Stop staring at the net weight on your cereal box. You are looking for the robbery in the wrong place.
According to Morning Consult data (2023), 64% of you are obsessing over Shrinkflation—counting the missing chips in the bag. Retailers love that. While you measure the package size, they are pulling a digital sleight of hand that erases the price hike entirely from the record.
We call it the "Shadow SKU."
It works like this: A manufacturer doesn't just raise the price of a $4.99 jar of sauce. They change the font on the label or tweak the salt content by 0.1%. That tiny change legally justifies a new Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). To the store's database, the old $4.99 product is dead. A "new" product is born at $6.99.
The price history graph flatlines. The inflation tracking algorithms used by everyone from Truflation to your budgeting app see a new market entry, not a 40% markup on the same old dinner. You aren't crazy; the data is being laundered.
We built the 'Silent Inflation' Receipt Generator to catch them. By using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to read the text on your receipt rather than the barcode, we stitch the "zombie" products back together to show you the real cost of your grocery cart.
ð Key Takeaways
- The 'Shadow SKU' Protocol: How Retailers Delete History
- Building the Legacy Price Reconstructor
- Insider Moves: The "New Look" Trap
The 'Shadow SKU' Protocol: How Retailers Delete History
Standard price trackers are dumb. They rely on the barcode (UPC/GTIN) remaining static. If the code changes, the software assumes it is a different product. Retailers know this.
This creates a massive blind spot in official data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tries to account for quality changes in their CPI "Basket of Goods," but they can't manually audit every font change in the cereal aisle. This is where "SKU Churning" does the damage. It breaks the digital chain of custody.
Edgar Dworsky, the founder of Consumer World, has spent decades tracking physical downsizing in his "Mouse Print" reports. But even he notes that the digital side of this shell game is harder to track. When a product is "discontinued" and immediately replaced by a near-identical twin at a higher price point, the inflation metric for that specific item resets to zero.
It validates the "sellers' inflation" theory proposed by economist Isabella Weber. Companies aren't just passing on costs; they are strategically managing their portfolio to obscure profit-taking. If they kept the old barcode, the price jump would trigger "Greedflation" alerts on price-comparison engines. By killing the SKU, they dodge the bad PR.
Building the Legacy Price Reconstructor
The USDA Economic Research Service forecasts food-at-home prices to decelerate in 2024, predicting a mild 1.2% rise. Does that match your bank account? Probably not.
That disconnect happens because the official "Basket of Goods" is hypothetical. Your receipt is reality. To build a tool that actually tracks Purchasing Power Parity at the kitchen table level, we had to ignore the barcodes entirely.
Our generator uses Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine, to scrape the raw text from your crumpled receipts. We then feed that unstructured data into Python (specifically the Pandas library) to run fuzzy matching algorithms.
If you bought "Heinz Ketchup 32oz" in 2019 and "Heinz Ketchup New Look 32oz" in 2024, a barcode scanner treats them as strangers. Our script recognizes them as the same overpriced condiment. This allows us to visualize the "churn tax"—the specific cost added during that transition window.
There is a catch. While we can catch price hikes, we struggle to detect Skimpflation. If a brand swaps sunflower oil for cheaper palm oil but keeps the price and weight identical, our OCR can't taste the difference. That requires ingredient scraping, which is our next frontier.
Insider Moves: The "New Look" Trap
ð Worth Noting: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tries to account for quality changes in their CPI "Basket of Goods," but they can't manually audit every font change in the cereal aisle
Retailers bank on your bad memory. Here is how to use the generator to beat the "Shadow SKU" game and prove your personal inflation rate.
- The "New Look" Red Flag: If a package says "New Look, Same Great Taste," run the numbers. This label is almost always a distraction for a SKU reset. The brand is telling the database "this is a new item" to detach it from the old $3.50 price point.
- Watch the Unit Price: This is your North Star. The generator calculates price per ounce across different SKUs. It is the only metric that cannot be fudged by packaging redesigns.
- Check FRED Data: Use our API to pull Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) baselines. If your personal inflation rate on eggs is 40% but the national average is 12%, you need to switch grocery stores—or brands.