Americans rewire their grocery shopping routines while digesting the biggest price jump in 50 years

What’s for dinner? Lately, at Apral Jack’s house, it’s whatever is on sale.

Jack, 50, scouts an app for deals at her local supermarket before she buys groceries. When she reaches the store, she looks in the weekly circular for coupons she might have missed. If shelf prices look too high, she tries to find lower prices someplace else.

“The apples went up here, the ones I eat, so now I’m not going to get them here,” Jack said as she pushed a cart into a Stop & Shop near her home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Couponing, comparison shopping and cutting back on favorite foods are new habits for her and millions of other Americans as they absorb the biggest jump in grocery prices in a half-century. Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures.

With a conflict in the Middle East creating more price pressures, the cost of filling refrigerators, freezers and pantries has made affordability a central issue in the fall midterm elections.

Residents of four urban areas where food inflation has exceeded the national average shared how steadily rising prices are changing the way they shop. They described hunting for discounts, switching to store brands and feeling grateful for food banks. Some are buying less meat and skipping nonessentials like cookies. Others are buying less food overall.

Beef epitomizes out-of-control grocery prices for many Americans. The price of a pound of ground beef reached $6.82 in June, which is 79% more than at the beginning of 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Ada Torres, 60, who lives 45 miles northeast of Houston in Cleveland, Texas, is one of the people no longer buying it. She does the grocery shopping and cooking for the home she shares with her daughter and three grandchildren.

“Prices are sky-high. One hundred dollars’ worth of groceries these days is nothing,” Torres said.

Chicken and cold cuts are the family's main source of animal protein now that fresh meat is a luxury, she said. Her grandchildren, ages 12, 15 and 16, miss eating lasagna with ground beef, beef fajitas and steak with plantain chips.

Torres' daughter is the family’s main provider. Her work for a mobile car-washing service dwindles during the rainy season; the family only can afford one full meal a day, Torres said.

Apral Jack, a care provider and part-time Amazon worker, has fewer mouths to feed now that her three daughters are adults. But she spends more cautiously than she once did.

Instead of shopping at Whole Foods, she builds her weekly menu around discounts and digital coupons.

“Typically, I’ll try to pick the meals based on that. So like chicken fajitas: there was a three-day sale on chicken” Jack said.

Nabisco Ginger Snaps and Nilla Wafers are off her shopping list. Jack won't buy store brand replacements. To her, they don't taste the same.

San Francisco has a reputation as foodie city. Food preoccupies 33-year-old Jack Chang for other reasons. The self-employed barber has three young children and a partner who is unemployed.

"Since I have five mouths I have to feed, basically — and then sometimes my mom, too — it’s a lot on me financially,” Chang said.

Their family is not one that goes out for boba milk teas or artisanal ice cream. They visit a Japanese entertainment center with $1 ice cream cones. Milk is the only organic product they consume.

“I look at my credit card every month and I’m like, ‘Wow, how am I going to pay this?’ So I’m a little behind on bills, honestly,” Chang said.

When their 4-year-old daughter’s preschool has leftover meat or bread, Chang's partner, Tina Chhous, offers to take it. Chhous also receives monthly food assistance through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

“Without that, I don’t know what I would do,” Chang said.

Chang's 77-year-old mother, Lien, receives SNAP aid, too, and visits two food banks each week. She shares the canned food, eggs and produce she gets with the rest of the family.

High grocery bills come with living in Hawaii. The state gets nearly all its food from cargo ships that have traveled thousands of miles, making prices vulnerable to oil market spikes.

Local products also got costlier this year. The cost of shipping goods between the Hawaiian Islands skyrocketed amid rising fuel prices tied to the Iran conflict.

Amanda Tabadero, 28, a pastry chef on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, remembers buying Maui-grown strawberries and blueberries for $7.99 per pound in 2024. Now that they cost $11, she buys berries from California or Mexico at Costco for $5 when she bakes.

Tabadero also doubts she will buy lychee again anytime soon. Kaimana lychee, the variety grown in Hawaii, mostly comes from the Big Island. Tabadero said an iced coffee and a bag of fruit she recently purchased in Honolulu's Chinatown came to $30.

“It makes me sad,” Tabadero said. “I want to use local stuff.”

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and The Lexington Observer in Massachusetts, La Esquina in Texas and Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii. AP Video Journalist Terry Chea contributed from San Francisco.

