited. Like she found out from one of her friends at church, came for the first time to one of our distributions, and couldn’t believe the fresh fruits, vegetables, and protein, “ Crittenden said. “And she honestly was in tears when she was talking to me on the phone and she spoke to our CalFresh team, and was able to get on CalFresh. Her daughter had just gotten heart surgery and they got her on CalFresh as well.”
While the increased demand has put pressure on food banks and aid organizations, Sly, Crittenden, and the California Association of Food Banks remain hopeful thanks to new legislation. Earlier this summer, Governor Gavin Newsom and members of the California State Legislature added $108 million in funding for CalFood for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, which will provide fresh, nutritious California-grown food to millions across the state facing food insecurity. The final budget agreement will help fund programs like CalFresh Outreach, Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, School Meals for All, and more.
But the fight isn’t over, as Sly puts it, and asks Bay Area residents for their continued support through donations and volunteer work.
“We need more neighbors helping neighbors. We’re lucky that we live in a community that understands this and responds,” she said. “We are very lucky that folks in Contra Costa and Solano do not want to see their neighbors suffering, and that they respond accordingly. Unfortunately, we need them to continue responding accordingly because this is a fight for the long haul.”
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