BREAKING: The First Crack In The Dam
One of the nation’s five largest food distributors is now quietly pulling back from the massive wholesale margin increases that helped drive the grocery inflation wave since 2021 — including the notorious “auto-padding” markup that insiders say added up to 30% to thousands of products. Is the dam finally cracking? And what does that mean for consumers?
Welcome To The New Normal
If you want the New Normal to end, stop shouting into the void and start shoving this data into the agencies that are supposed to protect you. Send this story — and the Mona Lisa Graph — to three places: the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, your State Attorney General, and your U.S. Representative’s office. Tell them exactly what you now know: diesel prices collapsed, Big Food’s costs didn’t rise, and the CPI never came back down.
The Mona Lisa Graph Returns
This isn’t a market correction. It’s a margin extraction — and the fingerprints are all over BigFood.
For the past two months, SpokenFood has been dissecting what we’ve called the Price Gouging Conspiracy — a coordinated silence among major producers, distributors, and retailers who continue inflating prices under the pretense of “supply-chain recovery.” In truth, their supply chains recovered long ago.
Whistleblowers Say ‘30% Margin’ Is Automatic
Between 2020 and 2025, Sysco’s profits surged, UNFI’s revenues jumped, PNG revenues tripled – this information comes from our archived stories. Meanwhile, diesel prices fell nearly 30% from their 2022 peak.
The math doesn’t lie. Somebody’s banking the difference — and it’s not the farmers or the families at checkout.
This UNFI source says the 30% standard has been internal knowledge “for years.” We’re working to verify supporting data and will provide all findings to the proper authorities – which we’ll divulge soon – before publishing specific documentation.