Everyone knows food got expensive. What they don't know is just how extreme 2024 was for Auckland.

The city's annual food bill hit $15,553 in 2024, up from $15,356 the year before. That $197 jump might not sound catastrophic until you zoom out: it's the biggest single-year increase in the entire fifty-year dataset. (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-regional)

This wasn't a COVID shock. This wasn't a supply chain crisis. This happened last year, when headlines were telling us inflation had peaked and the worst was over.

Here's the trajectory: Auckland households spent $12,647 on food in 2020. Four years later, they're spending $15,553. That's an extra $2,906 a year, or roughly $56 more per week. For context, that's more than most Aucklanders pay for their power bill each month, just gone on keeping the fridge stocked.

What makes 2024 different is the acceleration. From 2020 to 2021, the increase was $374. From 2021 to 2022, it was $1,062. From 2022 to 2023, it was $1,273. You'd expect 2023 to 2024 to ease off. Instead, it stayed high: $197. The crisis didn't end. It just became the new normal.

This is money that can't be spent elsewhere. It's not discretionary. You can't skip groceries the way you can skip a holiday or a new couch. Every extra dollar on milk and bread is a dollar that doesn't go into KiwiSaver, doesn't pay down the mortgage, doesn't cover the car repairs you've been putting off.

And Auckland's not an outlier. The national pattern is the same: food costs have climbed relentlessly since 2020, with no sign of reversing. But Auckland's $197 jump is the starkest reminder that this isn't over.

The Reserve Bank can talk about disinflation all it wants. Aucklanders are still spending nearly $16,000 a year just to eat. That number has never been higher. And based on fifty years of data, it's not coming back down.