President Trump promised lower grocery prices. Has he delivered in Lexington?
On the campaign trail in 2024, President Donald Trump pulled no punches: If reelected, he would immediately make groceries cheaper.
Trump said then-President Joe Biden was “the worst president in the history of the United States,” and blamed him for high grocery prices.
“Every time you go to the grocery store and pay these brutal prices, just remember this is crooked Joe Biden’s inflation and there’s never been an inflation like it,” Trump said in a video posted on social media in March 2024.
“I will fix it and I will fix it fast. I will end Joe Biden’s inflation nightmare once and for all.”
At a Pittsburgh campaign rally the day before the 2024 election, he pledged: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.”
So far, here in Lexington, those promises have not yet come to fruition.
A five-month analysis by the Herald-Leader shows grocery prices have increased slightly since the start of President Trump’s second term.
Starting in late January, reporter Kendall Staton has bought the same 26 food and household items from Kroger, Meijer and Publix each month to track price fluctuations. (She began to track Publix after its March opening and arrival in Lexington.)
Staton has gone the same week of each month.
On inauguration weekend in January, the average price of the 26 groceries purchased was $180.81.
That now sits at an average of $181.89 as of May, which is an 0.6% increase or a dollar value of $1.08.
The most expensive month for groceries in Lexington so far this year was March, when the price of our cart spiked to $182.89.
Local shoppers say they’re aware of the pricing trends.
“I’ve seen prices going up a little bit, but I still have to buy the same things,” said Jose Balver, who shops at Kroger each week for his wife and himself.
Scott Winkler shared a similar sentiment, saying even though prices have gone up, he tries his best not to pay attention to the cost of what he needs.
Winkler shops for a four-person household. He said his shopping habits haven’t changed much since things have gotten more expensive, but now he’s more inclined to reach for whatever weekly specials the grocery store offers.
Eggs in particular, have been a tension point for shoppers.
Daisy Aranda shops for groceries at Kroger, but her family has to make a trip to Sam’s Club for eggs because Kroger’s prices are too high for the amount her six-person family needs, she said.
Even when shopping at Kroger for her regular groceries, Aranda has to be mindful of her shopping habits.
“We’re buying Kroger Brand and Great Value Brand because it’s so much cheaper,” she said.
Michelle Suazo, a nursing student at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, said she also opts for store-brand groceries instead of name brand, because it’s more affordable.
She said her family checks for deals and coupons online before grocery shopping, to help curb rising prices.
What affects groceries? Supply and demand.
“If demand picks up, people are wanting to consume more, they start purchasing more of these items. As demand goes up, if supply can’t keep up, then prices tend to go up,” said Mike Clark, an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky.
The other main thing that affects grocery prices is supply chain disruptions.
Clark said that’s what happened after the pandemic when the economy reopened. People had a lot of savings, so they started spending money. That spike in activity disrupted the supply chain, hiking prices up.
How did we track the price of groceries?
We shopped for grocery staples you can find in just about every kitchen — eggs, butter, chicken, for example — and other items many people need each month — such as tampons, baby food and diapers.
We tried to think like a typical shopper, buying some name brand foods, such as Heinz ketchup, and some store brand items, such as butter.
We bought the same product from each grocery store. If one of the chains was sold out of a product we were tracking, we substituted the online price.
For January and February, we shopped at Kroger and Meijer. Lexington’s first Publix opened March 5, so we started shopping there, too.
Each month, the total of our groceries was cheapest at Meijer, costing on average $5.05 less than the most expensive store on our list.
How have grocery prices changed this year?
“Groceries (even eggs!) are down,” Trump said on social media April 15.
But, that’s not entirely true.
Grocery prices have not gotten cheaper since Trump took office. They’ve actually increased a bit in Lexington.
None of the groceries we tracked had any big spikes or drops in pricing. The average price increase for each item in our cart was 4 cents from January to May.
Other key findings:
▪ The highest percent increase of the groceries we looked at was a 34-variety pack of Tampax tampons. The price for that started at $8.94 in January, and was $10.53 in May. That’s a $1.59 increase or a 17.8% change.
The pack of tampons also claimed the title of highest dollar value increase.
▪ Ringing in behind tampons, the product with the second-highest dollar value increase was a 16-ounce pack of Oscar Meyer bacon, which saw a $1.02 increase from January to May.
Did any groceries get cheaper?
▪ Butter got cheaper almost every month we went to the store. It dropped from a price of $4.44 in January, down to $4.14 in February, then $4.10 in March, before settling to $4.07 in April and May.
▪ The highest percent decrease of the groceries we tracked was a 10.75 ounce can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. It started at $1.64 a can in January and cost $1.34 in May. That’s a decrease of 30 cents or 18.5% .
▪ Milk had the highest dollar value decrease, knocking off 98 cents per gallon. It went from $5.74 to $4.76. But that decrease can be partially explained by the addition of Publix to our calculations.
Publix carries only store-brand milk, and charged between $2.29 and $2.49.
That’s noticeably less than Kroger and Meijer’s cost of Prairie Farms milk, which has been between $5.69 and $5.99.
That means the addition of Publix to our calculations dragged the average price of milk down starting in March.
▪ Interestingly, more of the groceries we bought were cheaper by May than in January. Of the 26 products we bought, 17 of those were at least one cent cheaper by May.
So, then, why did the overall price of our cart increase from January to May instead of decreasing?
Because the products that got more expensive did so at a higher rate than the ones that got less expensive.
▪ If you look exclusively at the groceries that got cheaper, they shaved off $4.51 from their starting prices in January.
▪ Looking at the groceries that got more expensive, they added $5.59.
What happened to eggs?
Conversations around inflation the past few months have mostly centered on eggs. Prices shot up in February, with a dozen eggs priced at over $5 in Lexington. In January that same dozen cost $4.39.
That’s a new record and more than double the national low of $2.04 recorded in August 2023, the Associated Press reported, citing consumer price index data.
So, what happened?
“The bird flu, it disrupted production,” said Clark, the UK associate economics professor.
“We had egg producers having to euthanize a lot of their hens, in order to control the spread of the flu. When you have fewer hens, you have fewer eggs, and supply can’t keep up with demand, so that means prices will tend to go up.”
Stores like Costco, Whole Foods and Aldi put purchase limits in place in February due to “supply chain issues” across the country. By March, prices were already falling. The average we recorded in May sits at $3.92 in Lexington.
“None of us like to see our prices go up,” Clark said. “But when prices go up, a lot of times people respond by thinking they’re taking advantage of us.”
“Oftentimes what happens is actually the prices are going because of this disruption between supply and demand. Demand is strong. Supply is not there.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2025 at 10:29 AM.