I buy almost exclusively store brands. Probably less than 5% of my grocery spending goes to name brands.
If groceries tomorrow cost 10x I would not suddenly be spending 10x my current grocery bill. Luxury purchases like snacks, soda, premade sauces, candy, off-season produce, would be on the chopping block. Anything non-perishable would be bought in bulk during sales and wholesale clubs.
And for people who are already scraping by it would result in a 10x grocery bill which they can now not pay.
There's only so much money you can squeeze from a stone in the long run. Rising prices like this changes consumer behavior but can't make money appear out of nowhere. Since food is one of the easiest ways to belt-tighten rising prices across the board has the risk of reducing the wallet share food producers have.
I mean market finds its way, people can move to small stores and non-branded products if it gets bad enough, but to paraphrase, market irrationality can outlast people's well being.
I'm not in favor of some more regulations which usually only help big players, but corporations power steadily climbs and I expect it to become bigger than those of governments.
New big companies, some decent competition, come from places when there was none. They hardly ever can push themselves into existing markets. They create new ones. But we still need groceries, gas, electricity etc.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/elzqf2/eleven_c...