Canadians shocked by price difference between Walmart grocery bills in 2020 and 2024

Canadians are well aware of the sky-high prices of groceries, but how much have they increased over the years? One shopper decided to find out by comparing a Walmart grocery order from 2020 to the same order today.

In a post Wednesday, Reddit user MrCrix said he found his oldest Walmart order from 2020 on what appears to be the Instacart app and duplicated it to see how much prices have increased for the same order since then.

The buyer shared the results on r/povertyfinancecanada, and it was shocking to say the least.

“My oldest order was on November 30, 2020. For 22 items, I paid $145.87. This included all fees and a $10 tip,” MrCrix wrote in the replies.

They repeated the order today, but only 10 items were automatically added to the cart, and the remaining 12 had to be added manually.

“The reason is that the packaging sizes have changed,” the Reddit user explains. “For example, Wheat Thins went from 200g to 180g, and Kraft Dinner, which used to sell five-packs, now only sells four-packs.”

This is already a sign of shrinking inflation.

Comparing a 2020 Walmart order to the same order today
byu/MrCrix inpovertyfinancecanada

MrCrix checked the current order with a tip of $11.15; the total was $214.72. That’s a difference of $68.91, or a 47.2% price increase from 2020.

“This also doesn’t include the $3.99 shipping fee that was taken away from me because it was a promotion,” they wrote. “So basically, it’s now 50% more expensive to order the exact same items, with less volume at Walmart than it was 3.5 years ago.”

Canadians reacted in the comments.

A Reddit user shared his own experience with shrinkflation.

“Good old shrinkflation,” the response reads. “We ordered a “large” pizza last night while we were out getting stuff in town. We sat down with this box which contained a pizza big enough for me to eat three slices, my wife took two, which left two regular sized slices and one skinny ass slice.”

They continued, “Is that a large pizza? It wouldn’t feed a family for a movie night, that’s for sure.”

“The funny (and sad) thing is that prices are going up while sizes AND quality are going down. This has to make sense,” someone added.

“Okay, we know this is happening – what the hell do we do about it?” added another.

Comparing the above results with the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator, we see that the same $145.87 order placed at Walmart in 2020 would cost about $172.34 today. That’s an 18% increase in nearly four years, with an average annual inflation rate of 4%.

Several commenters on the post claim that Instacart is raising prices on groceries, which could explain the Redditor’s higher bill.

We’ve taken grocery price comparisons even further, back to 2002. Find out how much the average Canadian spent on 10 popular food items over 20 years ago here.