There is only a month left until Christmas, so we decided to look at the receipts and prepare a price report for the products associated with this holiday. It’s still a price basket from the neighborhood convenience store where we go for quick shopping – For example, when at the last moment it turns out that we forgot to buy mayonnaise or we ran out of eggs. This is an initial review – we’ll be taking a closer look at Christmas pricing right before Christmas.
Inflation is not going away for the holidays. Here is the price basket for “seasonal” products.
Let’s start with the Christmas classic: red borscht with dumplings. Mushroom pies cost an average of 6 PLN per package in October 300 grams (remember, for our list we take into account the product of the leading brand – where it can be specified). That’s 11.5 percent. more than last year. Uszka with mushrooms and cabbage costs an average of 5.57 PLN – up 15.1 percent over the previous year. more than a year ago. Ready-to-eat borscht in a liter carton increased by 9.4 percent. on an annual basis (on average PLN 7.33).
Another typical Christmas dish is herring. In our basket we have herring, that is, in oil and onions, sold in 600-gram jars. You have to pay an average of PLN 18.05 for such a jar (remember, on average in smaller stores, especially small ones up to 300 square meters). This is an increase of 24.5 percent. Dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms are a fifth more expensive than a year ago. If we suddenly ran out of mayonnaise for a traditional vegetable salad, we would have to pay an average of PLN 8.96 for a 400-ml jar, that is, almost 60 percent. more than last year. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – after all, mayonnaise is made, among other things, from oil, which has become very expensive this year.
Christmas basket quotes. Source: CMR, Gazeta.pl, Handelextra.pl. Graphics: Gazeta.pl
Homemade cake is a big expense
strong growth the prices Oil – by 46.4 percent. – This is one of the reasons for their high price, for example, pastries. In addition to oil, prices for other fats are on the rise – butter (by more than 40%, an average of PLN 8.80 per 200 cc) and margarine (an increase of up to 72.3%, 250 grams an average of PLN 4.86). Sugar prices are much higher than they were a year ago – and in our basket they are still 100 percent higher. On average, you have to pay a third more for eggs in small shops (9.20 PLN for 10 eggs).
We have written more about why eggs cost so much in a month in the following text – here we just point out that the reasons include not only the increase in production costs associated with energy and more expensive feed. And it won’t get better by the end of the year. – It looks like sky-high egg prices will be with us at least for the next few months. Egg production cannot be increased from week to week or even from month to month. It is likely that the adjustments will last at least half a year, so it is likely that egg prices for Christmas will remain quite high, – Michai Kollinikov, head of the sector analysis team at PKO BP, told us.
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For example, cocoa is obviously more expensive (by a quarter), while spices associated with Christmas, such as cinnamon or cloves, do not impress against this background when it comes to price changes. Similar to the mass of poppy seeds for bread – 5.9% more expensive. compared to last year (9.90 zlotys, 850g can).
Christmas sweets
And now the aforementioned group of products, which are also in our “traditional” basket, behaves a little differently than most. Sweety. Prices for pralines bought as a gift in October (depending on brand and type) rose from 4.7 to 14.1 percent, despite a number of the largest producers officially and unofficially announcing larger increases in their price lists. Here we can talk about two tactics used in the market.
The first is to bring the customer to the store for such a gift and offer a better price for a while. It would be logical if he would buy other products at the same time. Is this what manufacturers and retail chains decided? The first Christmas products (mainly packaged sweets) appeared in the largest retail chains already in October. This is not the first time that retailers have opened the Christmas season before November 1, but this year, in the era of continuous price increases in the consumer goods market, energy costs and rampant inflation, the majority of experts pointed out that Poles will begin to spread Christmas shopping around the time appropriate and buy products with a longer expiration date. And here the natural choice is sweets, and not dairy products for baking. And that’s what happened. in another meaning. The producers assure that Christmas was, is and will be the best time for the confectionery category in Poland, and they have already noted well-thought-out planning of purchases, especially those related to groceries, thus spreading the costs over a longer period than usual.
The second tactic is to wait until December with higher prices on the part of the retail chains (in the current basket we compare the data from October) so that the consumer has no choice and will buy the product at the last moment anyway. In this case, sweets are a gift.
Here it is also worth remembering two very festive sides of sweets – calendars Cakes and chocolates. The average price for one package in December 2021 was PLN 2.20 (CMR data). Santa Claus was the most popular item in the basket – four of them are among the ten most popular figurines. In addition, you can find: angels, ornaments, cones, reindeer, snowmen.
You can check out how prices of other essential products (milk, bread and beverages) rose in October in the ‘Core’ version of our report, under this link.
Together with the HandelExtra.pl portal, we monitor the costs of daily grocery shopping in Gazeta.pl every month – it’s more than 30 selected products. We rely on data provided by the Center for Market Surveillance (CMR). Our basket is data from receipts, ie actual picture What shops are selling all over Poland. CMR collects this data from thousands of outlets, from small stores (up to 300 sqm) and chains of such stores – which are located near the homes where we do our daily shopping. When creating our cart, we take into account the leading brand of a particular product (based on popularity statistics in the sales structure), average prices for the country are calculated. When such a brand cannot be distinguished (as in the case of bread sold locally), we compare products with the same criteria. We also include promotions. It is not a report comparable to the “Gusowski” report, as it only shows a part of the market, but its advantages include the fact that we see specific and average prices for the products we choose. Our price basket is based on data from real receipts.
Echo Richards embodies a personality that is a delightful contradiction: a humble musicaholic who never brags about her expansive knowledge of both classic and contemporary tunes. Infuriatingly modest, one would never know from a mere conversation how deeply entrenched she is in the world of music. This passion seamlessly translates into her problem-solving skills, with Echo often drawing inspiration from melodies and rhythms. A voracious reader, she dives deep into literature, using stories to influence her own hardcore writing. Her spirited advocacy for alcohol isn’t about mere indulgence, but about celebrating life’s poignant moments.
