Are grocery stores gearing up for a fight?

An interesting article appeared in Business Week recently - click here to have a read.

In the article, grocery retailers talk about fighting back against high food prices. They feel that prices forced upon them from companies like Kraft have not fallen as they should. They are tired of being on the front line of complaints.

The chart is from the article.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

A year ago, when the cost of commodities such as wheat, oil, and corn was soaring, grocers grudgingly accepted price increases from Kellogg, General Mills, H.J. Heinz, and other food manufacturers. The strange thing is, those price tags never came back down, even when commodity prices collapsed in the fourth quarter of 2008. As a result, grocers have little cheer to offer their shoppers at a time of deepening economic gloom. "The prices don't seem to go down as fast as they go up," says Jeffrey Noddle, CEO of Minneapolis-based Supervalu, one of the nation's leading grocers.

Now, the grocers are demanding action. On Jan. 7, Noddle told analysts to expect a "battleground" over the next six months as he pressures manufacturers to adjust their prices. And if they refuse? "In almost every category," notes Noddle, "you have other vendors to look to."