Quick answer
Grocery inflation has slowed from its post-pandemic peaks, but food still costs far more than it did before 2020. In Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore, new data show the pressure is reaching well beyond the checkout line.
The story
For families in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk and across Coastal Virginia, the grocery bill does not move as one number. Beef can get more expensive while eggs get cheaper. Produce can rise while dairy holds relatively steady. A household can see inflation slow without seeing its grocery bill return to what it was several years ago.
That distinction helps explain why groceries continue to register as a major affordability concern even after the worst period of food inflation has passed.
In September 2025, a Navigator Research survey of 1,500 likely 2026 voters across 61 competitive congressional districts, including Virginia's 2nd District, found that 87% placed groceries among the three expenses that mattered most to their personal budgets. Sixty-nine percent said tariffs had already increased costs they paid, 54% identified groceries as the expense that had increased most because of tariffs, and 50% believed the worst tariff-related increases were still ahead. In another question allowing respondents to choose several expenses, 62% selected groceries among the three areas where tariffs had increased prices most. [1]
Those numbers require two important qualifications. The survey was conducted Sept. 18-21, 2025. It measures what voters believed they were experiencing then, not grocery prices in October 2026. And although VA-02 was included in the 61-district universe, Navigator did not publish a statistically independent result for Virginia's 2nd Congressional District.
A year later, however, federal price data and new Virginia hunger research show that the broader concern about food affordability has not disappeared.
Grocery inflation has slowed. Grocery prices have not gone back down.
The latest complete federal Consumer Price Index data available as of early October cover August 2026. Nationally, food purchased for home consumption was 2.2% more expensive in August 2026 than in August 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall food prices were up 2.7%. [2]
That is considerably slower inflation than households experienced earlier in the decade. But slower inflation means prices are increasing more slowly. It does not mean the previous increases have been reversed.
The Federal Reserve reported in July that food prices were almost 30% higher than before the pandemic. The Fed noted that this increase was far above what would have occurred if food prices had continued rising at their average pace during the decade before the pandemic.
There is another limitation to localizing the numbers: BLS does not publish a dedicated grocery-price index for Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads or Virginia's 2nd Congressional District comparable to the national food-at-home CPI. It would therefore be inappropriate to claim that groceries in VA-02 rose exactly 2.2%.
The grocery aisle is not moving uniformly.
USDA's September 2026 Food Price Outlook forecasts overall food-at-home prices to rise about 2.4% during 2026, but some categories are moving much faster. Beef and veal prices are forecast to rise 9.4% this year, largely because cattle supplies and beef production remain tight. Fresh vegetable prices are forecast to increase 5.7%, while sugar and sweets are projected to rise 6.6%. [3]
BLS data showed retail coffee prices 6.1% higher in August than a year earlier. Bread prices were up 3.8%. Fruits and vegetables as a category were up 3.2%. Dairy and related products were 0.3% cheaper than a year earlier. Egg prices were 23% below their August 2025 level, although they rose 3.5% between July and August alone.
Are tariffs responsible?
Partly, according to economic research. But they do not explain the entire grocery bill.
In its July 2026 Monetary Policy Report to Congress, the Federal Reserve said food inflation had accelerated earlier in the year and identified higher tariffs and rising agricultural and livestock commodity prices as contributing factors. The Fed also cautioned that tariff effects cannot be directly isolated in official consumer-price statistics because prices depend on how importers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers respond.
Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York examining the 2025 tariffs estimated that about 26% of tariff increases passed through to consumer prices. Researchers found both direct effects on imported products and indirect effects when tariffs raised input costs or reduced competition from imported goods. Some indirect effects took nine to 12 months to work through supply chains.
By mid-2026, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that tariff-driven inflation appeared to be stabilizing. Their model suggested other forces had become more important contributors to inflation above the Federal Reserve's target beginning in spring 2026.
Food prices have their own additional pressures. Beef prices have been affected by tight cattle supplies. Egg prices have been heavily influenced by avian influenza. Weather affects produce. Coffee depends heavily on overseas growing conditions and international trade. Transportation and energy costs flow through food production and distribution, while labor, packaging, fertilizer and agricultural commodity prices can affect what retailers ultimately charge.
Energy is particularly relevant now. In August, the national CPI for energy was 16.3% above a year earlier, while gasoline was up 27.4%. Higher fuel costs can affect farming, processing, refrigeration and transportation, although the amount ultimately passed through to a specific grocery item varies.
Hampton Roads is showing a different measure of the problem.
In September, the Federation of Virginia Food Banks released the first Virginia Hunger Study, based on interviews with more than 5,600 Virginians and conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago with support from Virginia Tech. [6]
The survey found that 42% of Virginia households experienced food insecurity at some point between May 2025 and May 2026. Among households with children, the rate was 51%.
For Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore, the reported rate was 43%. WHRO reported that the Virginia Peninsula rate reached 50%. [7]
Those figures are substantially higher than older estimates derived from other surveys, and the methodology matters. The Virginia study was designed specifically to measure food insecurity in the state and used USDA's standard household food-security questions. Differences in sampling and screening mean its results should not simply be treated as a continuation of previous federal estimates.
Chris Tan, president and CEO of the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore, told WHRO that food-bank lines were running 30% to 40% longer than ever before, with more transactions than even four years earlier. He described an increasing number of working families forced to choose among groceries, rent, medication and unexpected expenses.
The Eastern Shore provides an especially visible example. The Foodbank's Tasley operation serves about 3,500 people, or roughly 1,100 households, each month. The facility distributed nearly 1.5 million pounds of food in Accomack County during the previous fiscal year, and officials said its existing capacity could no longer keep up with rising demand.
SNAP is changing at the same time.
Congress changed SNAP substantially through the 2025 budget reconciliation law, Public Law 119-21. Among other provisions, the law expanded the population subject to work requirements, restricted states' ability to waive those requirements in some areas and changed how SNAP is financed and administered. [8]
Virginia now generally requires adults through age 64 who do not qualify for an exemption to meet the applicable work requirement. The dependent-child exemption was narrowed so that having a child age 14 or older no longer automatically provides the previous exemption. Separate exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and some former foster youth also ended effective Nov. 1, 2025.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the SNAP provisions in the 2025 reconciliation law will reduce federal deficits by $187 billion from 2025 through 2034 compared with its previous baseline. CBO expects the expanded work requirements, tighter waiver rules and other eligibility changes to reduce the number of people receiving SNAP. [9]
Virginia's 2nd District representative, Republican Jen Kiggans, voted for final passage of H.R. 1 on July 3, 2025. The House approved the measure 218-214, and President Donald Trump signed it the following day. Kiggans said at the time that she viewed the overall package as providing tax relief and other benefits to working families while strengthening work requirements and addressing waste in federal programs. [10]
The vote establishes Kiggans' support for the overall legislation. It does not mean every projected SNAP outcome can be attributed to a single member of Congress, nor was SNAP voted on separately in the final House vote.
What the 2025 poll got right, and what it could not tell us
Navigator's battleground survey captured something that subsequent evidence supports: groceries remained unusually visible in household budgets. But polling cannot establish why a carton of eggs, pound of beef or bag of vegetables costs what it does.
The evidence available a year later shows several things simultaneously. Grocery inflation has moderated. Prices remain substantially above their pre-pandemic level. Some major staples, particularly beef, vegetables, sweets and coffee, have experienced above-average increases. Tariffs contributed to inflation but operated alongside commodity constraints, disease, energy costs, weather and supply-chain pressures.
And in Coastal Virginia, the strongest local evidence may not be a price index at all. It is the number of households reporting uncertainty about food, the length of food-bank lines and the expansion of hunger-relief infrastructure from Virginia Beach to the Eastern Shore.
What to watch next
Beef supplies remain important because USDA expects production to stay below year-earlier levels through the end of 2026. Energy and transportation costs bear watching after the sharp increase in fuel prices this year. International commodity prices could add pressure if recent increases persist.
Federal and state implementation of the new SNAP rules will also provide increasingly useful evidence. Participation data can show how enrollment changes, while food banks may provide another measure of whether households losing or foregoing benefits turn to charitable food systems instead.
The central affordability question is therefore no longer whether grocery inflation has slowed. It has. The question for Coastal Virginia households is whether incomes and assistance are keeping pace with a grocery basket that remains much more expensive than it was before the pandemic.
Sources
- Navigator Research — navigatorresearch.org. Navigator Research
- BLS August 2026 CPI — bls.gov. BLS August 2026 CPI
- USDA Food Price Outlook — ers.usda.gov. USDA Food Price Outlook
- Federal Reserve July 2026 Monetary Policy Report — federalreserve.gov. Federal Reserve July 2026 Monetary Policy Report
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York tariff research — newyorkfed.org. Federal Reserve Bank of New York tariff research
- Federation of Virginia Food Banks — vafoodbanks.org. Federation of Virginia Food Banks
- WHRO Hampton Roads hunger reporting — whro.org. WHRO Hampton Roads hunger reporting
- Virginia DSS SNAP requirements — dss.virginia.gov. Virginia DSS SNAP requirements
- CBO — enacted Public Law 119-21 budget estimate (see linked spreadsheet) — cbo.gov. Estimates about $186.7 billion less nutrition spending over fiscal 2025–2034.
- House Clerk vote — clerk.house.gov. House Clerk vote