Maryland Draws a Line on Grocery Pricing

Why Wes Moore’s push against surveillance pricing matters as more grocery shopping moves online

There is a reason this story is getting attention beyond Maryland. Grocery shopping has become far more digital, far more app-driven, and far more data-soaked than it was just a few years ago. Shoppers now move between in-store and online buying, use retailer apps for coupons and lists, and increasingly expect real-time updates and personalized offers. That convenience can be useful. It can also become a very slippery excuse for retailers to treat the price tag like a living creature.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore has decided that, at least when it comes to groceries, that line needs to be drawn somewhere. Earlier this year, his administration announced the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, a measure aimed at stopping dynamic pricing and surveillance-based individualized pricing in grocery stores. The proposal came with a simple idea: the price on the shelf should be the price you pay, not a number quietly adjusted by software because of who you are, where you live, how you browse, or what the system thinks you can tolerate.

What Maryland is trying to stop

The bill targets two related practices. One is dynamic pricing in the grocery context, meaning prices that change within the same business day based on demand or other factors. The other is the use of surveillance personal data to set prices, which the enrolled bill describes as consumer information collected or tracked through technological tools such as sensors, cameras, device tracking, biometric monitoring, and similar methods. The law’s language also makes clear that this can include AI systems or models that recalibrate in near real time.

That matters because the technology already exists. The Federal Trade Commission said in its 2025 surveillance pricing study that firms can use details such as a person’s precise location, browsing history, mouse movements, shopping history, and even the products left unpurchased in an online cart to tailor pricing or promotions. The FTC also said the intermediaries it examined worked with at least 250 clients across sectors including grocery. In plain English, this is not some futuristic theory still hiding in a white paper. The plumbing is already in the walls.

Why groceries are different

A lot of industries flirt with variable pricing and get away with it because consumers have come to expect it. Airline tickets move around. Hotel rates bounce. Ride-share prices spike. People may not like it, but they know the game. Groceries are different because they are essentials. When the price of eggs, vegetables, cereal, or drinks starts acting like a concert ticket, people are not dealing with inconvenience. They are dealing with household stress. USDA data shows food-at-home prices were up 2.4 percent in February 2026 compared with a year earlier, and USDA forecasts food-at-home prices to rise 3.1 percent for 2026 overall. That is exactly the kind of environment where lawmakers start asking whether more pricing opacity is the last thing shoppers need.

Maryland’s own rollout of the bill leaned into that affordability argument. Governor Moore’s office said the measure was meant to protect Marylanders from “invasive data practices” and “unpredictable price spikes” as grocery stores adopt electronic shelf labels that can change prices instantly. The administration also said violations would be treated as unfair or deceptive trade practices, with civil penalties of up to $10,000 for a first offense and up to $25,000 for later ones.

The bill is not banning every discount under the sun

This is where people tend to get confused. Maryland is not trying to outlaw sales, coupons, or loyalty programs. The enrolled bill expressly carves out several exceptions, including promotional offers, loyalty or rewards programs that are publicly available, subscription-based agreements, price differences tied to objective costs like shipping or taxes, and discounts based on clearly disclosed eligibility criteria. So this is not a war on coupons. It is a push against hidden, individualized price setting that rides on personal data or same-day algorithmic adjustments in essential food retail.

That distinction matters for business too. A retailer can still say, “Join our program and get a discount.” What Maryland is signaling is that a retailer should not be allowed to quietly decide that one shopper gets a different price than another because the system has profiled them as more desperate, less price-sensitive, more affluent, or simply easier to squeeze. That is the part that starts to feel less like merchandising and more like a slot machine wearing a store badge.

Why this fight is showing up now

Because the shopper is changing, and the store is changing with them. FMI says the majority of shoppers now take a hybrid approach, buying some groceries online and some in person, while grocery apps increasingly serve up customized deals, real-time updates, loyalty rewards, and purchase histories. At the same time, Purdue’s Consumer Food Insights survey found that 82 percent of consumers changed their grocery shopping behavior in 2025, with seeking sales and discounts among the most common responses. That is the perfect setup for personalized retail tools to look helpful on the surface while also giving companies more chances to test what each shopper will bear.

And that is why this story is bigger than one state bill. Maryland is effectively saying that if grocery retail is going to get smarter, it cannot get sneakier at the same time. The state is not rejecting technology. It is rejecting the idea that technology should quietly turn food pricing into a private negotiation between an algorithm and your wallet.