First up? Noooooooooooo... This is just too damned early:
I went to Boston University a few years ago (1971-73) and for a while, lived in a commercial warehouse. Cheap rent and it was right on the waterfront - one of the ship canals. A business on the ground floor sold displays to retail stores. Needless to say, the sales for a specific season actually happened six months or so before. It was always fun to be walking home from a nearby tavern and seeing an animated Santa and elves in the window being very jolly in the middle of July.
The supply chain is wonky these days so they are probably getting the stuff in from China when they can. Makes sense to get it out on the shelves and selling instead of spending money to warehouse until closer to December. Still... Waaaaay too early.
And, it looks like the Tri Tip prices are heading up again. Here is a photo from August 17th (last Tuesday) It is "normally" at 9.99/pound - looks like the price went up a dollar.
And here we are today - one dollar higher:
Different SKU numbers as one is the whole roast and the other is the trimmed strips. Both have the same retail price.
Same thing happened in May and June here, here and here - it went up from 9.99 to 12.99.
See if the same thing happens again. Curious.
With only a little effort, we have maintained our family budget without buying stuff from China for the last six months.
Of course, we haven't looked very far into the "chain of supply" to find where our sellers sourced their goods from the first. But we make it a practice to "buy American".