Editor’s Desk: Lost in the supermarket

By Theodore Ross

My most recent Editor’s Desks have been about FERN’s innovations — podcasts, special series, multiformat distribution, and more. But today I’m writing to you about something very old-fashioned and essential: a shoe-leather investigation into pricing problems at Kroger, the supermarket megachain.

Yesterday, we published “‘Customers are being duped’: How murky grocery sales tactics are squeezing some Kroger shoppers” in partnership with The Guardian U.S. and Consumer Reports. The story was written by FERN staffer Ted Genoways and me (my first byline for FERN, for those keeping score at home); Michael Hudson from The Guardian; and Derek Kravitz from Consumer Reports.

Kroger is the nation’s second-largest grocery retailer, after Walmart, with 2,700 stores in 35 states, including Kroger-owned chains King Soopers, Harris Teeter, Ralphs, Fry’s Food and Drug, and more. Using a team of “secret shoppers” in 14 states and Washington, D.C., and digging into internal corporate documents, court records, complaints to government authorities, and interviews with customers, workers, and union officials, our story found:

“a pattern of overcharging customers by frequently listing expired sale prices on the shelves and then ringing up the regular prices at checkout … producing average overcharges of about $1.70 per item, an 18% markup over the discount price.”

At the heart of Kroger’s pricing problems, we discovered, is a labor shortage. Its workforce fell from roughly 465,000 full- and part-time employees in January 2021 to just over 409,000 in February 2025, according to company filings with U.S. securities regulators. As noted in the story, Kroger didn’t respond in detail to most of our questions about its pricing practices, saying that it is “committed to affordable and accurate pricing” and that it regularly conducts price checks that review “millions of items weekly to ensure our shelf prices are accurate.” It also said that it is “inaccurate to say the company reduced standards or labor hours.”

There’s nothing glamorous about this kind of reporting. It takes hard work and expertise, and a willingness to ask a lot of questions. You never know what kind of story you will have at the end, or if you will have a story at all. It’s why so many outlets have cut back on this kind of reporting. It’s not an accident that all three organizations involved in this work are nonprofits.

We rely on donations from caring and committed people just like you to allow us to continue this kind of important work. I hope you will consider making a donation today to help us keep digging.