Getting squeezed for the juice

Earlier this summer the frozen juices at my local grocery store began shrinking. It was a subtle change made more evident in transition before customers bought out all the old stock. The old tins of juice came in at 355 ml, the new ones at 295 ml.

At the time the juices were reduced in price, marked down to 93 cents a tin so I figured the size and the price were relative. However, soon after Labour Day came and went the prices for frozen juice shot up to $1.17. Bigger price, smaller tin.

The Minute Maid orange juice website made no mention of the shrinking size of its frozen juices. Check it out for yourself at http://www.minutemaid.com/. I clicked the 'contact us' button and it directed me to the Coca-Cola website, which owns Minute Maid. I typed in my 'shrinking frozen juice' concern into the questions field and it directed me back to the Minute Maid site. Hmm.

Upon further investigation I stumbled upon a blog titled, Fagstein at http://blog.fagstein.com/2011/08/12/minute-maid-frozen-juice-ripoff-2/. It told me all that Minute Maid and Coca-Cola would not.

A company statement said this: "With the increase in commodities, rather than pass the total cost on to the consumer, the decision was made to adjust the package size to offset some of the increase the consumer would have had to pay if this adjustment wasn’t made."

I also went on to the McCain website to see if any mention had been made about its juice size. On this site there was a 'contact us' button that didn't send me to another website then back again. I sent my concern and McCain replied. Here was the response:

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback; it is always valuable to hear consumers’ insight and concerns.
Old South is responding to increased ingredient costs and is passing along these increased costs by reducing the volume of frozen concentrate in the package. In order to keep the price the same we had to slightly reduce the volume of the frozen concentrate which means that a package now yields 0.19 litres less prepared product.
We are still offering consumers products which are an excellent source of Vitamin C and have no artificial colours or flavours. In addition, all Old South Juices and 100% Juice Blends contain 2 fruit servings per 250 mL.
Old South is our way of offering consumers a line-up of healthy, great tasting juices and punches at a competitive price.

To keep the price the same? To that I say WTF. But at least they had the courtesy to accept the question and respond.

 As consumers we're paying more for frozen juice and getting less to drink. This isn't offsetting an increase, it is an increase and the companies are hoping we don't notice, or don't care. As Fagstein so rightly states, it's a frozen juice ripoff.

This juice issue got me to thinking about other grocery store products that have shrunk in size but not price the past little while. Remember when laundry detergent came in large boxes? These days it comes in what I refer to as mini-me boxes, they're a third the size of the old ones. The various brands boast the detergent is more "concentrated" yet the amount per load remains the same.

Again I say WTF.

I get that companies are always looking for ways to increase their profits. That's businesses and even though it sucks for consumers it's a necessary evil. I'd rather see the prices raised than the size of the product reduced. Just be honest and hike the price, don't shrink it or feed the consumer a 'concentrated' line of bull, put it on sale for a month or two and then put the price back up to where it used to be. That's deceitful, it's wrong.

I'm not buying as much juice anymore, the kids can drink more water -- from the tap. None of that bottled water nonsense. But that's a consumer rant for another day.