October 2023 Food Price Surge: Pizza Leads with 3.9% Increase Amid Seasonal Trends

(An online newspaper): Pizza was one of the things that saw the biggest price increase in October. Prices rose 3.9 percent overall.

It is a very strong monthly price increase. Food prices in general increased by 0.7 percent. Only chocolate, lamb, vegetables and eggs rose more than pizza in October.

See an overview below

Offers and promotions

But if you look at the price of pizza in the past year, the picture is a little different. Then there’s the 3.5 percent increase in pizza prices.

– We can see that frozen pizza is a product with many offers and promotions. Along with chocolate, these seem to be popular items to attract customers to the store, Statistics Norway’s section manager Espen Kristiansen told Nettavisen.

In other words: Pizza and chocolate are lures, and this has an effect:

– We will see this again because prices go up and down a lot from month to month, says Kristiansen.

Large crowds

There is no clear seasonal pattern to how pizza prices change, according to Kristiansen.

Frozen pizza is a major product in Norwegian grocers, Big One, D. Oetker and Grandiosa are popular brands. Nettavisen has previously written about how the price of Grandiosa can change dramatically.

In April this year there was the price of the classic all the way down to NOK 20.86 at the discount chains. It was the lowest level in several years. Otherwise, Grandiosa has gone between NOK 30 and 70, depending on the chain and whether campaigns are being run.

Lambs sold cheaply

Lamb meat is another product with strong growth in prices in October, but there is an explanation for this.

– Here there are also several offers, but unlike pizza there is a very clear seasonal pattern, says Kristiansen in SSB.

– In September, lamb prices are lowered, apparently to attract buyers during lambing season. And then the prices go up again in October, he says.

If you look at prices from a slightly longer perspective, in the last two years lamb has not increased in price more than beef, and a little less than pork, according to Kristiansen.