Why This Fall and Winter Could Be the Hardest Season for Grocery Budgets in Years

Grocery inflation headlines keep saying "things are cooling down." Here's the problem: that headline is built on two falling categories — eggs and dairy — masking seven categories rising faster than their historical average, including beef up 12% year over year, coffee up 19%, and sugar up 6.7%. Add rising energy costs flowing directly into food production and transportation, a Middle East conflict driving diesel prices higher, and a tariff wave that analysts say hits consumer prices with a 12–18 month lag — which lands squarely in fall 2026. Today I walk you through the real data and exactly what I'm doing about it right now. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I want to share something with you. I'm going to put up two different numbers. I'm going to show you two different uh screenshots. And I want you to tell me which one you think best reflects what you're seeing with your grocery bill today. Number one, grocery inflation in 2026 is expected to be below the 20-year average. That's the headline. That's what you see on the news, on financial websites, and in reports that people share on social media. Number two, beef is up 12.1% from a year ago. Coffee is up 19%. Sugar and sweets are projected to rise 6.7% this year, more than double the historical average. Canned goods are more expensive because of metal tariffs. And there is a wave of cost increases working its way through the food supply chain right now that analysts say will not hit your store shelves until fall. Both of these things are true at the same time. And the reason most people only hear, you know, number one is that number two is buried on page three of the USDA report that nobody reads. Today we're going to walk through the real picture, what's actually happening, uh, why fall and winter, you know, of 2026 could hit grocery budgets much harder than people are anticipating or prepared for, and exactly what I'm doing in my kitchen about it. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sutton's Days. If you're new here, my name is Lisa, and we are all about pantry preparedness. Let's start with headline number one. Because it's it's not wrong. And as such, it's being uh delivered out from other sources incomplete. The USDA food price outlook, that's the official government forecast, says food at home prices, uh meaning grocery prices, will increase about 2.4% in 2026. The 20-year historical average has been 2.6%. So technically, they're not wrong. But here's the part of the report that it seems nobody reads. Of the 15 food categories that the USDA tracks, seven are predicted to grow faster than their 20-year historical average. But nobody goes that far into the actual report. We're gonna grab the headline and run with it, yes. And the two categories, pulling the overall number down, are eggs, projected to fall about 22% as the bird flu recovery continues, and dairy, which is slightly down. Those two categories are doing some enormous statistical heavy lifting. I mean, they are just more than earning their keep for this, to make the average look calm and predictable and fine. But if you strip them out of the equation, what you're left with is a completely different picture. I mean, night and day. Beef and veal up 6.3 to 9.4%. That's significant. Non-alcoholic beverages, meaning like your coffee, are up 5.2%, sugar and sweets up 6.7%, processed fruits and vegetables, your canned goods rising above their historical average. Fresh vegetables above average, seafood above average, everything except eggs and dairy. So the the question is not, is grocery inflation slowing down overall? You know, that's not the question. The question is, what do you buy? And is that category in the average or above it? For most families that I talk to, for most of the comments that I receive, the categories rising fastest are also the ones that are in their cart every single week. Now, here's the context that makes this hit all just a little bit differently. You really have to sit back and look at what's going on from a whole bunch of different perspectives. Since 2020, uh overall grocery prices have jumped about 24%, nearly a quarter more expensive than six years ago. A recent uh CNBC survey monkey poll found that more than 76% of Americans said rising grocery prices were a leading cause of decreased affordability, more than gasoline, more than health care, even, more than housing. So when the USDA says 2.4% on top of those 24%, you know, cumulative increases, your grocery bill is not returning to 2019. That is in the history books rearview mirror, hard. It's not ever coming back. And people need to stop expecting it to return to normal because normal is gone. Normal does not exist anymore. What we are talking about now literally is the rate of additional increases. And seven of the 15 categories are accelerating above their long-term trend. So it's not just 2.4%. That you know, 24% increase in six years, that's the new baseline. We will never go back to 2019. But I want to tell you what is building on top of it. This is the piece that most people just overlook. And I think it's the most important thing that I'm gonna say today. And I really, really want you to hear this. Diesel fuel is the lifeblood of the food chain supply. Tractors run on diesel, refrigerated trucks, the ones that you move your meat, your produce, you know, your dairy from distribution centers to store shelves, they run on diesel. Uh, refrigerated trucks burn even more diesel than standard trucks because they are running cooling systems around the clock. A food economist at Michigan State University, David Ortega, he put it