It really depends on where you live in the US. A lot of people live in areas where there are very few competitors in the grocery business so they can charge obscene amounts of money; especially anywhere rural. On top of that, the major grocery stores like Safeway, Albertson’s, and Kroger try to keep their stock consistent year round instead of going more seasonal, which massively inflates the price of fresh food.
I live in Southern California in a high cost of living area but the produce and meat is very cheap at ethnic stores like Ranch 99 and SuperKing that actually compete on price. These kinds of stores are only present in areas with dense immigrant populations. Even in urban areas so many people default to shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joes that it’s easy to get a distorted view of prices. Much of it is that Americans ostensibly choose to pay more for convenience and availability.
As an example, the Halal grocery that I usually buy my meat from has ribeye steaks for $5-8/lb while Costco - normally considered cheaper than most other stores (in bulk) - has them for $20-25/lb. Now the former isn’t as high quality as prime Costco steaks so I still buy the latter for special occasions, but for day to day food it’s a much better deal. A little smart shopping goes a very long way.
> Much of it is that Americans ostensibly choose to pay more for convenience and availability.
I doubt that convenience and availability is a US only thing. Prices in budget grocery stores like Aldi and Lidl in Europe are still 50-70% cheaper than US prices.
IME that may be true for Bucharest or Prague, but definitely not Paris or London. Budget US grocers are much cheaper than nominal US prices so I don’t know why you’re comparing the cheapest in Europe to the average in the US (which, again, has a much less concentrated population leading to less competition). Average prices are higher but the floor in the US is significantly lower.
Every one of the posts I looked at priced in Euros looked like they were significantly more expensive than any shopping trip I ever made at SuperKing or Ranch 99 (in Los Angeles no less). I then went and sorted by top posts for the year and the only post that looks similar to the prices I actually pay was from a shopping trip in Algeria. Only a few posts of people paying €4 for a bunch of pastries and breads are impressive, the rest is just overpriced.
That subreddit is not a reliable source of data or even anecdata.
To see Aldi's prices, you need to use a mobile application called instacart. It lets phones see the prices in-store at Aldi for the purpose of making shopping lists. It also has another set of prices for those that have food delivered or do "curb side pickup". Those are higher than the in-store prices.
If you compare the prices, do you still believe that food is more expensive in the US than in Europe?
As another poster said, it truly depends on where you live. In my state, grocery stores will be expensive for rural shoppers, but there are an abundance of farmer's markets and local mom and pops with cheap, but seasonal food. Even for national chains, things are just cheaper if you eat what's in season for your area. When apples are in season for my state, they're cheap. Then a little more expensive when they have to come out of state and then super expensive when they're imported because they're out of season in the US generally.
Americans just don't eat seasonally and that ups the cost. We also have the problem where some states over specialize on particular foods, so everything beyond that has a baseline higher expense.
Speaking for the regions they compete in, Lidl and Aldi have marched down the "cutting margins to the bone"-learning curve for several decades now. It's... not great for their suppliers.
But it is pretty great for their customers, and for their direct employees (for which I respect them a lot).
