Hi, everyone. We're back with Phil Lempert. He is the supermarket guru. And Phil, it's great to have you back on the show.

Thanks, Jen. It's great to be here. It was so much fun to talk to you last year. It was our first conversation, but it was a memorable one.

And I hate to take you back to April, which seems like a million years ago.

But we were talking about tariffs then. And we have a whole host of different things to talk

about now. And I'm excited to have you back to work through it because our audience has so

many questions about grocery prices and everything that's going on. But just to take a quick

pause, I just love the backstory to your name,

Supermarket Guru. Can you tell us once again how you got the name? Because you are the supermarket

guru. It's legal. Thanks. In fact, I didn't come up with it. It was actually Peter Jennings.

First time that I was on World News tonight, he had interviewed me afterwards. He said, oh,

you're a supermarket guru.

So I left. Next morning, I called my attorney. I said, you think we could trademark supermarket guru.com or supermarket guru? He said, well, let's give it a try. And some 40 years

later, here we are. And so that's it. So he really is, you guys, the supermarket guru. I just want to underscore that. It's not just a nickname, all right? It's something serious. And this is something you do take serious, taking a look at what's going on with the grocery business all over the country, really all over the world. And that's why I wanted to touch base again.

So let me just tell you a quick story. This is part of the reason we're talking. I hate to confess this, but I went to the store the other day, the grocery store, and I just was running in for a few items. You know, I was able to go through self-checkout. It was just, I just had a little basket. And when I saw the bill, I was just blown away.

I also was slightly

irresponsible in that I threw a few things for Valentine's Day into that basket for my, for my kids. But if you don't get them, they're gone. So I had to do it. But anyways, it was $200, Phil. I left the grocery store walking to the car. I don't know how many people have the same experience, you're walking to the car thinking,

how did I spend all them? What did I just spend money on? And it's not, it just seemed to just,

this is what happens at the grocery store. The prices just seem so high. So, are prices really so high, Phil? Have they gone up year over year? What is it like out there?

Prices have gone up since the pandemic, now about 30, close to 30 percent. But there's certain

areas. So, for example, if you bought your kids chocolate for Valentine's Day, some of those

chocolates are now double the price of what they were. Now, keep in mind, we've got a lot of factors.

We've got tariffs. We've got climate change. We have sources of supply. We've got all this stuff

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