Grocery store charging for meat by the piece, not the pound?

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by PuppiesandKittens

I'm confused here:

My local grocery store (a national chain) had steak with a price reading, "$11.99". Kind of steep, but good-quality, so I got 2 small pieces of steak, less than a pound total.

The cashier rang up 2 pieces for $23.98. I told her that it should be less than $11.99, and she insisted that $11.99 was per piece, not per pound. The manager backed her up and said "that's how we do things."

So a large piece of steak is $11.99 and a small piece of steak is $11.99.

What in the world--is that a new thing for grocery stores these days? The chain has closed a bunch of stores lately-- no wonder.

If they wanted to charge over $24/lb for anything except Wagyu, I would have handed the packages back.

Per unit pricing is something I accept if there has been labor involved in the creation of a unitary product, or on items pre-weighed to similar weights, or on vegetables. This policy seems like a violation of common state consumer protection laws even if it does not fail the "misbranding" federal guidelines.

9 C.F.R. § 317.2(9)i seems to state that the actual weight must be on the individual package for the consumer to compare, but unit pricing is left silent.

[boxus]

Yes, seen it often, usually it is some independent meat company with their product in the store. If I recall correctly, I saw that they do have a price per pound somewhere on there, but I guess all the meats are the same weight, so they just make it a unit price when selling it.