{"id":818438,"date":"2026-07-22T11:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818438\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T11:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:04:14","slug":"chicken-thighs-are-how-much-heres-whats-driving-the-latest-grocery-sticker-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818438\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicken thighs are how much? Here’s what’s driving the latest grocery sticker shock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n

Guess what? Grocery rut. Guess why? Chicken thigh.<\/p>\n

Canada’s inflation rate<\/a> might have eased last month, but your grocery bill likely hasn’t. Statistics Canada’s newest consumer price index (CPI) numbers<\/a> show overall inflation\u00a0eased to 2.8 per cent in June as gas prices decelerated, but prices for some grocery items still went up.<\/p>\n

The worst month-over-month offender was\u00a0chicken thighs. Prices for fresh or frozen thighs jumped 8.2 per cent from May to June, according to the CPI \u2014 far above the monthly increases for the usual offenders like beef and coffee \u2014 while year on year, prices jumped 13.6 per cent compared to last June.<\/p>\n

At the same time, prices for other grocery items that had been giving Canadians sticker shock of late \u2014 like cucumbers<\/a>, tomatoes<\/a>, and grapes \u2014 all dropped from May to June. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a club pack of nine boneless, skinless chicken thighs cost $22.18, or $20.92 per kilogram, at a Loblaws in Toronto<\/a>, according to its website. <\/p>\n

A Walmart in North Vancouver was selling a value pack of Lillydale boneless, skinless chicken thighs for $22.48, or $18 per kilogram. And a pack of Our Compliments boneless, skinless chicken thighs was going for $20.92 per kilogram at a Halifax Sobeys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shoppers ‘trading down’ on protein, prof says<\/p>\n

The price of chicken mostly comes down to demand, explains Michael von Massow, a\u00a0food agriculture professor\u00a0at Ontario’s University of Guelph. <\/p>\n

Proteins in general are getting more expensive, so people are “trading down,” he said. <\/p>\n

Chicken still doesn’t cost as much as beef, and chicken thighs still tend to be less expensive than breasts. <\/p>\n

Any change in demand affects the price because there are only so many chicken thighs to go around, von Massow added, and only two per bird.<\/p>\n

“You can’t snap your fingers and have more chicken.”<\/p>\n

A beef with protein prices<\/p>\n

Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University’s Agri\u2011Food Analytics Lab in Halifax, told CBC News he agrees that expensive beef is pushing consumers toward chicken thighs as a more affordable protein alternative. <\/p>\n

And it’s not just thighs \u2014 nearly every part of the chicken except for breasts is getting more expensive, he added. While breast prices dropped 0.7 per cent from May to June, according to Statistics Canada,<\/a> drumsticks went up 1.8 per cent.<\/p>\n

That said, breasts are still the most expensive part of the chicken, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent retail data<\/a> from May, at an average $14.58 per kilogram. Thighs were an average $13.72 per kilogram, and drumsticks were $7.29 per kilogram in May according to Statistics Canada.<\/p>\n

Beef, by comparison, ranged from $16.07 per kilogram in May for ground beef to $35.30 per kilogram for striploin cuts, according to Statistics Canada.<\/p>\n

“The chicken industry is under tremendous pressure because of the amped demand created by beef prices and people are looking for cheaper proteins at the meat counter,” Charlebois said.<\/p>\n

That said, Charlebois says he was seeing prices were already starting to drop in June. <\/p>\n

WATCH | Temporary lower gas prices bring down inflation:\"\"<\/p>\n

Temporarily lower gas prices bring down inflation<\/p>\n

Gas prices dropped by 10 per cent in June, which helped bring down Canada\u2019s overall inflation rate, but escalating conflict in the Middle East already has fuel costs soaring again in July.Is any protein affordable anymore?<\/p>\n

First beef, now chicken. In the Maritimes, haddock prices have shot up<\/a>. At the same time, demand for milk-based proteins like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt is soaring, and there’s a shortage of whey protein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It may feel like there’s no affordable protein left. But von Massow says chicken supply will eventually adjust to demand. <\/p>\n

There’s also the option of plant-based proteins, he said, but noted you need more time to prepare beans and lentils \u2014 it’s not as easy as throwing a pack of chicken thighs on the grill. And Canadians don’t seem as resilient to changing their diets as they were a few decades ago thanks to a decline in food and cooking skills, von Massow added.<\/p>\n

Plus, people have strong preferences.<\/p>\n

“Beef went up a whole bunch, and people maybe switched to ground beef, but they still stuck with beef,” von Massow said.<\/p>\n

“In fact, we ate more beef last year than we did the year before.”<\/p>\n

WATCH | Beef relief is years away:\"\"<\/p>\n

Relief from soaring beef prices years away, experts warn<\/p>\n

Consumer experts warn relief from soaring Canadian beef prices is still years away as the rising costs of fuel and food slow ranchers’ ability to increase supply, despite adding more cows to their herds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-818438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}