2 points here. First, you can find many of those OU products at kosher stores, and depending on the store, sometimes it's pretty competitive. Second, you're not really doing yourself any favors in the long run. That kosher store needs to make a certain amount in order to keep the lights on. By spending 30-40% of your grocery dollars elsewhere, you end up costing yourself a lot more in the long run. The kosher store will just need to raise their margins on the items you can only get from them in order to stay solvent.
Full disclosure: many here know I'm in the business. I've been on both sides of the counter, and I don't blame people for trying to save money where they can, while they can. Just trying to give a full(er) picture.
I think that’s a pretty faulty argument. Pay inflated prices by us or we’ll just have to stick it to you some other way to make our numbers. That’s making an assumption that the stores need to exist at their current number of stores and profit margins, and simply need to to work backwards to figure out how to make those numbers work.
Ideally it should go in the other direction. Consumers should do most of their dry goods shopping at the box stores, which are often half to one third of the price on many if not most items. The savings can amount to tens of thousands of dollars a year for most families. Those who need the convenience or see the value in having a heimishe hechsher on everything short of bottled water can pay the inflated grocery store prices. If that means there isn’t enough residual business to support the 25 grocery stores in Lakewood, the stores can consolidate to adjust to demand. This would result in collective savings in the millions for consumers that can be redirected to Schar Limud or other vital needs.
Unfortunately most consumers are being taken for a ride. And it’s largely not the stores fault, it’s the distributors who have muscled their way into what is effectively a massive monopoly. With the exception of Bingo, stores are generally hostage to distributors who create the appearance of competition with brand variations that they actually control. This has allowed them to exploit the recent inflation by raising prices well above was is taking place in the non kosher industry. In the non Jewish world there is elasticity of demand. If prices of brand name items rise too high, consumers will tend to switch to generic items, putting pressure on pricing. In the Jewish world it is much harder to get consumers to change their spending habits. This allows distributes to stick it to the consumer with higher prices with impunity.
In general retail prices are sticky but it is much more pronounced in the kosher grocery scene. For example, wholesale prices of milk have tanked to under $2 a gallon. Farmers have started dumping some milk because it so cheap. In the box stores a gallon of milk has slowly edged down to between $3 and $4. In the Cholov Yisrael market prices have hardly budged at over $8 a gallon ($4 a half gallon) at many stores. Wholesale chicken cutlet, wings, and other chicken prices have tanked on the wholesale non kosher market months ago. Only recently have slightly lower prices begun to make their way into the kosher groceries.
The fact is that many dry goods such as pasta, flour, many spices, and the like are non kashrus sensitive items, and other than yoshon, you are getting virtually the same kashrus standard when you buy the Good and Gather macaroni for 99 cents at Target as buying heimishe pasta at seasons for 2.59. There definitely are some kashrus sensitive items where you are getting a superior product by buying heimish, but that still leaves hundreds if not thousands of products where the average condumer would be just fine with the store brand at a virtual fraction of the price.
Even on generic items such as fruit and vegetables the difference can be staggering; .79 Avocado and .99 mango vs over double the price at the kosher supermarket. A side of Salmon can often be $5 a pound higher at the kosher supermarkets vs ShopRite. If enough consumers would shift their buying habits it would put pressure on distributors to stop taking the consumer for a ride.
