Grocery shoppers may be earning more relative to food prices than they were in 2023, but they are not behaving like it — and a new research tool from Acosta Group quantifies exactly why that gap matters for retailers and brands.
The inaugural Acosta Group Affordability Tracker measures grocery affordability by comparing the cost of a typical stock-up trip against U.S. median hourly earnings, rather than tracking prices in isolation. That methodology surfaces a dynamic that pure price indexes miss: purchasing power has partially recovered since its 2023 trough, yet the shopping behaviors consumers developed during the inflationary surge remain firmly entrenched.
The Numbers
Acosta Group's Typical Stock-Up Trip — an 84-item basket representing commonly purchased grocery and household essentials — now costs more than $366, roughly 27% above the comparable 2020 figure. Wage growth helped offset a portion of that increase, and the tracker shows the affordability recovery has largely stabilized. But the firm cautions that future gains are likely to be incremental rather than the sharper improvements seen between 2023 and 2025.
The data show consumers continue exhibiting elevated promotional engagement, heightened price awareness, and more deliberate purchase scrutiny across the store — behaviors historically associated with economic stress that typically moderate when conditions improve. This time, the pattern appears different.
Why It Matters for Operators
"The most important implication may be that improving grocery purchasing power alone does not appear to be reversing many of the shopping behaviors consumers developed during the inflationary period," said Colin Stewart, EVP of Business Intelligence at Acosta Group. "Consumers have adapted to a marketplace defined by higher prices, and many of the habits developed during that adaptation now appear increasingly durable. For retailers and brands, future growth may depend less on waiting for economic conditions to normalize and more on understanding how consumer expectations around value have changed."
That framing carries direct weight for foodservice and grocery operators who have counted on easing inflation to restore traffic and basket size. If value-oriented behavior is now a baseline rather than a crisis response, promotional strategy, private-label assortment, and price-tier architecture all need to be recalibrated accordingly. Our restaurant consumer spending analysis has tracked similar caution among diners trading down from full-service to fast casual, and the Acosta data suggest the same value calculus is driving grocery channel decisions.
Broader Household Pressure
The tracker also draws an important distinction between grocery affordability and overall household financial sentiment. Even where grocery purchasing power has measurably improved, consumers still face significant pressure from housing, insurance, healthcare, and transportation costs — expenses that compete directly with food budgets and help explain why shopper sentiment remains cautious despite the nominal recovery. Understanding that gap is critical for any operator or supplier modeling demand in 2026 and beyond.
The inaugural edition is designed as the foundation for a recurring research series covering affordability, purchasing power, value perceptions, and consumer behavior across grocery. For brands and retailers navigating an environment where shoppers have permanently reset their value expectations, that longitudinal view could prove as useful as any single-point snapshot. Additional context on how value trends are reshaping food and beverage retail can be found in our grocery and retail food coverage.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
