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Did the weather ever get cold out recently! What a switch and so quickly too.

No, we are not in the "freezing zone" yet. However, temperature has dropped significantly from the hot weather this summer. It just feels cold out now compared with what we experienced for so many days in the summer.

Interestingly, the weather really dropped right at the beginning of Fall. Honestly, I think that this is Mother Nature having fun with us. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before we start feeling below freezing temperatures. Heck, who wants to see snow falling soon? Not me for sure!

I don't know if you will remember last year but autumn seemed to last for a very long time then. My biggest memory was the leaves taking forever to fall off of the trees last year. They just seemed to stay on much longer than I can ever remember. It will be interesting to see if that happens again this year or not.

I thought that I read somewhere, but cannot find it now, that temperatures were supposed to be getting much warmer in the summer over the next four years. If that is true, that might explain why the leaves will not fall down as early as I have always expected.

It doesn't matter though. There's nothing that any of us can do about it anyway.

However, what I can do is write about something that interested me and which I hope you will enjoy as well. It told me a lot about how some people carry on business

WILL GROCERY PRICES INCREASE NEXT YEAR

Of course they will! In my opinion, they will rise dramatically higher amongst all of the major grocery company store chains since you will not see companies competing all that strongly against each other, on prices anyway.

I have noticed that a lot of the prices seemed to increase this year. Oh, don't ask me which prices I am talking about. I don't have any specific information on that because I have not done any work to try to figure out which prices I mean. 

It just feels that way to me because I have been commenting often to members of my family rather negatively about the higher prices I see in the stores for products we like and which we buy. Moreover, when looking at the advertisement materials put out by the stores, it seems to me that the prices set out are not so many "sales" prices for which I would hope to see but rather are the usual prices for that particular product.

To be direct about it, it just bothered me for so long. However, there may well be an explanation of what has happened this year and what is absolutely going to happen next year. To our detriment unfortunately I believe.

This is my point of view: the grocery chains need cash and may not compete by lowering prices on a lot of their products to get more sales. All that will happen to the price of the product dropped by one chain, if that happens, is that the other chains will drop their prices as well. So what is the point! They will all receive less cash with probably no increase in market share.

Now you might wonder how I can say that. It's easy. Take a look at this article that I just saw recently:

“The CEOs of three of Canada's major grocery chains doubled down on their expectation that food prices will soon rise at their stores.” (Aleksandra Sagan, Canadian Press, Sept 18, 2018)

Honestly, you must read this article. You have the Heads of three of the major grocery chains talking together in public in a meeting. They are telling you what you probably can experience over the next significant time-period.

I cannot believe some of the things they say about price increases:

"Metro CEO Eric La Fleche said consumers should eventually see a return to more normal inflation levels…

The company, which is the parent to grocery chain Sobeys Inc., held off on raising prices for some time, he said, but is now reviewing these tariff-related costs.

Empire will pass the extra costs on to consumers where it makes sense in the market, he said, adding it will be careful not to give away any market share…

Loblaw CEO Galen Weston...predicted food inflation of one- to 1.5-per cent, which he said is in the normal range as opposed to higher range in the five to six per cent level.”

Come on, aren't they telling you how they expect to price in the future? And, just as importantly, aren’t they telling their competitors what they're going to do so everyone knows!

Then, they talked about their delivery service. It is something now that is a new competitive tool for these three companies:

“The chief executives also outlined their respective plans to grow their e-commerce business, specifically home delivery. Canada's grocers have been slow to offer delivery, but ramped up their efforts after Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market last year."

There they are in public telling everyone what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. 

All of this is very interesting to me