$18 for a beer at the 2022 PGA Championship (Tulsa Oklahoma)

[Frank Cox]

220519154556-02-justin-thomas-pga-championship-beer-prices.jpg

That's $18 for one individual can.

It's $16 for a salad.

[Mike Blakesley]

Yeah but those are the jumbo 25 oz cans so it's a bargain!

Seriously though -- looks something like Vegas mini-bar prices. I looked up the price list in our room at CinemaCon....

16 oz bottle of Pepsi - $12

Snickers candy bar (the regular size, not the jumbo) - $8

Smallish bottle of no-name wine - $32

Box of Oreo cookies - $16

etc.

And people still gripe about movie theater prices.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This reminds me of when I ordered two beer in Cannes... I gave the guy behind the bar one 50 euro bill and he said: Merci... I kept waiting for the change, which never came...

The exhibition industry may be known for their high prices at the concessions stand, but it's by far not the worst offender. Compared to the Las Vegas Strip, the Cannes Boulevard, your average Disney theme park and your local golf tournament, the average concession prices at your local cinema almost feel like grocery store pricing.

[Randy Stankey]

Since Michelob (Anheuser-Busch) sponsors the event as the "Official Beer," they should be giving the shit away for free.

Oh? Did I say "shit?" Oops! I shouldn't have said that. I meant to say "piss water."

[Leo Enticknap]

I heard about this in an item about inflation on a talk radio show the other day, but as others have pointed out, it's not the real story. Food and beverage prices at event/entertainment venues have always been very high. The real story is concern that retailers have been holding off passing most of the recent producer price inflation increases along to consumers, especially for food, until now, but in the next few weeks will be forced to do so; apparently Target was the biggest casualty of Wednesday's stock price falls. $18 for a can of beer at a prestige sports event isn't big news, but $10 for a loaf of bread at Stater Bros. will be if it happens.

[Sam Chavez]

Giants Ball Park beer is $16.00 for a large can. Cocktails are $18.00.

[Mike Blakesley]

I heard on the radio yesterday that gas pump makers are beginning to roll out software and equipment updates to add a digit to the price displays on the possibility that gas might hit $10 a gallon. It's already over 6 bucks in California.... still $4.14 here though.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I heard on the radio yesterday that gas pump makers are beginning to roll out software and equipment updates to add a digit to the price displays on the possibility that gas might hit $10 a gallon. It's already over 6 bucks in California.... still $4.14 here though.

I think most gas pumps are using 7 segment displays which puts a hardware limit on the number of digits they can display. If they used a dot matrix graphic display, they could just use a smaller font! Many seem to have dot matrix displays so they can scream ads at me.

I remember when we moved from mechanical displays on gas pumps to electronic. One option retailers had was to sell gas by the liter instead of gallon. That would hold down the number of digits required in the "per unit" display. Another way to deal with the "per unit" display limit is to get rid of the silly pricing of $0.009 . Just make it to the nearest $0.01! I don't recall if gas pumps currently allow the total sale to be in the hundreds of dollars. I have seen some where the limit on a single credit card transaction was something like $50.

I wonder how elastic gasoline price/demand is. As prices go up, how does demand decrease. If demand does not decrease much, prices become quite volatile. They have to increase a lot to reduce demand to match supply. There's an interesting graph at https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/Le...s=WGFUPUS2&f=W showing gasoline deliveries by week. The week of 5/13/2022, deliveries were 9.027 GB (giga barrel). To account for seasonal effects and avoiding the pandemic, we can go back to about the same week in 2019 and see 9.429 GB delivered the week of 5/17/2019. So, deliveries are down about 4%.

Another interesting graph is at https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/Le...s=MCRFPUS1&f=M . It shows US crude oil production over time.

Finally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...oil_production shows crude oil production for the year 2021 by country (there is also a graph showing production over time). Removal of Russian crude from the world market has removed 13% of the supply. I suspect other countries can increase production to cover part of this, but it seems like there would have to be substantial price increases to decrease demand by 13%.

But, I suspect the demand for beer is fairly elastic, and an $18 dollar price will discourage consumption.

Harold

[Jim Cassedy]

I saw this at my local Safeway supermarket this morning.
☞ When did the price of a box of Peanut Brittle hit $21/lb?
Nuts.jpg
-- and I just realized, this isn't even a 1lb box. It's only 10oz.
So, a full US pound of peanut brittle would actually be over $33.50

I'm accustomed to everything costing more here in San Francisco,
& I've had this stuff & it's very good- - but that's pretty pricey!

And while on the same topic, Mike B wrote: " gas pump makers are beginning to
roll out software and equipment updates to add a digit to the price displays on the
possibility that gas might hit $10 a gallon."

- - Last month, I saw a some guys up in one of those bucket-trucks adding extra LED
panels to the big price-per-gallon display sign at the gas station near my house, also,
I assume, for the purpose of needing to display prices over $10/gal in the future.

[Harold Hallikainen]

[

- - Last month, I saw a some guys up in one of those bucket-trucks adding extra LED
panels to the big price-per-gallon display sign at the gas station near my house, also,
I assume, for the purpose of needing to display prices over $10/gal in the future.

They just won't give up that 0.9 cents a gallon to get another digit!

[Bobby Henderson]

The real story is concern that retailers have been holding off passing most of the recent producer price inflation increases along to consumers, especially for food, until now, but in the next few weeks will be forced to do so; apparently Target was the biggest casualty of Wednesday's stock price falls.

