A family in Tauranga walks out of the supermarket with $297 worth of groceries. That's not a special occasion shop. That's not Christmas or a birthday. That's just a regular week in 2024.

The latest regional food price data shows households across the Rest of North Island. everywhere from Northland down to Taranaki, excluding Auckland and Wellington. spent an average of $15,443 on food last year (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-regional). Divide that by 52 weeks and you get $297. Every single week. For the entire year.

This is the same week RNZ reported households are freezing spending because power bills, insurance, and rates keep climbing. But groceries? You can't freeze those. You still need to eat.

Five years ago, in 2020, that same household was spending $12,615 on food. That's $2,828 more now, for the same weekly shop, the same basics. In percentage terms, it's a 22% jump. But percentages don't capture what that feels like when you're standing at the checkout watching the total climb past $250, then $280, then $300.

The trajectory is what matters here. The bill climbed steadily: $12,926 in 2021, $13,992 in 2022, peaked at $15,362 in 2023, then held almost flat at $15,443 in 2024. That plateau isn't relief. It's exhaustion. Prices stopped accelerating, but they never came back down.

This isn't an Auckland story or a Wellington story. This is Whangārei, Hamilton, Rotorua, Napier, New Plymouth. Places where median household incomes are lower than the main centres, but the grocery bill keeps pace regardless. A Hastings household pays nearly the same for milk, bread, and vegetables as a Grey Lynn household, but takes home thousands less in annual income.

And here's the part nobody talks about: this is just food. The $15,443 doesn't include power bills that jumped 23% in some regions last year. It doesn't include insurance premiums that doubled. It doesn't include the rates increases that hit every council from Kaipara to South Taranaki. Food is the one cost you can track weekly, the one that shows up every time you go to the supermarket, and it alone has consumed an extra $2,828 of household income since 2020.

When politicians talk about cost-of-living pressures, this is the number they mean. Not an index. Not a percentage. $297 a week, every week, just to keep the fridge stocked. For a family in Tauranga or Palmerston North or Whanganui, that's the new normal. And it's not changing anytime soon.