This new display on products should alert customers.

The battle over labels continues in supermarkets. Reductions of all kinds, “anti-inflation basket”, guaranteed to be the cheapest among the competition, coming from a local producer… There are a whole bunch of commercial arguments that are put forward around prices. Enough to sometimes lose customers, as there is so much information displayed on the shelves. Except that in a context of a permanent increase in prices, this flood of elements is far from over since a new label will very soon appear.

For several months, many consumers have had the bitter experience of this: products are sold at the same price, or even more expensive, even though their quantity has decreased! An impression of a scam which has made many customers jump, even though the practice is completely legal. However, faced with the proliferation of the phenomenon, a decision was taken to better inform buyers and clearly tell them whether the manufacturer manufacturing the product has used this method or not.

If this is the case, this must now be marked in black and white on a new label, which will display this explicit statement: “For this product, the quantity sold has increased from X to Y and its price per kg or liter has increased by… % or …€.” This must be perfectly visible, “directly on the packaging or on a label attached to or placed near this product and in the same font size as that used to indicate the unit price of the product.” This is what the public authorities have decided. Leclerc, Carrefour, Auchan, Lidl as well as all distributors will therefore have to demonstrate transparency if some of their suppliers have decided to reduce the quantities of their products and increase the price.

These new labels will not arrive in supermarkets straight away. They can only be displayed from Monday July 1, 2024. Furthermore, only stores of more than 400m² are affected by this obligation. So no more small neighborhood supermarkets, for example. Furthermore, the display of the label will be limited in time: two months after being affixed, it will disappear. But the quantity will not return to what it was before. No more than the price.