Brian Laird on WNYC.

Now we're going to talk about something many of you have probably felt in your own kitchens

and definitely your own wallets these last few weeks and months, not to mention years, food just costs more.

And it doesn't always make sense why it costs what it does or why the price seems to swing,

even from one store to the next. So our colleagues at WNYC and Gothamist are reporting on this

from two angles now.

First, their Price of Groceries Project, where they've been tracking everything from beef

to milk to avocados across dozens of stores in all five boroughs.

This is New York City project.

Finding, for instance, that at the same time an avocado was going for $2.69 at a park slope market,

you could get four for a dollar in flushing. And second, as SNAP recipients waited for

delayed benefits during the government shutdown and are still waiting, many neighborhood grocers

saw sales drop by as much as 25%. Also,

a cutback on orders, and they lowered prices just to move food off the shelves, and in some cases

even paid out of pocket to help regulars get enough to eat. The Trump administration was actually

trying to stop them from

doing that, as we talked about on the show previously. So we are joined now by the reporters behind that

work, Karen Yee, who covers homelessness and poverty at WNYC and Gothamist, and Joe Hong, WNYC and

Gothamist investigative data reporter, will talk about what they're finding,

how the cost of groceries get set in New York City,

and what the snap interruption has revealed about the fragility of our food economy.

Karen and Joe, thanks so much for this reporting.

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