7-Eleven Secretly Reduces Size of Super Big Gulp

Very Interesting article from NIA 


7-Eleven Secretly Reduces Size of Super Big Gulp


An NIA member just sent this to us with the suggestion that we do a future documentary on all of the retailers and wholesalers that are secretly reducing the sizes of their products with no warning to the public, while keeping their prices the same.



Apparently, 7-Eleven just reduced the size of their Super Big Gulp drink from 44 oz to 40 oz and the price has remained the same at $1.50. This is food inflation by deception, but it is indeed another form of food inflation. The real cost for a Super Big Gulp at 7-Eleven just rose by 10%, but this will never show up in any government CPI numbers.



Super Big Gulp fan says 7-Eleven duping the public out of 4 ounces

By John Kelso from the Austin American-Statesman



One thing I admire about Austinites is how they’re all over any wrongdoing that comes along, large or small. Or, in this case, super.



Take Paul Sunby, 50, a biologist with an environmental consulting firm who is all over 7-Eleven for “trying to dupe people” over the actual size of its Super Big Gulp fountain drink. Sunby said the convenience store has reduced the size of the drink from 44 to 40 ounces in a sneaky way — or as he put it, “cleverly, quietly, and diabolically.” Meanwhile, he said, the price remains the same: $1.50.



Paul, who is married to one of our business reporters, Lori Hawkins, said he noticed this transgression last summer when the store stopped selling Super Big Gulps for a couple of months, then started up again with a new cup. The old cup used to say Super Big Gulp on it, along with the 44-ounce size. But the new cup, while saying Super Big Gulp, included no size info, Paul said.



“They still say Super Big Gulp, but they no longer had the 44-ounce size printed on them, making people think they’re the same thing,” Paul groused.



Sunby said the new cup just didn’t feel quite as large as the earlier version, so he decided to measure. Was the wool being pulled over the eyes of the big soda-pop-drinking public?



“The first time, unofficially, I just took the new cup and filled it with water up to the top, and poured it into a legitimate 44-ounce cup from Exxon Tigermarket, and noticed that it didn’t fill it up all the way,” Paul said. “It was a quarter-cup short. So then I actually filled it back up and poured it into a measuring cup to get the full measurement, and determined it is a 40-ounce cup.”



Sunby said he wouldn’t be upset if it just said “40 ounces” on the side of the new Super Big Gulp. “They still called it a Super Big Gulp, when in fact it’s no longer,” he said. “It’s somewhere between a Big Gulp and a Super Big Gulp. It’s a Not So Big Gulp. To me, the Super Big Gulp is deceased.”



Sunby thinks this is important because, as he wrote in his e-mail, the term Big Gulp “seems to have a place in the fabric of some segments of society.”



“The Super Big Gulp is an American institution, in my mind,” he said. “How many truckers have made it across I-10 because of the Super Big Gulp?”



I called up 7-Eleven corporate to try to get to the bottom of this. I spoke to a woman named Keisha, who said she couldn’t give me her last name. I asked her if 7-Eleven had changed the size of the Super Big Gulp without informing the public. She looked it up, then said, “It says it has been changed to 40 ounces, this information I have in my system.”



So I asked her if 7-Eleven had made a public announcement about the change.



“We don’t have announcements; we just have information, so I’m not sure if we ran an announcement or not,” she said. Then she gave me case No. 1101030132. If I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.


ALSO-
Watch your bacon sizes as well, they are no longer 1lb packages most have gone down to 12 ounces.  Dont be surprised if the size of your bread loaves goes down as well.  In the last three weeks my husband said that the price of bacon went up $3.  And that's on the sale price...I think I need to start canning meat...:)

Talk to ya later!

Denise