Why Am I Paying $60 for That Bag of Rice on Amazon.com? – The Markup

After hovering at around $10 consistently, the price of a five-pound bag of Nishiki medium grain rice shot up to $30 on Amazon.com in March and hit a peak of $59.99 at 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, according to the Amazon price tracker Keepa. As of Friday, April 24, the bag of rice was priced at around $20. Prices on Amazon have been volatile since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. By the end of March, Keepa's data revealed, an eight-pack of Barilla spaghetti, whose price normally hovers around $10, shot up to $49.25. The cost of an eight-pack of Skippy Superchunk Peanut Butter nearly quadrupled, from $12.52 to $45. COVID-19 has made the public more aware of price fluctuations on basics like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and dried goods, as demand for those products surged beyond expectations.