Is our treasured Vogel’s the latest victim of shrinkflation, or are we all just losing our minds? Alex Casey investigates. 

Being a journalist is weird because sometimes total strangers contact you out of nowhere with the most shattering, complex stories that take months to unravel. Other times, the love of your life texts you at 6.36am on a Friday saying “sponoff [sic] pitch: I think Vogel’s sandwich slice has gotten thicker” and the next thing you know you are in the bread aisle at Fresh Choice surreptitiously counting slices and hoping nobody will citizen’s arrest you for behaving like a freak. 

Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to Vogel’s, but we have always been a Vogel’s sandwich slice house due to its versatility over the thicker toast option and the positively waifish “very thin” variety. “The sandwich slice makes better toast than the toast slice makes sandwiches,” my husband explained to me, eyes shining and mathematical symbols flying around his head like Bradley Cooper in Limitless. “It also saves money because you get more slices per bag.” 

But sometime “a few shops ago” his suspicions became raised. “It just feels a lot thicker than it used to… maybe so we eat it faster and we buy more.” 

The difficult thing about proving a claim like this is that our voracious appetite for Vogel’s means it never lingers around long enough for any longitudinal data gathering to take place. Multiple times I have pitched to The Spinoff that we need start periodically purchasing supermarket staples and storing them in a temperature-controlled room to monitor for size fluctuations, only to be told we have “no money” and “this is a performance review, please stop yelling”. 

Of course, I emailed Vogel’s, but knew it would take a while for their PR crisis department to handle this explosive claim. As a brave and tireless truth-seeker, my next port of call was to bravely and tirelessly contact my colleague Robbie Nicol. Not only does he stay on top of crucial local news for Now You Know, he also happens to be the star of the current Vogel’s neighbours-themed ad. Who better to weigh in on this bread-based scandal of national significance? 

“No comment” he said. “You’re probably eating it faster because it’s so delicious.”

Determined not to extend myself beyond The Spinoff family, I contacted our former commercial manager Fraser McGregor, who starred in Vogel’s’ iconic “New Zealanders overseas” campaign in the 2000s. Since then, he’s been a devout Vogel’s buyer. “I’m a sandwich guy, 100%,” he said over the phone from Rarotonga (rollovers must be nice). “Occasionally I will buy the ultra thin slice, great for butter and Marmite, but I’lll never buy the thick – I’ll never buy the thick.” 

So as someone so vehemently opposed to thickness, had he noticed a change in the sandwich slice? “I’m really sorry, I cannot lie,” he said gently. “Hand on heart, I haven’t noticed.” 

Nevertheless, she persisted. I reached out to a bunch of community Facebook pages and pleaded for anyone, anywhere, to come forward who might have an old frozen baggie of Vogel’s sandwich slice in the freezer for comparison. I didn’t get any bites, but what I did find was dozens of New Zealanders across the country who had also noticed unusual changes in their Vogel’s slice thickness, and held similar fears that it was a way of getting them to buy more over time. 

Speaking under the guise of anonymity, sandwich slice enthusiast Alison* shared her concerns. “The ratio is usually perfect, and it just goes further. More slices means more sandwiches and toast,” she explained. “Texture and ratio is so important to me, so a few weeks back I definitely noticed the bread ratio on my sandwich slice was different.” How was it different? “There just seemed to be more bread to my usual amount of toppings.” 

It was a compelling testimony, but was it even feasible that Vogel’s could suddenly thicken their slices like this? I rang a local baker to ask how Big Bread would execute this kind of thickflation maneouvre. “Look, if a bread company was going to do something like this, that’s how they would do it – they would increase the slice size,” he said. “They’re not going to make a slightly smaller loaf because that’s its own version of hell, but changing the slice blades is not impossible.”

The assessment that this was “not impossible” was good enough for me to do some shoe leather journalism and head to my local Fresh Choice. It was drizzling and miserable outside, but the supermarket was bustling with activity as they experimented with a thrilling new checkout set-up – efficiency maxxing or the perfect distraction from fluctuating slice counts? I kept tunnel vision on the busy bread aisle, and soon found myself kneeling in reverence at the altar of Vogel’s. 

What was I looking for? I didn’t really know. I counted one loaf of sandwich: 19 slices and two crusts. I counted another loaf of sandwich: 19 slices and two crusts. I did the whole shelf: 19 slices and two crusts. I turned one loaf over slowly in my hands, hoping for some kind of divine answer, before realising that the nutritional information on the back had included the slice count all along. I gasped so loudly that the old woman next to me nearly dropped her pita breads. 

This was it. The smoking gun. In our kitchen cupboard, we had a sausage-shaped receptacle of soft plastics (you’re welcome, planet Earth) that I knew mostly comprised of old Vogel’s bread bags. Tearing out of the carpark and back home, I proceeded to rip it open with a kind of mania, my fingers quickly becoming discoloured as the green and maroon Vogel’s stripes melted onto my sweaty hands. This was exactly like Spotlight, but with way more crumbs. 

When I eventually snapped out of my frenzy, there were around 70 Vogel’s bags littered across the kitchen table, dating back roughly two years. There was shredded soft plastic all over the floor. The dog looked scared, but I was even scareder. The slice count on the sandwich bag had remained the same throughout: 19 slices and two crusts, as had the total weight of the bag. I opened my emails and saw a response from Vogel’s PR that made my blood run cold: 

“We can assure you, and readers of The Spinoff, that there hasn’t been any changes made to the thickness of Vogel’s slices.” 

I had spent days chasing a conspiracy theory. I had done more counting than I had done in about 20 years. I was exhausted, deflated. There was no story here. But as I thought of all those people in all those community groups sharing their concerns, and all those other Fresh Choice folk in the bread aisle poring over serving sizes, slice counts, and price tags, I wondered if we are right to stay this paranoid about the changing state of our groceries in 2026. 

Just last year, a Consumer NZ survey found that 72% of shoppers had noticed shrinkflation at the supermarket, the phenomenon of a product being downsized, but the price staying the same. Consumer NZ also found the trend extends to everything from Keri Juice shrinking from three litres to 2.4, Nescafe quietly ditching their chocolate shaker, Cadbury Roses dropping 40 grams, and even Purex toilet paper shedding 9% of sheets from 450 to 410 per roll. 

Start looking, and you’ll see it everywhere. Snickers bars have dropped 6g, while Peckish baked rice crackers have lost 10g. Family-sized pies are withering before our eyes. You can’t even use a Burger Ring to propose anymore. Cookie shrinkage is so out of control that the Cookie Monster has had to step in. And shrinkflation is not even the only ‘ation our wallets are wrestling with these days – there’s also excuseflation, skimpflation, and enshittification. 

So maybe in this instance Vogel’s isn’t out to get us like Big Loo Roll and Big Juice, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remain vigilant. Because we’re in a pretty weird place indeed when discovering we haven’t been swindled at the supermarket feels like the best news since sliced bread.