Sainsbury’s has cut the price of its own brand bread and butter, in what some are seeing as a sign that soaring food price inflation will start to come down in the coming months.
The UK’s second-largest supermarket chain said it had lowered the price of its soft white medium, wholemeal medium, wholemeal thick, and toastie white loaves of bread to 75p, which is a reduction of 11%.
The retailer said on Tuesday it had also cut the price of its salted and unsalted butter to £1.89 for 250g, a 5% decrease.
The lower prices were available to customers on the Sainsbury’s website from Tuesday morning.
“Whenever we are paying less for the products we buy from our suppliers, we will pass those savings on to customers,” said the Sainsbury’s food commercial director, Rhian Bartlett.
“As we see the commodity prices starting to fall for wheat and butter, we’re able to lower our prices on two of the products people buy most often, bread and butter.”
Sainsbury’s said the price reductions would not affect the amount of money it pays farmers for their produce.
Food and drink inflation reached 19.1% in the UK in March, according to official figures, showing the cost of groceries had soared far above the headline rate of 10.1% over the past year.
This marked the fastest annual increase in food and drink prices since 1977, as the surging cost of basic essentials added to the pressure from rocketing energy bills.
Surging energy costs and supply chain disruption unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have been blamed for higher food and drink prices, along with rising labour costs, the impact of poor weather on harvests, and Brexit trade barriers.
There are hopes that price rises could ease soon, amid a recent drop in global wholesale food costs. However, grocers have cautioned that widespread price cuts are unlikely to come soon with energy and labour costs still rising.
after newsletter promotion
Sainsbury’s move comes just weeks after its chief executive, Simon Roberts, promised the retailer would do all it could to pass on any falls in the price of goods as quickly as possible to shoppers.
Last month, Sainsbury’s reported a 5% fall in annual underlying profits in the year to 4 March, with the retailer saying it had spent more than £560m on keeping its prices down during high inflation over the past two years.
Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, as well as Sainsbury’s cut the price of a pint of milk by 5p in April, taking the cost to 90p for the first time since 2020, taking advantage of a spring boost in milk production.
The price cuts were also seen as the latest example of retailers trying to lure price-conscious shoppers to their stores with deals on the most popular items, amid a battle for customers with the discounters, Aldi and Lidl.