very plainly in a recent interview. Diesel fuel is critical up and down the food supply chain. It literally is the lifeblood. The majority of the food that gets transported here in the U.S. moves on trucks. So higher fuel costs translate into higher costs throughout the supply chain, and eventually that reaches the consumer at the store. Here is why this matters, you know, specifically right now, and especially for the fall. The Middle East conflict is creating a real volatility in oil and gas markets. You'd really have to have your head buried not to see it. Uncertainty around negotiations has kept markets on very, very shaky ground. Nobody knows what's going to happen next. It's just a circus. It's a circus, you know. The FMI, that's the uh food, the food industry association, uh, said explicitly that the food processing and retail industry expects cost impacts to occur in a longer window than just the day the war ends. If the war ends today, we are not going to see anything uh good, seriously, come out of it as far as our food and our fuel and everything else for a very long time. A very long time. What that means practically, you know, just to lay it all out, is the fuel price volatility happening right now works its way through the food chain supply over weeks and months. None of this is, you know, none of this is Amazon Prime delivery, okay? Uh farmers who face higher diesel costs may apply less fertilizer this season. Fertilizer is made from natural gas. Lower fertilizer input means lower crop yields this fall. Lower crop yields means less food for the livestock, which drives up beef prices and pork prices and poultry prices, you know, that are literally already at historic levels. Do you see the chain? I hope I hope I portrayed it, you know, so that you could see it. Because fuel, fertilizer, crops, feed, livestock, your grocery bill, bam. There you go. That is the chain. That is how your food gets to your table. And it all takes literal months to play out. None of it happens quickly. What's happening in energy markets right now is what you are going to feel at the store in the fall. There is no other way around this. There is no changing this. Nothing that happens now will alter that outcome. I need to make that really clear just to make myself sleep better at night, because I really need everybody to understand how serious and important that is. Now, let me add a second layer to this because unfortunately, yes, it compounds. It really does. Most of the major tariff actions happened in 2025. And here's what most people do not understand about how tariffs affect grocery prices because it's amazing the comments that I still get on this. There is a lag, you're not going to see it immediately. Okay. And so I'm not listening to the tariff trolls, not going to do it. Uh, manufacturers and retailers absorb the cost initially, and they did. Initially, they said, you know what, we're going to take the hit to see how bad this is. But that's not a sustainable practice. It's not. It's squeezing their margins, it's using up their pre-tariff inventory because they've always got inventory for the next thing coming down the pike. And rather than immediately, you know, raising prices, they typically lag between a tariff increase and its appearance at the consumer level about 12 to 18 months. So we are just now starting to seriously feel the impact of those. The only place, and I'm no expert on this, but this is what I've always been told and what I know. The gasoline that you pay for at the pump, okay, um, yes, they paid, you know, say a dollar a gallon for it to put it into the tanks at the gas station. But they know that the next time they fill up, it's going to be $2 a gallon. So they have to raise the price, regardless of what they paid for it, to the price that they're expecting to pay for it. That is what they do to make sure that they can cover, you know, their margins, to make sure that they can cover everything they need to. That doesn't necessarily uh happen across the board with everything else that we purchase. It's something that happens with a few key categories where they have to they have to charge what they anticipate having to pay next. And that's one of the markets that that is kind of predominant in, which is why immediately the prices go up, they go down, they go up, up, they go down, they go up, up, up, and then they go maybe down a penny again, you know. That is our uh that is our current situation with the gas. With your food and your commodities and you know, anything else that you that you purchase where, well, the price really hasn't gone up, you know. It will anytime now because they purposely held back on it so that it wouldn't hit for the first year. This is literally not my guess. It's not my, you know, prediction. It's not mine. None of this is, okay. That's from a formal analysis by Spins. It's a market research firm that uh examined historical patterns of commodity cost increases moving through the food supply chain. So I'm not making this up. People that get paid a lot of money to, you know, figure it out, did. Um, analysts at SPINS told Food Navigator specifically that it is in 2026, potentially even late 2026, that we will start to see consumers feel a pinch of these higher tariffs. Late 2026. That's fall and winter. The pipeline is full, you know, all the stuff has been, you know, keeps coming in, and the, you know, they've kept the lower prices, but now the stuff that's coming up behind it, that's going to have bigger prices. The costs have been absorbed upstream as long as they possibly could. And now they're working their way to your store shelves. So, you know, it makes sense. The categories that you