ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Almost 30% - that's the amount grocery prices have gone up since before the pandemic.
JOE HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: Food costs have been rising for all of us for a number of years now, but, you know, I wanted to sort of talk to people who are dealing with those issues.
FLORIDO: That's NPR reporter Joe Hernandez, telling me about his series What's Eating America. His stories explore how people are coping with rising food costs. He's really been trying to understand...
HERNANDEZ: How they're thinking about it and what kind of strategies or, you know, different approaches they're bringing to eating now that prices have gone up on so many different things.
FLORIDO: Things like shopping at budget grocery stores, as Rich Henderson explained to him.
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RICH HENDERSON: The more we shopped here, the more products we tried, we realized, quality-wise, you're not really sacrificing anything.
FLORIDO: Hernandez has also been spending time with the people producing our food, like Mary Hudson, from the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association. When people started buying less fish during the pandemic, her group hatched a plan to buy up locally caught fish and give it away to food banks.
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MARY HUDSON: We were trying to figure out how we could get the boats out fishing, make some money, and realized also that we were facing these big issues with food and security. And it just was a perfect marriage of issues to try to find some funding.
FLORIDO: Across the country, people have had to make adjustments in their lives as food has gotten more expensive. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I asked Joe Hernandez about getting people to open up about that.
How hard has it been to get people to talk about their struggles affording food? Not everybody likes to admit that they're struggling.
HERNANDEZ: No, but I think a lot of people like to talk about this and share kind of their stories about it. And I think because food prices have gone up and been going up on so many different things, there's a bit of a we're-all-in-the-same-boat feeling, I think, and so, you know, people were pretty willing to kind of share their feelings about it. And in some ways, you know, I think they wanted to share their story so other people could hear that, you know, people aren't alone in having to figure out these different ways to deal with rising food prices.
And, you know one - I did a story about a pay-what-you-will night at a restaurant in Austin, Texas, where the owners there wanted to welcome people back in - basically, people who stopped going to restaurants because they got too expensive - they wanted to let them have a night out there and pay whatever they felt like they could afford.
And I talked to one diner there who said, you know, right now I'm on rental assistance. It's difficult for me, but I'm able to have, you know, access to this restaurant because of this promotion, and I hope that as I kind of develop in my career and life in Austin, I'll be able to support these businesses so they can do promotions for people, you know, in the future, who are in the shoes that I'm in now.
FLORIDO: That's a story that's not just about people's struggles to afford food and the way they're trying to find more affordable food, but also the other side of the coin, which is people who are producing food and wanting to make sure that they can stay in business. Say a little bit about that.
HERNANDEZ: Yeah, I wanted to kind of capture both sides of that coin, which is the people who are producing our food and serving it and selling it to us, as well as, you know, the consumer side. But in many cases, these are small businesses, like that restaurant that I mentioned, and the co-owners there, you know, are dealing with rising costs themselves on everything from the raw ingredients they're buying to insurance.
And many restaurants, including this one, have raised prices in the past because, you know, to maintain the slim margins that they operate on, they would have to raise their prices in order to stay profitable. This restaurant, the owners there, you know, they just felt like this was a moment to say, we want people in our restaurant. We don't want to price people out of it. So once a week, we're going to allow people to come in, pay whatever they want, have a good meal and then leave.
And they - you might think that that's not a really great business decision, and I think that they would say - they might agree with that, but that's not why they did this. They did this, they say, because they want their restaurant to be accessible. But also they're finding a lot of people are paying what they owe when they come to that night or paying more if they're able to do it because they want to make it possible for those people who are coming in who aren't able to pay that much.
FLORIDO: It sounds like you've spent a lot of time in grocery aisles and diners and school cafeterias - places that we all spend time in or have spent time in, you know, when we were kids. Are there things that you've noticed as a reporter in these spaces that maybe those of us who have ever just experienced those places as consumers might not notice?
HERNANDEZ: One thing I feel like I did pick up in doing all of this reporting is that a lot of those people who are on the production side of our food system are themselves dealing with these high prices. They have to wrap up their shift. Or at the end of the day, if they're - they own their business, you know, close up their business and go to the same grocery stores that you and I shop at.
And so they - you know, the ones that I talked to - for example, I visited a cattle farm in Kentucky run by a husband and wife couple who live with their two children on the farm and talked about sort of the struggles that they have keeping the farm profitable and operating without raising their own prices too high and just sort of, you know, how they're dealing with it, and then they have to go and go shopping themselves.
You know, hopefully, one thing that people take away from this is just that, that other side, which can often be a little bit elusive or confusing - like why are food prices going up so high?
FLORIDO: Yeah.
HERNANDEZ: Who is causing...
FLORIDO: And who's responsible?
HERNANDEZ: Exactly, right. Like, who's setting...
FLORIDO: Yeah.
HERNANDEZ: ...These prices and why? - you know, trying to open a window a little bit into the decision making there and the struggles that those producers and restaurateurs, you know, have as well.
FLORIDO: Joe, has this reporting changed at all how you view food and its central place in our lives?
HERNANDEZ: Well, I'm trying to be better at looking at prices in the grocery store, for sure. I think reporting on how to cut food costs really illuminated for me some strategies that I could use, I think, that a lot of people could use to spend less money on food if you want to do that when you're in the grocery store. And this is small things - like, you know, going with store brands, for example, which are becoming more popular - to big things like budgeting and setting a budget for your family, if you want to do that.
And then I just think more broadly, you know, the fact that we live in a food system with other people in it - these producers who are making our, you know - raising beef cattle or catching fish or people who are operating restaurants or school cafeterias - you know, many of them are working with tight budgets themselves to run their businesses and aren't necessarily trying to raise prices on consumers and then themselves have to become consumers at the end of the day or on the weekend when they go food shopping as well.
FLORIDO: Well, you've published five stories so far. You've got more coming. Where can listeners and readers expect the series to go?
HERNANDEZ: Right, so the next story is about the shrinking domestic U.S. cattle herd. The number of beef and dairy cows is the lowest it's been in decades in the U.S., yet demand for beef is quite high, even though, as we - you know, many of us know, the cost of ground beef and beef right now is also very expensive. So, you know, we looked at kind of why it is that if demand is so high, there are so many fewer cows than there once were across the U.S.. And there's a lot of reasons for that as well. But we talked to - you know, I mentioned that family in Lexington, Kentucky, that really illustrated for me kind of all the pressures they're facing as business owners in running a farm in 2026 and just the difficulty of it.
FLORIDO: Well, we're looking forward to that story. I've been speaking with NPR reporter Joe Hernandez, whose series What's Eating America is about how Americans are responding to rising food prices. Thanks, Joe.
HERNANDEZ: Thank you.
FLORIDO: You can also sign up for his newsletter that offers tips on how to cut your food bill. Find it on our website, npr.org.
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