We have all noticed that with inflation, the prices of food products increase, and more and more consumers are rushing to the distributors’ first prices.
In eight months, distributors’ sales of first-price products increased by 20%, while those of major national brands fell by 4%. Decryption with Sophie Coisne, deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine 60 million consumers, which is releasing a new special issue on the first prices of food and which has screened more than 110 first price products.
franceinfo: First of all, are the prices really more attractive than those of the big national brands?
Sophie Coisne: So, we’re talking here about these products whose packaging is super basic, white, which we often find at the bottom of the shelves. All distributors have their first-price brands, and they are on average 40 to 50% cheaper than national brands. So concretely, the kilo of shells will be 1.28 euros compared to 2.5 euros, for a national brand for example, the packet of flour costs 0.74 euros compared to 1.34 euros for basic wheat flour, d ‘a great brand.
The problem is the nutritional aspect. This can apparently work for basic products, but is it more complicated for elaborate products?
Yes, there are really some very bad surprises, like the first price ham, which necessarily contains nitrites. It is a preservative that promotes colorectal cancer. The pains au chocolat have up to 10 additives or the caramel sides, at certain distributors, contain little milk and a fake caramel, made from glucose and fructose syrup. So really not great for your health.
And this is even more true for fresh products. It is very difficult to find cheap and good quality fruits or vegetables. However, we know that these are important products for health. Once again, it is the small budgets that are toast?
This is indeed one of the lessons of our survey, on the variety of products in its ranges. Of the four brands studied, only two offer fresh fruit and vegetables, in their low-price range, with the essential seasonal fruits and vegetables, some frozen foods and especially cans. This is a problem, because all the studies show that, as soon as we have a tight food budget, it is on fruits and vegetables that we cut back, because they are more expensive.
What we also notice is that the offers are limited for the first prices. For what ?
These are basics. So, you will have dessert creams for example, but only in one flavor. This keeps prices very low for the manufacturer, because, generally speaking, they need to produce large volumes.
Are distributors as virtuous as they want to say? Reducing the weight of a product, for example, while maintaining its price, does that also exist for low-cost products?
Oh yes, there too, another survey showed that hidden inflation existed for very low prices. This is how a distributor who had flogged the big brands who had done so in September does it himself, on a bottle of orange juice, for example, which goes from 1 liter to 90 centiliters, without reduce its price. Likewise, the size of its paper tissues is reduced by a few square centimeters.
In fact, this quest for low prices is sometimes a boon for distributors…
Absolutely, firstly because these are brands which are very popular, and increasingly popular with the French, with a 20% increase in a few months, and then these low prices have migrated to the shelves. Now they can sometimes be at eye level, whereas until now they were at foot level.
They are sometimes part of promotional catalogs, and finally, they still allow distributors to make a good margin. This is how we saw, from the start of inflation, these prices increase sharply. They had taken 16%, even before the national brands increased.
Are there any products to avoid at all costs? And conversely, are there products that are equal?
For products that are of equal value, that obviously only applies to the products that we have studied. It remains for the consumer to also see for themselves. For the products that are worth it, it’s mostly raw products: salt, sugar, flour, shellfish, anything that is minimally processed. There, indeed, the low prices compete with the brands, because they do not necessarily need too much technicality.
On the other hand, the very bad surprises, the first prize ham, it’s really not great. And then animal products, generally speaking, there are much fewer guarantees on the feeding of these animals, for example, are there GMOs in cereals, chickens? We don’t know that. So that’s something to look at all the same.