buy most often, right as we head into, you know, the most expensive time of year, which is always fall and winter, uh, when our budgets are already super tight, people are trying to figure out how they're gonna heat their house and keep the temperature above 60, you know, if you're in a northern climate, how we're going to afford to get through the holidays, which should be the least of your concerns, and you know, just how we're gonna survive the toughest part of the year. And that's when all of the prices are gonna start hitting hard. And it's already in motion, it's already in play. There is no stopping it. So, real quick, we're gonna go through the um specific categories that are under the most pressure. Beef, we've talked about it, okay? Um, it's structural, it's long-term, it's literally non-negotiable. You cannot make them breed faster. So it's just what it is. It's a biological thing. You've heard me talk about it quite a few times, but I'm gonna give you the freshest number. Beef and veal prices uh were 12.1% higher in March of 2026 than March of 2025. USDA wholesale beef prices, what the category, what the what the grocery store pays before you know marking it up for us, uh, are up 19.7% year after year after year. That gap between the wholesale and the retail means the full cost has not yet hit your store. It's still coming down the pipeline. So they're not necessarily taking a loss, they're just not charging you what it's gonna cost them to backfill it. So it's gonna hit and it's gonna be, you know, 19, 20 percent. With cattle herds at its smallest since 1951, the Mexico border uh closed for imports due to the screw worm disease thing, you know. Uh supply recovery will not be until 2028 at the absolute earliest. That is when hopefully our our beef, you know, supplies will get, they'll feel some kind of relief. I don't know if we will, but they will. Peak grilling season demand is right now, and uh it's summertime, you know, everybody likes the barbecue. So this is structural, not cyclical. It's not cyclical. We're used to the prices going up a little bit during, you know, spring, summer because people are tired of being in the house and they want to grill, they want to barbecue. And so the demand goes up, prices go up. That's just the way it works. But we need to understand that what's happening right now has absolutely nothing to do with that cyclical change. Absolutely nothing. This is a structural issue. Next is coffee. Coffee prices are up 19% from a year ago, and I'm calling fooie on that one uh because I know I'm paying almost twice as much for my coffee as I was a year ago. But, you know, they're saying 19%. The global coffee market is making its fourth consecutive season of a deficit. And depending on the season, possibly it'll we'll be doing the fifth, you know, where they're running at a deficit. And we're gonna have to see how it plays out before we actually call that. But, you know, it's gonna be a heck of a weather year, too. Tariffs on Brazil, the world's largest producer, added cost pressure on top of an already tight supply situation. There's a tight supply situation because of weather, because of disease, because of, you know, it's a Tuesday, but uh your morning cup of coffee costs significantly more than it did a year ago, even if you're making it at home, and that's not going to change quickly because uh Mother Nature, she doesn't care. She does not care. So if you are an avid coffee drinker, I highly recommend stocking up now. Yes, you can freeze it. Just freeze it, don't overthink it. Okay. Now, this one originally kind of threw me for a loop. I was like, really? Um, sugars and sweets, you know, the cat the category literally nobody saw coming because you're like, why are we having an issue with sugar? Uh the USDA projects sugars and sweets will increase 6.7% in 2026, more than double the historical average and the single fastest rising grocery category this year. How's that for statistics? Changing weather patterns affecting sugar production, which I apparently was not paying attention to, tariffs on imports from India, and uh this hits baking, snacks, and everything in the center aisles of your store. Literally everything. If you are a huge fan of manufactured food, there is a lot of sugar and sweet in there. And so when people tell you to shop the outside and get out of the store, that's why. So then there's pasta and imported staples. Now, not all pasta is imported, and I, you know, I know that, but it's about to get expensive really quick overnight. Uh, this specific one might kind of you know surprise you a little bit. The U.S. has imposed a 15% base tariff on food imports from Italy and the EU. And starting in early 2026, 13 of Italy's biggest pasta exporters face an additional anti-dumping duty of up to 91.74% on top of that. An anti-dumping duty, I mean, a 90 almost 92% increase on top of that, for a combined tariff approaching 107% on some products. I want to look into the anti-dumping a little bit more, but you know, Google is your friend. Uh that means cost for importers of Italian pasta could be more than double. If you cook with imported pasta, this is about to show up on your receipt. You don't have to get imported pasta. You can make your own very easily with some Durham wheat that you grind yourself with your mill, manual or electric. I don't care. But I mean, pasta is pretty easy to do. It's shapes of noodles, you guys. Come on. Canned goods, uh, you know, they're gonna do a quiet creep, a very quiet creep, but they're gonna creep just the same. And it's because of a specific cause that this is gonna happen. It's not because of the fruit per se, it's because of the container. It's the