Serving up a full English breakfast is growing ever more expensive for Britons as higher grocery prices add to the squeeze on household budgets.
(Bloomberg) — Serving up a full English breakfast is growing ever more expensive for Britons as higher grocery prices add to the squeeze on household budgets.
Bloomberg’s monthly Breakfast Index shows the price of the ingredients in a traditional fry-up rose by an average of more than 17% from a year ago. Ingredient costs rose 1.1% in August from July, a slightly smaller increase than in recent months.
Crunching data from the Office for National Statistics, the index tracks the prices of some of the key ingredients in an English breakfast — sausages, bacon, eggs, bread, butter, tomatoes, mushrooms, milk, tea and coffee. It offers a glimpse into the real-world impact of inflation on consumers facing soaring living costs.
“The outlook is pretty bleak for a lot of food shoppers at the moment,” said James Walton, chief economist at the Institute of Grocery Distribution. “And it’s kind of hard to see any relief in the immediate future.”
The total cost to make an English breakfast has risen to £32.04 ($37.02) from £27.92 in August 2021, the index shows. The biggest monthly increase was in the price of a pint of milk, which soared 5.1%. Sausages, butter and eggs all rose more than 2%.
Dairy products have grown costlier after one of the driest summers on record pushed up prices for cattle forage and Russia’s war in Ukraine sent fertilizer costs soaring. With no resolution in sight for the war and parts of England likely to stay in drought until next year, prices for agricultural products might edge higher still.
While UK inflation slowed from its fastest pace in four decades in August as gasoline prices eased, the cost of food rose 1.5% and clothing climbed 1.1% in the month. The annual rate of inflation hovered just below 10%.
Lower-income households, which tend of spend larger shares of their budgets on food, are the worst victims of the cost-of-living crisis. It’s becoming increasingly common for people to skip meals, especially for families with children, according to Walton. Others are relying on food banks or going into debt to pay for groceries.
“When people tell you ‘our plan is to rely on charity and debt,’ you know that is about as bad as it can get for them,” Walton said.
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