NYC grocers brace for price hikes on Oreos, Wheat Thins and more as distributor retreats from city

Prices for name-brand snacks including Oreos, Triscuits, Chips Ahoy and Ritz crackers are poised to spike at supermarkets across New York City as the junk-food conglomerate that makes them shrinks distribution, The Post has learned.

A $5.99 package of Oreos and a $5.99 box of Ritz crackers could rise as much as $1 each by the end of the month, grocery executives said. That’s when Mondelez International — which also makes Clif Bars, Hall’s cough drops and Philadelphia cream cheese — will stop direct deliveries to 1,000 independent grocers across the city.

In a Jan. 10 letter from its in-house counsel obtained by The Post, Mondelez told grocers that it will no longer make deliveries directly to their stores as it “moves to a new operating model.”

Chains that will be affected include Foodtown, Key Food, Bravo and C-Town, according to the National Supermarket Association, which represents the stores. Gristedes stores will also see Mondelez deliveries stop, the company confirmed to The Post.

Bodegas won’t be impacted since they already use independent distributors, as does the Morton Williams chain, industry executives said.

Shoppers who are paying $4.99 for a one-pound package of Chips Ahoy this month will likely pay $5.99 starting in March, while a 12.5-ounce box of Triscuits could go up $1 to $5.99, said Nelson Eusebio, the the National Supermarket Association’s government relations head.

“There is outrage about expensive food and this is going to increase consumers’ costs,” he told The Post. “We have to carry these items in our stores.”

Mondelez has long made daily deliveries to Big Apple grocery stores and is responsible for bringing the products to the shelves and deciding how they are displayed.

The grocers will now have to rely on outside wholesalers who will simply drop off the product — and will be forced to charge more as a result, according to Eusebio. He explained that getting deliveries through middle men instead of straight from Mondelez — along with extra labor costs — will force stores to raise prices.

Mondelez pinned the new policy on lack of parking and accessibility problems, Eusebio said, adding that the company did not mention congestion pricing. Most of the affected stores are in upper Manhattan and in the outer boroughs, outside of the congestion pricing zone.

Some National Supermarket Association members in other states including Florida have also been told that Mondelez will no longer provide delivery services, the trade group told The Post.

The Minnesota-based company did not respond to requests for comment. 

In a Monday letter to politicos including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the supermarket association argued that Mondelez is violating federal fair trade law – specifically the Robinson-Patman Act – by cutting off delivery service to mom-and-pop retailers while continuing to service big chains like ShopRite, Stop & Shop and Wegmans.

The group is asking lawmakers to intervene because Mondelez’s policy “threatens fair competition and would put pressure on grocery costs for New Yorkers,” according to the letter by Anthony Pena, the National Supermarket Association president.

“Independent grocery stores were established to meet needs of communities that larger retailers have historically neglected,” he wrote.

In December, Assembly member Micah Lasher and state Sen. Cordell Cleare introduced the Consumer Grocery Pricing Fairness Act, which would expand enforcement powers for New York Attorney General Letitia James.