steel and aluminum, which are facing a 50% tariff from Canada and China. So anything that we bring in from Canada or China is being charged a 50% tariff. Uh, that can itself is more expensive. It's really going to make recycling take on a whole new level of concentration, you know. Every can good on your shelf carries that additional packaging cost. That's part of what you're paying for. Canned fruits, vegetables, soups, you know, they're the foundational pantry items for a lot of people, and they are all rising because of the metal tariff that has nothing to do with the food inside the can. What am I gonna do about this in my kitchen? Because my kitchen is very much a lot like your kitchens, except I may be a little less fussy, okay? So, what it comes down to, you know, in reality is how is this going to impact my house? What am I gonna do to prepare for this? And uh that's what I want to hit next, because that is honestly why you're here. We know the problems, and now we really know the problems, but now I want to give you the solutions because that's what we do here. We acknowledge the problems and then we solve them. So, one, I am buying protein right now. I have already secured uh my half a beef that's coming this fall, and we are getting an entire pig uh in a few weeks. Earlier than what I would normally expect, but it's fine because. We're going to use it, you know? So I am doing everything that I can right now to secure our meat before fall hits. The only thing, surprisingly enough, for me that might take a hit is chicken. But I'm going to watch the sales and do what I can do. Because yes, I have a lot of jars of ugly chicken, but sometimes you need the whole chicken breast for whatever you're making. And you know what? If at the end of the day that's my biggest problem, I have got it made. Okay. It's not a must-have. It's a I wouldn't mind having if I can find room in the budget. Now, number two. Number two is very important. I'm treating coffee and pasta exactly like the investments that they are. Okay. I am stocking up on coffee. You guys know that. I have about a year's supply right now, and I am going to be buying more that I'm going to be putting into the freezer. Because typically, if you look at the there is an expiration date on your coffee. Coffee can go stale. I have had it last two and a half to three years, I think, before I started tasting a difference by just keeping it in its original container on the shelf, you know. But uh if you put it in the freezer, it stops the clock and it's fine. So if you're super sensitive to that, you know, put it in the freezer. And if the power goes out, drink coffee. You're gonna need it. You're gonna need it a lot. Um same thing with pasta, well, same thing, only different. Um, instead of stocking up on a bunch of pasta, which I did a few years ago and we're still working down on it because I can't eat it anymore. Instead of buying a bunch of pasta, instead, I am making pasta when I need it. It takes hardly any time at all. Uh, being grown-ups who can pivot, we don't rely on a specific shape of pasta to um tell us what the dish is. And so, you know, I can make pasta with my Durham wheat in minutes, literal minutes. And it is so much better than anything you can buy 10 for 10 at the grocery store. Now, if you are not at that stage, 10 for 10 is great. Stock up on it, put it into airtight containers, you're good for a few years. No harm, no foul. There's literally no shame in this game unless you deserve it. And I normally call those out as I'm doing the video. So, you know, it's an investment because these prices are going to keep elevating, and you want to be as far ahead of the game as you can so that even if you're just backfilling, you're pulling the one from the freezer to put it on the shelf, fill that spot in the freezer, go to the store regardless of the price, and fill that spot in the freezer because it's not going to get any cheaper. Number three, of course, you guys know I'm deepening my freeze-dried, you know, foundation because I'm finding that I'm using it uh a lot more lately. It is and always will be my long-term food storage kind of retirement plan for my husband and I, um, so that we always have real, honest to goodness food available to us so that we are not reliant on whatever else is going on in the world. Um, and that to me is very important. It is also very important to know how to use it. Now, luckily, I'm a grown-up that can pivot, you know. So I I use it uh fairly regularly lately because everything's been chaotic, but it's fantastic. And the more that I use it, the more I'm like, this is really good. Is it really good to the point where I'm gonna use all of it? No, I am not. Okay, but I'm still gonna keep an eye on the dates and rotate through it uh and add it in when I need it. I you can't go wrong with it. You really can't. So, this is where honestly I am obliged to tell you about Thrivalist. Um, it is the company where I landed when Thrive Life uh decided to shut their doors to, you know, direct a customer. And so this is a company that I am head over heels in love with, you know, they offer so many great things, so many great opportunities, but on top of all of that, they offer real, honest-to-goodness food that is exceptionally good quality. Now, you know, I have tried, well, I am highly addicted to the sausage crumbles, straight up. I unfortunately have started a habit of eating them straight out of the can. And that's probably not a really good thing to do, but they're crazy good. The beef is the same, the chicken is the same. Now, I don't eat the chicken straight out of the container because I just still can't get to that point. But refreshing it, you