Jane Milton on BBC radio
Yesterday Paul Salt the drive-time DJ for BBC Radio Merseyside called and asked …. ‘has the 20% increase in Freddo bars been caused by Brexit ‘
I told him Brexit is just a convenient excuse for companies to deflect criticism of their own decisions.
Commodity prices have gone up and so Mondelez has increased some product prices ….. when they reduced the size of the Toblerone and kept the price the same people did not like that either.
Listen to what I said here …
It raised some interesting themes, though – a few months back Dispatches were concerned food industry was making things bigger and making us fat, , but there are just as many people complaining about things getting smaller – chocolate, desserts, multipacks of crisps, biscuits.
Do we want prices held and maybe a slice or two taken off a product or would we pay more? The UK consumer still spends less on average per person on food as a % of total income that most other EU countries. Was it not a desire to keep prices low from retailers that contributed to horsemeat finding its way into the food chain being sold as beef?
Would it do us any harm if they did make bars of chocolate and biscuits smaller?
Paul Salt also said what can consumers do if they are not happy? My response was that social media has certainly given them a far stronger voice and a place to protest and for smart businesses to respond.
Jane Milton