Food prices have already been going up A LOT. I couldn't care less how much people at a Tulsa country club are getting price gouged for beer while watching the PGA Tournament live. Chances are those spectators don't have any problems affording $16 for a Michelob Ultra. They're probably paying something like $50 to park. Events like that can get super-douchey really quick.

People not in the upper income classes are really starting to take it in the ass now. Here in Lawton we have one of the lower costs of living nation-wide, but rent prices have been spiking. Food prices are way up. Wages are not keeping up with any of this. Business in discretionary areas, like eating out, is starting to take a hit. At least around here people are starting to cut back on various things. At my sign company our materials prices keep going up and up. We're having to pass along as much of those increases as we can. We're having to add fuel surcharges thanks to diesel prices. But we're not giving out any pay raises for our own people. We've been pretty busy recently. But with our business being advertising related I'm really nervous that business could come to a screeching halt if they economy tanks.

Our local market weathered the housing bubble of the mid 2000's without much problem because we didn't have a lot of speculative activity taking place here. Not this time. Bidding wars for houses are happening even here in freaking Lawton. The cost of a mortgage or rent is not lining up with wage scales here. It is NOT a mathematically sustainable situation. I swear, two different families are living in the house next door to me. There is a growth of people having to share apartments with roommates to spread out housing costs. Or there's the absurd thing of young adults graduating from college and having to move back in with their parents because they can't make enough to get out on their own, at least not without roommates.

I heard on the radio yesterday that gas pump makers are beginning to roll out software and equipment updates to add a digit to the price displays on the possibility that gas might hit $10 a gallon.

Nearly all LED-based fuel price digit displays on gas stations signs are not physically able to add a fourth digit to a fixed 3-digit display via any kind of software update. The digits resemble a squared "8" to define any possible number from 0 thru 9. They have what amounts to "8.88" with a little "9" to the right. There are no spare LEDs to use to squeeze the extra "1" in there to create "10.00" or higher.

Our company mainly sells Daktronics "FueLight" price digit displays for the gas station signs we build. But we'll use Sunshine brand units if the convenience store chain prefers those (Love's is big on using Sunshine units). The only way a convenience store can show off a four digit fuel price on a LED display is if they have a regular "jumbotron" variable message sign that can also display graphics, imagery, etc.

If gasoline prices reach the $10.00 mark any time in the near future it will just create another industry-wide shift in the design of price digit displays. Over 20 years ago the vast majority of fuel price signs had analog digits. But they were designed where the digits couldn't display anything wider than 1.99. When gasoline prices went past the $2.00 per gallon barrier many of those signs had to be modified or replaced.

[Frank Cox]

I just bought a bag of food for my bird this afternoon. $14.95

*boggle*

The last time I bought that (not that long ago) it was $8.95.

[Fraser Falconer]

Hi Everyone,
Seems inflation is out of control in everywhere. Petrol is over $3 per Litre here in New Zealand, this is even after the Government has reduced fuel excise tax by 25 cents per litre. I definitely wouldn't be paying $18 for a can of beer.

Cheers Fraser

[Leo Enticknap]

I couldn't care less how much people at a Tulsa country club are getting price gouged for beer while watching the PGA Tournament live. Chances are those spectators don't have any problems affording $16 for a Michelob Ultra. They're probably paying something like $50 to park. Events like that can get super-douchey really quick.

Amen, Brother (though it's not just ultra swanky country clubs that charge that much for parking: the parking structure for one of the theaters I service in downtown LA relieves you of $43 without validation). Likewise, everyone knows that they're going to be anally raped in Vegas. They don't really care, for one of three reasons. Either they're rich enough not to have to care, a tourist making a once-in-a-lifetime trip (in which context you'll put up with prices you wouldn't in everyday life), or attending a convention and putting everything on their expense report. My hotel bill came to just under $2K from the last Cinemacon, and I can assure you that it didn't include any bottles of Chateau Wanquer '59 (or $16 boxes of Oreos)!

As you and many others have pointed out, it's the numbers at the supermarket and the gas station that are of real significance.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Hi Everyone,
Seems inflation is out of control in everywhere. Petrol is over $3 per Litre here in New Zealand, this is even after the Government has reduced fuel excise tax by 25 cents per litre. I definitely wouldn't be paying $18 for a can of beer.

Fuel prices are all over the place here, between three countries you pay anywhere between EUR 1,70 and EUR 2,60 per litre, depending on what country and how the wind is blowing that particular day... Whenever Putin farts, prices go up or down.

As you and many others have pointed out, it's the numbers at the supermarket and the gas station that are of real significance.

My bank has a pretty smart feature that automatically categorizes stuff you buy. You can also pull some interesting graphs out iof it, pretty neat. But that feature has clearly shown me that I'm paying about 35% more for groceries now than back in November last year. While the app obviously doesn't compare individual ticket items, my buying habit between now and last November hasn't significantly changed, if it has, then that I buy less now than back then, because of the price increase.

Still, I'm wondering how anybody who already had to puzzle to make ends meet back in November will be able to cope with the current situation, especially since I didn't even factor in the dramatic increase in energy cost, which increased even more than those 35%.

Meanwhile, governments all across the board keep on publishing fake inflation numbers, to hide the real pain a lot of people are going through.