would never know that it's been freeze-dried. Their fruits, I mean, their pineapple is amazing, but it's sold out until later on next year, you know. So you have to kind of keep an eye on it. But my favorite part about it is because egg prices are what egg prices are, they have obtained the eggs, they have done the hard work of freeze drying it and packaging it so that it lasts the longest for you without any issues. And uh, yeah, if you can get ahead of anything as far as eggs go and being able to get out, eggs are amazing. They are protein, they are fat, they are good for you. And thanks to Thrivalist, they are shelf stable. They have egg crystals back in stock. I'll put a link down below. Absolutely fantastic. Every single cost pressure that I have described thus far in the video diesel, tariff, supply chain volatility, weather, all of it affects fresh and processed foods. Okay. But everything that is sitting on my shelf that I have purchased over the years, it's taken me five years to build up the supply that I have. Um, that is all bought, it's paid for, it's good for years and years, and it's real food. And it doesn't care what is happening outside of these doors. Literally, when I'm building my pantry foundation, thrivalist is what fills the shelf. Making sure that I have the vegetables and the fruits and the meats and the grains in a way that they will store very, very well. I have had and tried products from other companies and have been remarkably unimpressed, especially a very old and popular one where when I opened up a can 10 years later, even my pigs wouldn't eat it. Okay? Yeah. So, regardless of what they tell you, you know, it's just you have to really, you have to do your homework. And that's why I'm here for you to help you do that. Um, the link is in the description down below and in the pinned comment if you are interested in checking it out. They have a really great uh breakfast focused bundle this month, but you don't have to buy the bundle, you can buy the individual things that you want, and it's free shipping over $99, I believe. And uh I would love to be your connector. Again, you'll see my name at the top of the website uh if you are interested. And if I can help, be sure to let me know because I want to make sure that we all get through this with as few scars as possible, and that alone is gonna be challenging, my friends. So uh at the end, you know, everything I've told you today is it's real. I've got the links for you down below. You saw the screenshots, the numbers are from the USDA, from food economists, from industry analysts, you know, all the people that know what they know. Um, I didn't make any of it up. I don't have to. I'm not into just I'm into reading dystopian fiction, not writing it. You know, fall could be genuinely a very, very difficult season for grocery budgets, which makes it a very difficult season for a lot of households. Harder than the last two years in specific categories for specific structural reasons, ones that cannot be denied and cannot be avoided. But here is what is also real, and I don't want you to forget that. You are watching this video today, you're hanging out with me, and for that I greatly appreciate it. You literally have four to five months to start preparing. You don't need to build a year's worth of food in that time. You need to build three months, you know, just enough to give you that buffer when things are really tight to get you through the really tough times when the electric bill or the gas bill comes in much higher than what you anticipated, you know. And then maybe you can still celebrate Christmas with all of the stuff. Who knows? But every jar you can, every bag that you seal, every freeze-dried bundle you add to your pantry, literally between now and September, is protection against exactly the pressure that I described today, the pressure that is not going to go away. That's the gift of being in this community. We do not find out about these things in October at the checkout. We find out about them now in May when we can actually do something about it. And you don't have to do everything about it, but you have to do something about it. And anxiety is not one of those things. Take a deep breath and just do what you can do. It's not going to be the end of the world. And honestly, I'm seeing a lot of stuff going, there's gonna be famine by December. No, no, there's going to be food on the shelves, it's just going to cost significantly more with a lot less options. It is not empty shelves, it is not famine, okay? It's just harder, significantly harder. And we have the opportunity to save up a little bit and make it less difficult. That's what preparedness is, my friends. It's not about going out and putting yourself eyeball debt, you know, eyeball deep in debt on your credit cards and buying a year's worth of emergency buckets of carb laden, sodium laden stuff that at the end of the day you really won't eat and you won't want to eat, and your body's gonna hate you for. But it's still building up what you actually eat already today so that you have that extra put up so that you don't have to buy it next month or the month after, or maybe even the month after that if you're really good about it. You all are amazing, and I appreciate you being here. I appreciate the conversations. I love the comment section, except for the trolls, you know. But um the comment section is a wealth of information with the understanding that sometimes some of them sneak past me. There's not going to be a huge famine. It's just gonna be a lot harder. And I don't want it to be that hard for anybody. Until next time, everybody, be safe. Keep stacking it to the rafters, my friends.