We've all felt the rising cost of groceries over the past couple of years, and depending on where we're situated economically, those higher costs can trigger frustration or downright anxiety.

When we see prices edging up on our favorite products, we might wonder whether the pinch

is happening at the producer level, the companies that make the goods we eat, or whether

supermarkets are responsible for the fact that, say, a $100 trip to the store no longer

fills as much of the cart as it once did. The true story, though, may lie somewhere in between.

From KERA in Dallas, this is think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

Distributors are an easily overlooked but absolutely essential link

in the food supply chain we rely on.

They have a significant effect on how much food makers get paid for their products and

how much food sellers have to charge in order to make a profit. And while distributors do contribute

to how much we all have to pay for what we eat, they themselves operate on razor-thin margins,

and at the moment they are feeling the pressure of prices too. Jesse Newman is a food reporter at the Wall

Street Journal, which published her article, The Mysterious Fees Inflating Your Grocery Bill. Jesse,

welcome to think. Thanks for having me. You start us out by considering the cost of this certain

brand of granola that they sell at Whole Foods, which increased last year, I think, from

$599 to $6.69, which increased last year, I think, from 599 to 669,

which comes out to something like an 11% spike. But the company that makes the stuff says

it's not taking a bigger profit. Why is it charging more?

So like everything, the answer to that is not simple. It is charging more for a variety of reasons,

many of which your listeners, you know, may have heard about already. So, you know, things like

wrong ingredients cost more, you know, fuel and transportation and labor. All of this, all of this

...