It's two big conglomerates battling over money. This doesn't benefit consumers, it benefits the two giants.
If Carrefour gets a good deal by using it's shear scale, it will compete with smaller retailers who can't force a better deal. If it's doing this to Pepsi, imagine what it does to smaller business and farmers etc.
If Pepsi gets their price rise it'll increase its profits.
If they compromise halfway, consumers will ultimately still lose out.
Basically prices will still go up and the supermarket will get a wider profit margin to smooth things over so consumers will still get a brunt of the price increase.
I'm confused about why you guys think this is "funky" or something else is happening. FritoLay/Pepsi hiked prices on certain products, Carrefour wasn't happy about not being able to negotiate a different price point and they decided to hit back by discontinuing those products and very publicly adding PR signs blaming Pepsi for increasing prices to flex their muscle.
This is very unusual, but not that confusing. Inflation being caused by corporations rising prices unnecessarily has been a common narrative, large supermarkets have been blamed for it, especially when it comes to products like fruit and vegetables. Carrefour wants to make sure the manufacturer gets blamed instead of them. It helps that they have a very, very robust set of store brands, too.
What's a Quaker Oats? I guess they dropped it 1958 when they first opened, along with everybody else.
(Kidding, kinda, I have heard the name, but I couldn't tell you what you get inside a box or what you do with it. Eat it, presumably, but I don't know how).
I don't understand what is upsetting in your comment for some.
Some heavily processed foodstuffs are unique to the US and doesn't sell anywhere else, to the point as someone who has lived in a bunch of countries across Europe, I have no idea what a rice-a-roni is either. I imagine every country has its own food types not many other countries sell. I would be surprised if French cuisine stopped at croissants as well.
Maybe people don't like pointing it out that US culture is not the default across the world and people have different cultural lenses with which they view the world?
I don't know, man. I mean, I know about that last part, that is definitely a thing. I don't know if that's it or if the perception here is different or what. I wasn't even trolling, I'm mildly curious about Rice-a-roni now. Just mildly enough not to google it. Maybe the Carrefour versus Pepsi thing reads as a Europe vs the US thing? I hadn't even considered that until just now and it seems hilarious.
For the record, we obviously get a ton of cereal, including very sugary cereal. You can get those pillowy things with nutella inside them, which are less cereal and more a way to pretend you're having breakfast when you're really just inhaling a full box of chocolate cookies.