United States | News & Politics

It means people are less able to afford the current price of food and the food that they are buying is either cheap to produce or cheap to purchase (or both, I suppose), so the overall actual profit for grocery stores and food producers is less than the expected profit.

In essence, they're upset consumers aren't choosing to spend money they don't have on junk they don't need. Also worth discussion are the questions of whether or not they're hedging their bets that this isn't a long-term downward trend and what they will do if it doesn't reverse course.