Dont worry because there isnt any inflation, this is just the 4th time they are raising prices, this time only a small 11% rise...... Smucker hiking coffee prices again Business Courier Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011, 2:08pm EDT Consumers of Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts-branded coffee sold in supermarkets will be paying a bit more. J.M. Smucker Co. is again boosting the price of coffee it sells to retailers, citing the climbing cost of green coffee beans. The Orville-based maker of Smuckerâs jellies, Crisco shortening and Jif peanut butter said Tuesday it has hiked prices 11 percent on most of the coffees it supplies to merchants. The coffee brands hit by the price increase include Millstone, Folgers and Dunkinâ Donuts. J.M. Smucker (NYSE:SJM) is licensed to sell the Dunkinâ Donuts coffee to retailers such as supermarkets, so its price hike does not change coffee prices at the doughnut shop chain. Smucker bought The Folger Coffee Co. from Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. in 2008. Smucker joins Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX), Sara Lee Corp. (NYSE:SLE) and Kraft Foods (NYSE:KFT) in raising prices since last spring, all of the companies saying the hikes were tied to increases in raw coffee bean costs. Smucker last raised prices on coffee sold under the Folgers and Dunkinâ Donuts brands in February, boosting them 10 percent, and bumped up the list prices on most of its coffees last August and in May 2010. The company blamed the hikes on coffee bean prices, as well as rising fuel and packaging expenses. In a Tuesday report, Reuters said roasters were hiking their prices amid high demand for coffee beans and speculative buying by commodities investors. Read more: Smucker hiking coffee prices again | Business Courier
And your point? It would appear Smucker is confident they can pass on input costs and preserve their profit margins. The ability to do it repeatedly would be inelastic demand. A franchise.
i like it how +11% hike is considered nothing nowadays. you don't here much about the salaries going up by 11%.
Fuck 'em. Folgers is crap coffee and that whole "Dunkin Donuts has great coffee" is a bad joke as well. People will switch brands, it's really not rocket science. Most of these name brand items will be discarded if we continue this massive monetization shell game and goose commodity prices for a significant amount of time. Hell, people might even just switch to 2 liter bottles of Coke for $.88 cents if they need their caffeine fix and coffee costs $10.00 for a bag.
On the other hand, prices of chicken and eggs are apparently declining, especially into Memorial Day weekend. So forget Dunkin Donuts and go see Colonel Sanders. He'll sort you out right.
Whoa, such bitterness. Like a cheap cup of lukewarm java aside a stale doughnut. I'm not a coffee drinker so many of these aspects is inconsequential. People won't switch brands if "all" brands rise in unison. I've watched pot go from $40 an oz to what it is now. Very little change otherwise. Far out-pacing the CPI. Reading between the lines, you hit the nail on the head, "branding". It's why Tobasco sauce still sells in droves at 4x its peers. Toss in a little BS about oak barrels and aging. Shell game? Smuckers isn't playing a shell game but responding to it. Since when is a 2 liter of Coke 88 cents? If caffeine is the primary driver of coffee drinking, then why not just pop a caffeine pill? More cost effective, quicker, portable. From what I'm told, Mountain Dew contains more caffeine per oz.