Picture a Wellington household doing their usual Saturday shop at New World. Same trolley, same brands, same weekly routine. Four years ago, that household spent about $238 a week on groceries. This year, they're spending $293.

That's not a splurge. That's not lifestyle creep. That's the same food costing 23% more in four years.

The annual figures tell the story even more starkly. Wellington households now spend $15,246 a year on groceries. In 2020, before the inflation storm hit, that number was $12,357. The gap between then and now is $2,889. enough to cover three months of power bills, or a family holiday, or the emergency fund you never quite managed to build.

And the trajectory shows no sign of reversing. The steepest jump came between 2022 and 2023, when annual grocery costs leapt from $13,680 to $15,020. That's $1,340 in a single year. This year added another $226, a smaller increment but still climbing.

Break it down to a weekly view and the creep becomes visible. Between 2020 and 2021, the weekly increase was about $6. Between 2021 and 2022, it was $19. Then came the $26 jump from 2022 to 2023. This year's rise was smaller. $4 a week. but that still means every single week, the same shop costs more than it did the week before last year.

For a renter already paying $600 a week for a two-bedroom flat in Mt Victoria, that extra $55 a week on groceries is the difference between saving and not saving. For a first-home buyer trying to scrape together a deposit, it's $2,860 a year that could have gone into the savings account.

Here's what makes this particularly brutal: wages have risen, but not at this pace. The median wage in Wellington grew about 15% between 2020 and 2024. Food costs grew 23%. The maths doesn't work. Every year, a slightly larger chunk of take-home pay vanishes into the supermarket checkout.

And this is Wellington, a relatively high-income city. If the capital's households are feeling the squeeze this acutely, imagine what it looks like in regions with lower wages and fewer job options.

The 50-year dataset shows we've been here before. food price spikes in the 1970s and 1980s. but the last four years represent one of the fastest sustained increases on record. The question now is whether this becomes the new baseline, or whether 2025 finally sees some relief. For Wellington shoppers facing that $293 weekly bill, the answer can't come soon enough.