Shrinkflation and slack-fill are coming for your Valentine’s Day candy

Your box of Valentine’s chocolates from your boo might not have quite as many pieces this year. But it’s (probably) not because they love you less and more about shrinkflation and slack-fill.

Shrinkflation, which Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org and consumer lawyer, describes as a “backdoor price increase,” is when manufacturers reduce the amount of a product but keep the price the same. This might look like fewer chips in a bag, fewer sheets on a paper towel roll and, on Tuesday, fewer pieces of chocolate to bite into.

It’s a phenomenon that isn’t all that uncommon when inflation is high, said Charles Lindsey, marketing professor at the University of Buffalo. In the last year and a half, shrinkflation has hit the U.S. particularly hard — in fact, the country hasn’t experienced shrinkflation of this magnitude since the 1970s, which is also when inflation was high and rising.

The way companies can get away with shrinkflation is if they clearly mark the package with the revised net weight of the package, said Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com and food industry analyst. If packages are clearly marked, then it is deemed legal. Although, he added, he thinks the practice is wrong. “The average person that buys snacks or chocolates or whatever else, whether it’s Valentine’s Day or anything else, is not necessarily looking at the net weight,” he said. “So, I think it’s misleading, it’s immoral. But no, I don’t think it’s illegal.”

It came for Halloween, it came for Christmas and now it’s coming for Valentine’s Day — and yes, we can expect to see Valentine’s goodies that contain less product, said Akshay Rao, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota.

A whole lot of nothing

There is another way manufacturers take steps to not anger their consumers in kind of a sneaky way, with a practice called slack-fill. Slack-fill is related to shrinkflation but is a separate issue.

As the word suggests, Dworsky explained, it’s when manufacturers “fill a large box with only a small quantity of contents.” This might look something like purchasing a large heart-shaped box of chocolates but realizing upon opening the box that there are only four pieces of chocolate in the whole package.

And is this legal? It’s actually not, according to federal law, said Dworsky — unless a manufacturer has a legally recognized exemption. That means companies can’t just start doing it because they want to.

“The law understands that consumers buy with their eyes,” Dworsky said. “They buy based on the size of the product, and a lot of them don’t pay attention to the fine print.”

But the legal part gets a little murky when you start talking about companies who say they need extra space in a package.

For example, Dworsky said, the potato chip industry has successfully argued that extra air in packaging creates a necessary cushion, which helps reduce breakage of fragile potato chips.

The Food and Drug Administration defines slack-fill as “the difference between the actual capacity of a container and the volume of product contained therein.” And, if there is a significant difference between what the package can hold and what it is holding in terms of weight, then regulators will deem it to have too much slack-fill.

As long as consumers keep buying, companies will keep shrinking the product

Experts agree that most consumers will not be deterred from Valentine’s Day spending — especially for those in relationships who are worried less about saving and more about wooing.

Candy manufacturers have also made products smaller, marketing it as if for health reasons, reported the Washington Post, who noted that in 2017, Mars Wrigley, Ferrero, Ferrera Candy Company and Lindt announced they would offer different product sizes and decrease calorie count, as well as list the calories at the front of the package.

In fact, this year, consumers are expected to spend close to $26 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day gifts, with 57 percent of people purchasing candy specifically, according to the National Retail Federation. And per reporting from the Washington Post, Valentine’s Day candy prices have increased 9.4 percent from a year ago, and dollar sales increased around 4.3 percent from last year, but, as the Washington Post notes, “volume sales are down about 4.7 percent, which means candy is more expensive and consumers are purchasing less of it.”

The determining factor on whether to spend more than usual, according to Lempert, might be based on relationship status and comfortability. For example, Lempert explained, there is a difference in spending habits between people who are in a relationship versus those who are getting into a relationship.

“People who are into new relationships, they’re going to spend more than people who have been married for five years and more,” he said. “They’re going to be smart about it, saying, you know, should we really spend this much money, where can we use it for something else?”

Lindsey suspects that overall shrinkflation and slack-fill won’t deter consumers from buying goods that have gotten smaller because, in his view, if consumers penalized firms for engaging in shrinkflation and slack-fill, they would likely stop. He added that shrinkflation, for the most part, “goes under the radar.”

Lindsey’s best advice for Valentine’s Day shoppers is simple: Do your research before you shop and look at the weight that is reported on the box, as opposed to just relying on what the packaging looks like.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.