Pastry chef Amanda Tabadero pours milk into a plastic container while preparing ingredients for maritozzi at Creature Coffeeshop in Kaneʻohe, Hawaii, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (Hikari Mae Hida/Honolulu Civil Beat via AP)

Ada Torres holds tomatoes while shopping for produce, Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Cleveland, Texas, about 45 miles northeast of Houston. (Sandy Guatibonza/La Esquina TX via AP)

Apral Jack orders deli meat at Stop&Shop in Lexington, Mass., Monday, July 6, 2026. (Maggie Scales/The Lexington Observer via AP)

Jack Chang cuts Isaac Obamehinti's hair while holding his 2-year-old son Cairo Miu at his studio on Monday, July 13, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

Lien Chang feeds her 2-year-old grandson Cairo Miu a bowl of rice next to his dad Jack Chang in her home on Monday, July 13, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — France says it will use a massive specially adapted cargo aircraft on Saturday to dump flame retardants on a wildfire that has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, including from some suburbs of the wine region city of Bordeaux.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the hulking A400M aircraft will join what is expected to be a “long and very difficult” battle against the blaze raging in the Gironde region of western France.

That blaze and another wildfire in the Landes region have together forced 197,000 people to evacuate, he said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — Authorities in France evacuated some suburbs of Bordeaux on Saturday as a massive wildfire shifted toward the city famous for its wines. The government mobilized soldiers to join the battle against the flames and rushed in 1.5 million face masks to protect against choking smoke.

The prefect of the Gironde region that includes Bordeaux ordered the evacuation for parts of three of the city’s western suburbs, including its airport. Other towns and villages further west of the city were also ordered to evacuate, adding to the tally of 141,000 people who'd previously already been told to move in the face of two major fires in the southwestern Gironde and Landes regions.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze had become so strong that it was generating its own winds.

“Our priority is clear: protecting human lives,” he posted on X, adding that evacuation orders “must be respected without delay.”

He said firefighting teams were being reinforced Saturday with the addition of hundreds of soldiers and that breathing masks to filter out smoke particles were being rushed to the Gironde region for those exposed to the clouds of potentially noxious fumes.

All told, massive forest fires have forced the evacuation of some 200,000 people in southwestern France and central Spain, including 60,000 forced from their homes west of Madrid and the 141,000 told to move in the Gironde and Landes departments of France.

The virulence of the wildfires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard in both countries. Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so fast and violently that they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through touristic towns on the Atlantic coast.

Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite the scenes of panic as townsfolk fled by car and police went door to door to tell people to leave as large plumes of smoke darkened the skies.

Successive heat waves that hit unusually early and hard this year, baking Europe with record-shattering high temperatures, have turned forests and scrublands into tinderboxes.

Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.

He said more favorable weather Saturday offered “a window of opportunity” for fire crews to bring the blazes under control. Madrid's regional government said the fires decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.

Other European nations were helping. Italy said two of its Canadair water-dumping firefighting planes deployed to Spain. Spain’s Civil Protection Service said it was expecting the arrival Saturday of two others from Greece, to join aircraft from the Netherlands and Portugal already deployed in Spain.

France was expecting two water-bombers from Croatia as well as two other planes from Portugal and two heavy-lift Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the fire closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to “an unprecedented magnitude.”

“The scale of the fire changed," she said. "To combat it, we will receive extremely significant national reinforcements. Reinforcements in firefighters, of course, reinforcements in military personnel, reinforcements in healthcare workers, reinforcements in experts. So, we are going to form a much larger team to face this extraordinary fire.”

People covered by the evacuation orders were being sent special alerts to their mobile phones, giving them instructions to leave.

“We want everyone to be quickly brought to safety. We must act quickly together,” Brocas said.

The Gironde blaze broke out Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, located 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described it Friday as "a large, self-sustaining fire that is extremely difficult to bring under control.”

“It’s quite impressive and even frightening,” said Laurent Moretti, a resident in the town of Arès. “An evacuation on this scale has never happened before. All we really hope is that the firefighters can quickly get it under control.”

Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press journalist Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.

Firefighters wait on a road near Lacanau, southwestern France, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A tree trunk burns in Lanton, in the Lege-Cap-Ferret region, southwestern France, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A view of a burned house and vehicle, in Lanton, in the Lege-Cap-Ferret region, southwestern France, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A resident sits at a bullring serving as a temporary shelter after being evacuated from their homes because of the threat of a wildfire in Valdemorillo, Madrid province, Spain, Saturday, July 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Wildfires advance near Le Proge region, western France, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)

A water bomber drops water while fighting wildfires In Ares, western France, Friday July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)

A firefighter sprays water in a burning forest in the Lège-Cap-Ferret region, western France, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)

A seaplane drops water onto the fire as a wildfire advances near La Adrada, Ávila province, Spain, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Fiirefighters spray water in a burning forest in the Lège-Cap-Ferret region, western France, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Caroline Blumberg)