After Denver grocery store workers union members discovered what they believed to be over-charging and inaccurate pricing at Colorado grocery stores, Consumer Reports worked with the Guardian and the Food & Environment Reporting Network to prove that Colorado Kroger workers were correct.
According to Consumer Reports, King Soopers stores across the nation regularly charge customers more than the listed price tag, with an average overcharge of 18.4 percent on mismarked items.
Independently, United Food & Commercial Workers Local 7 — the Colorado grocery store union — surveyed dozens of King Soopers and City Market stores across the state. The union found misleading price tags leading to the over-charging of consumers in every single store surveyed.
“The scale of this problem has led to King Soopers and City Market potentially taking millions of dollars each year from Colorado consumers through false pricing,” UFCW Local 7 said in an announcement of its findings.
UFCW Local 7 and Kroger have been negotiating a new union contract for the estimated 12,000 King Soopers and City Market workers at Colorado’s over 150 Kroger-owned stores. The negotiations haven’t gone well, leading to an eleven-day strike by workers in February. A key contention for workers has been understaffing in stores. According to the union, that understaffing is what is costing customers at the register.
“Chronic understaffing in grocery stores prevents the company from making sure the prices on the shelves match the price a customer is paying at the register,” union president Kim Cordova says. “When Kroger dictates that workers’ hours be cut in these stores, it is customers who pay the price.”
According to Joy Alexander, a King Soopers worker in Denver, workers have to hang thousands of new or updated price tags in the store each week but aren’t given enough time, leading to inaccurate and outdated prices advertised throughout stores.
“Because so few hours are scheduled to hang these tags, the work of hanging each week’s tags almost never gets done before the next week’s tags arrive,” Alexander says.
In the Consumer Reports fourteen-state study, which also included Washington, D.C., shoppers found problems with items ranging from Cheerios and tortillas to Mucinex cold medicine and dog food. Shoppers sent to 26 King Soopers stores found over 150 affected items, and one-third of expired sales tags were out of date by at least ten days.
As a result, people paid an average of $1.70 more per item than was listed on those erroneous tags.
“Our findings suggest the typical Kroger shopper ends up paying far more for what they think are discounted items — all during a time of inflation and economic uncertainty,” Consumer Reports concluded.
Kroger told Consumer Reports that the idea that the company has widespread pricing issues is inaccurate. But Consumer Reports also found that Kroger executives have known about the pricing issues for some time. In Colorado, King Soopers failed two price check tests by state regulators this year, Consumer Reports found.
The topic has also allegedly come up in union negotiation meetings in Colorado, according to Consumer Reports.
King Soopers has significantly cut the workforce in stores across the nation since 2019. In Colorado, government data shows the total number of hours worked dropped by 18.3 percent from 2019 to 2023, the UFCW says. Consumer Reports found that the stores with the most significant pricing errors had lost 10.3 percent of their workforce on average between 2019 and 2024.@MyKingSoopers and @MyCityMarket associates are tired of having to apologize for the lack of price integrity at the check stand, long lines, empty shelves, and understaffed departments.
— UFCW Local 7 (@UFCW_7) May 14, 2025
King Soopers, better staffing means better stores!
Though King Soopers has a “Make it Right” policy that calls for the company to fix the problem if a customer points out a price discrepancy, that system relies on customers knowing the right price for each item and catching issues themselves.
“It is time for government regulators to hold King Soopers and City Market accountable for deceiving their customers,” Cordova says. “These employers have the opportunity to address the underlying staffing crisis at the bargaining table and fix this issue for both workers and consumers.”
UFCW Local 7 has shared the findings with government officials in Colorado, including state Attorney General Phil Weiser. King Soopers did not reply to a request for comment.
