Yukon 'data guy' compares grocery bills to see how much more he's paying this year

A Yukoner tracking the price of food staples at his local supermarket found a price rise over the last year that's more than double the rate of inflation. 

Self-described "data guy" Brett Elliot compared the price of 37 food items at a major Whitehorse supermarket between October 2022 and 2023.

He found, on average, the same shopping trolley went up 12 per cent in price, disregarding sale prices.

"The biggest driver, the biggest price increase, was chicken breast," he said.

"It almost doubled in the last year. Last year, you could get a kilogram of chicken breast for around $9 and this year it's almost $17. So that was a huge price difference. Also — ground beef. Last year, at one kilogram you found it for about $8 and this year it's up to $14."

Orange juice jumped from $4.19 to $6.29, and a kilogram of Royal Gala apples, once $4.39, now cost $6.60. 

Even Kraft Dinner had climbed in price, he said, from $1.57 to $2.29 a pack. 

The project started mostly out of curiosity, Elliot said.

"I started doing a lot more of the shopping for my household in the past couple years and I noticed the prices were going up and up. As a data guy myself, I figured that everyone's talking about the prices increasing. But I wanted to be able to quantify it and see exactly how much they were increasing," he said. 

"There's pharmacy items in there, there's meat items, there's produce items, there's cookies and crackers and that sort of thing too. So it's mostly meant to represent a wide spectrum of what you'd be able to find in a grocery store."

Elliot found seven of his chosen items remained the same price, and seven decreased in price. 

Among them was a "welcome decrease" in the cost of a dozen eggs he said, from $5.09 to $3.89, and a litre of milk dropped from $2.89 to $2.79. 

CBC Yukon accompanied Elliot on a trip to his local supermarket to buy seven basic Thanksgiving ingredients — a large turkey, stuffing, cranberry jelly, two small pumpkin pies, whipped cream, four large potatoes and a can of peas and corn — enough for about four to six people.

The total came to $62.40.