The Price of Being Out of Touch

I was going through my notes app, just scrolling through the random things I write down, and I came across something about Frito-Lay lowering their prices. Oh right. I remember that.

The company finally realized that selling any of their chips, which for me included the “family size” bag going for over $7, wasn’t sustainable. Which is why in my family, we only bought generic, or name brand if and when it was on sale. I remember reading, I think it was right after Easter, that PepsiCo admitted they were losing money and needed to reduce costs.

Chips. They were losing money on the cost of chips. Let that sit for a second.

Photo by Olga Kozachenko on Unsplash.

Which was entirely their own doing, because back in 2021, on the heels of the pandemic, they raised prices across the board on all of their salty snacks. And then for five years, they just… watched. Watched profits dip, watched people complain, watched consumers quietly adjust their habits. (Pun intended.) And now, five years later, they’re finally responding to feedback.

Really? It took five years?

This is the same timeline where the federal minimum wage hasn’t moved in almost two decades, and somehow the strategy was to charge more for chips and hope people would just absorb it. Smh.

Now they’re talking about lowering prices by 15%, which, okay. That’s something. But it also raises a bigger question. Why did it have to get that bad in the first place?

That’s rhetorical. I already know the answer. Greed. Profit margins. Shareholder expectations. Bigger payouts for people at the top who will never have to think twice about spending $7 on chips.

And it’s not just chips. That’s what really stood out to me.

And just this week, I saw the news about Starbucks testing out a $9 coffee “experience.”

And honestly? I can already see exactly how that’s going to go, even if the CEO can’t.

Full transparency, I used to be a regular at Starbucks. Like, a solid part of my routine for a long time. This was before my own undoing. Before the steady price increases, before the rewards program started feeling like a scam, before the union busting and everything else that made it harder to ignore what was really going on.

At some point, I had to be real with myself. I couldn’t justify paying more and more money for a drink that was inconsistent at best, and a breakfast sandwich that was somehow always unevenly heated. You know the one. Half hot, half still kind of cold in the middle.

And now we’re talking about a $9 “experience”? For what, exactly?

The two minutes of interaction with an already slammed and short staffed barista trying to turn over customers as fast as possible.

That’s the shift that’s happening. It’s not just about the product anymore. It’s about reframing the product so they can justify the price. It’s not coffee, it’s an experience. It’s not chips, it’s premium snacking. It’s not fast food, it’s elevated convenience.

Same product. Different language. Higher price point.

And for a while, that worked. People paid it. Myself included.

But now? How?

The novelty of Starbucks wore off years ago. Most locations feel closer to fast food than anything else, but not in a comforting way. It’s transactional. Stand in line, place your order, wait for your overpriced drink, hear your name get called and somehow still spelled wrong, then either leave or hover awkwardly at a crowded counter.

That’s not an experience. That’s a system.

Meanwhile, I can go to Brick Road Coffee, a local queer-owned coffee shop and third space, and get a $6 cinnamon roll latte that actually feels worth it. The space is bright, welcoming, and engaging. People talk to you. You feel like you’re somewhere, not just passing through a transaction.

That’s an experience.

And that’s the part that makes this whole thing fall apart. You can’t manufacture “experience” through pricing strategy alone. You can’t slap a higher number on the same process and expect people not to notice.

So when I see a CEO push a $9 coffee in a moment like this, it doesn’t read as innovative. It reads as completely out of touch.

Because we’re not just talking about coffee. We’re in a timeline where people are dealing with rising costs across the board, stagnant wages, global instability, and yes, ongoing war that never really paused, no matter what they called it.

And in the middle of all that, one company is saying, “we need to lower prices because people can’t afford our products,” while another is saying, “what if we charged more, but called it elevated?”

That disconnect is loud.

There’s a limit to how far you can push people before they opt out. Before they make coffee at home. Before they skip the chips. Before they look at the price and decide, actually, I’m good.

That’s the part these companies seem to miss until it hits their bottom line.

Consumers don’t just complain for fun. Those complaints are early warning signs. And when they get ignored long enough, they turn into behavior changes.

That’s what we’re seeing now.

Frito-Lay didn’t wake up one day and decide to be generous. They adjusted because they had to. Because people stopped buying the way they used to.

And I have a feeling the same thing is going to happen here.

Photo by fikry anshor on Unsplash.

Because you can call it an “experience” all you want, but at the end of the day, people know what they’re paying for. And more importantly, they know what it’s actually worth to them.

And in this timeline, where everything is getting more expensive except people’s wages, that gap between price and value isn’t just noticeable anymore. It’s a dealbreaker.