Ten Products Shrank This Month, Not the Price. We Checked One Against a Rival That Stayed Full-Size — It's Pricier Per Liter at Every Major Chain We Checked

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-17 · 4 min read

14.7% — How much more, per liter, a shrunk 800ml Tnuva coffee-milk carton costs than a full-size 1-liter rival carton — in the same store, right now, per Superclear's data

On August 16, 2026, Walla! Finance and Maariv published, on the same day and with no apparent coordination, two near-identical reports: a list of basic shelf staples whose manufacturers had recently shrunk — not the price, the amount inside. Both pieces cited almost the same list of products, suggesting they drew on the same underlying source. We checked one of those products against its direct rival in Superclear's live pricing data — and found the smaller carton actually looks cheaper on the shelf, and still costs more for every drop you actually pay for.

What actually got smaller

Per Maariv and Walla, among the products recently shrunk without a matching price cut: cornflakes cereal that dropped from 750g to 686g (an ~8% cut), Elite Turkish coffee that fell from 100g to 85g, Nescafé and Jacobs instant coffee that dropped from 200g to 190-180g, "HaShachar" spread and "Yad Mordechai" honey that fell from a kilo to 900g, Bamba snacks that shrank from 80g to 60g and Bisli from 70g to 55g, dish soap that dropped from 750ml to 650ml — and Tnuva's coffee-milk carton, which fell from a full liter to 800ml.

This isn't a new phenomenon: Ynet previously reported the same pattern with Agis tissues (from 80 to 56 sheets), Nicole garbage bags (from 60 to 45 units) and Yad Mordechai olive oil bottles, which shrank in multiple waves — from 750ml to 500ml and then to 280ml. But this is the first time we've seen two independent outlets repeat essentially the same list on the same day — a sign the current wave is unusually broad.

The law already requires disclosure — it doesn't always happen

Per Ynet, the Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority requires manufacturers to prominently label any material change to a product on its packaging — including a reduced quantity — for six months from the date of the change. On top of that, the Consumer Protection Regulations (Unit Price), 5768-2008, require any store larger than 100 square meters to display, on the shelf tag itself, the price per kilogram, liter or meter — not just the price of the package (Nevo). In other words, the comparison tool is already required by law, on every shelf. The question is how many shoppers actually stop to read it, versus scanning only the total price and the package size they already recognize.

We don't remember weight, we remember how the package looks and what the price on it says. And when the total price stays about the same, or even drops a little, almost nobody stops to check whether they got less inside.

We checked one carton, in live prices, right now

Of the whole list, Tnuva's coffee-milk carton is the one product with a direct rival still sold today at the old, full size — and both products are sold side by side in hundreds of stores, which let us check this directly in Superclear's data instead of relying on a historical price we don't have.

We compared Tnuva's 2%-fat coffee-milk carton (800ml) against a vanilla-flavored coffee-milk carton from Ramat Golan Dairies, which is still sold at a full liter — 25% more liquid, in the exact same product category. Superclear tracks the Tnuva carton in 1,406 stores and the Ramat Golan carton in 749 stores; in 688 stores where both products are sold side by side, we could compare price against price, at the same moment, on the same shelf.

The result: the median shelf price for Tnuva's smaller carton is ₪8.5 — cheaper than the Ramat Golan carton's median of ₪9.2. At first glance, Tnuva looks like the better deal. But per liter, Tnuva's carton comes out more expensive — by a median of 14.7% — and in roughly 95% of the 688 stores we checked, the smaller Tnuva carton cost more per liter than the full-size Ramat Golan one, ranging from about even up to 50.3% more. At the major chains, the gap holds consistently: an average of 23.8% at Shufersal Deal, 20.5% at Carrefour (Yenot Bitan), 14.8% at Rami Levy, and 12.5% at Victory.

In other words: a shopper who picks the cheaper-looking carton on the shelf, without checking the unit-price tag the law already requires next to it, ends up paying more for every sip of coffee with milk.

The bottom line

The two reports published the same day describe a broad wave of package-shrinking without a matching price cut — from breakfast cereal to dish soap. Our check of one product from that list, against a rival that didn't shrink, shows exactly why that's dangerous: the lower sticker price can mislead precisely the shopper who thinks they're buying smart. The small tag showing the price per unit already sits, by law, next to every product in any store larger than 100 square meters. Next time you're standing between two similar cartons at a slightly different price, that's the tag worth a second look — not the smaller carton that looks cheap.

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