Sunday, March 16, 2025
I do like a Double Decker, the Cadbury chocolate bar with a stripe of nougat atop a crispy base. I've liked them ever since they were introduced in 1976, perhaps unsurprisingly given I was an 11 year-old boy who liked both chocolate and buses. If you're feeing nostalgic here's a 1970s advert, here's a 1980s advert, here's some old packaging and here's a double decker bus in Double Decker branding.
I don't buy Double Deckers in convenience shops because they're vastly overpriced, instead I buy them in multipacks from the supermarket. The best value is a 9-pack, a great long floppy thing with a recommended retail price of £3 (i.e. 33p each). I should say I can generally make one of these packs last two months because I have the self-control to ration myself to one bar a week, I'm not a craven sugar-seeker.
Obviously these multipack bars are a bit smaller than you get in corner shops, but that's more than cancelled out by the fact they're hugely cheaper.
Single Double Decker: 54.5g for 85pThe normal sized bar has 50% more chocolate but costs two and a half times as much. To put it another way, one 10g bite costs 16p in the proper bar but only 9p in the smaller version. To put it another way, you get 112g of chocolate for £1 in a multipack but only 64g in the full-size version. Multipack bars wipe the floor with their shelf-stacked counterparts, which is why you should never buy one.
Multipack Double Decker: 37.3g for 33p
Anyway, when I went to the supermarket two weeks ago I noticed that 9-packs of Double Deckers were 'Reduced to clear'. In my experience this means one of two things, either the line's about to be discontinued or they're about to reintroduce it in a new size. I bought a couple of packs just in case, and because the price of a pack had been reduced to £2.55 they were an even better bargain than before.
And hey presto when I went back to the supermarket last week a new multipack had appeared and it shocked me to the core.
The multipack still costs £3 but now you get only seven bars for your money. They're the same weight - I checked - but the thieving bastards at Cadbury have swiped two bars and are charging the same price.
Previously: 9 bars for £3 = 33p eachThat's a whopping 29% price increase disguised as a two bar cut. I'm OK for now because I have 18 bars stashed away in two original packs at a reduced price (an amazing 28p each). But when they run out in the summer I get to pay 29% more for all future Double Deckers or else I stop buying them in protest. Bloody shrinkflation, it's pernicious, it's everywhere and it locks in this expensive price hike forever.
Currently: 7 bars for £3 = 43p each
Exactly the same thing happened this month with my preferred brand of Earl Grey teabags. Previously a box of 100 bags cost £2.75, then the dreaded "Reduced to clear" sign appeared, then on my next visit they were suddenly in boxes of 80 instead. The new price is £2.60 so it looks like a 15p cut, whereas if you do the maths it's the equivalent of a 50p rise. Again I stocked up so I won't be shafted immediately, but eventually I'll be paying 18% more for every cuppa (or else switching to something less expensively bergamotty).
Inflation may be bad but shrinkflation is far worse, upping the price of tea bags by 18% and chocolate bars by 29%, ideally without you even noticing.
