You’re not imagining things—your grocery bill has gone up. A new study analyzing 2025 grocery prices found that Tampa Bay had the second-highest increase in the country when compared to last year.
To conduct the study, SmartAsset, a financial technology company, looked at price changes on specific goods using metrics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Researchers noted that prices of fruits, vegetables and dairy products either increased or decreased depending on the location, but eggs, meat and poultry soared almost unanimously. In fact, the prices of these three categories tripled the general rate of inflation, reaching over 9% or higher than just a year prior.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area saw a 4.3% increase in groceries when compared to March 2024, ranking second on the list behind Hawaii. When it came to specifics, eggs, meats, poultry and fish rose by a whopping 7.8%…