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Stephanie Sundstrom lives a half-hour out of Bemidji in the woods of northern Minnesota. She’s had it battling with high grocery prices.

“It’s extremely frustrating, like, to the point of exhaustion because it’s been going on for so long,” said Sundstrom. She said she’s thankful for what she has,  but worries about others with less. How are they getting by?

“I don’t buy beef. I rarely buy pork. I don’t buy eggs, Sundstrom said. “I have to use the little money I have in my budget to make sure we can eat until the next time I get paid.”

Sundstrom said it’s less expensive to eat junk food — potato chips and all the rest — than nutritional food such as fresh produce.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates food prices will rise 2.2 percent over the course of this year, slightly below last year. If they’re correct, that increase would be way down from just a few years ago. Grocery prices jumped nearly 10 percent in 2022. They were up nearly 6 percent in 2023.

Many consumers think price gouging is driving high grocery prices. But Minnesota Grocers Association President Pat Garofalo said grocery stores, just like their customers, are struggling. 

“This was not as a result of your local grocery stores making more money,” Garofalo said. “This was just a result of a significant disruption throughout the entire worldwide supply chain.”

As for egg prices — the source of a lot of recent concern for grocery shoppers — Garofalo said they’re up so much because of the toll avian flu has taken on chicken flocks.

Mastel’s Health Foods in St. Paul sells more supplements than conventional groceries, but they’re also known for their locally produced eggs.

“We have really, really high-quality eggs,” co-owner Laruen Gaffney said recently before showing an empty space in a refrigerated case intended to hold egg cartons.

Like many businesses, Mastel’s limits egg purchases to two dozen per shopper per visit.  The store gets its eggs from a small-scale supplier in southern Minnesota. Although Mastel’s is struggling to keep eggs in stock, Gaffney said the amount the store pays for eggs has not increased — so she hasn’t raised what her customers have to pay. 

As for other products, other stores — Gaffney, who’s worked in food sales for almost two-and-a-half decades, said she thinks higher prices are here to stay.

“I’ve almost never seen the prices come back down,” Gaffney said.

But Jason Amundsen, co-owner of Northeast Minnesota egg producer Locally Laid, said he believes the egg prices will come down when culled flocks are repopulated.

Amundsen said he has also kept his egg prices steady, but he’s concerned about the Trump administration tariffs — that stand to make chicken feed more expensive — might force him to charge more.  

“A lot of feed comes from China, oddly enough, a lot of grains — you’re just monkeying with the markets, I guess, unnecessarily,” explained Amundsen. “It provides even more risk in an already risky environment for us for feed. So that’s not a good thing.”

Tariffs on other food inputs could also fuel grocery price increases.

Back near Bemidji, Stephanie Sundstrom said she’s hoping grocery prices will begin decreasing soon. 

“We keep thinking that, ‘OK, at some point they’re going to have to start dialing back on price increases,’ but they’re not. It’s completely draining,” Sundstrom said. 

For now, Sundstrom said, she’ll keep trying to stretch her budget to keep food on her table.

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Food prices continue to rise in Minnesota and nationwide — though at a slower rate than dramatic spikes during the pandemic. The high price of eggs is top of mind right now for many grocery shoppers.

Rising food prices cause continued stress in Minnesota

Kerem Yücel | MPR News

Courtesy of Stephanie Sundstrom

A woman stands near a grocery fridge display.

‘It’s completely draining’: Rising food prices causing continued stress in Minnesota, nationwide

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