Grocery Store Price Comparison

June 18, 2008 by dave.

About handful of years ago I was curious which grocery store I should shop at. It had been a toss-up between in-town options or some that required a little additional travel time. To answer my question I had done a prices comparison between 3 supermarkets….and that helped me to decide where to shop.

I currently drive about 25 minutes to get to my ‘regular’ grocery store (Market Basket) despite the fact I have a local store a few minutes away from my house. The reason I drive the distance is that our local store (Jackson’s Star) has outrageous prices. They are the only local grocery store (and we are considered a ‘tourist area’) so they don’t have any competition and as a result, can get away with charging what they do. I do shop there on occasion but it’s usually to pick up a few things; I never do my full shopping there.

I’m excited because another store is being built in town (Meredith, NH). Sometime in the fall we will have a new Hannaford grocery store. Now comes the dilemma: I really like market Basket and believe the prices are REAL GOOD…..but will I be able to justify a 25 minute drive when Hannaford opens about 8 minutes away? It was time to do another price analysis.

I created a list of 20 items that I buy on a reasonably regular basis. I made sure all items were pretty common so I would be able to easily price them at all the locations. For this analysis I compared REGULAR prices for the items. Adding a ’sale’ component would only complicate things. I priced the items over a period of a few weeks for the following supermarkets. Note that since our new Hannaford is not open I had to choose another one of their locations for the study. The results didn’t surprise me at all - they simply confirmed my observations / assumptions:

• Jackson’s Star (Meredith, NH)
• Shaws (Tilton, NH)
• Market Basket (Tilton, NH)
• Hannaford (Plymouth, NH)

Note: Market basket is very unique these days in that they DO NOT have a web site! I’m curious why but assume it’s part of their ‘old-fashioned’ way of doing things. The link above is to their Wikipedia citation.

So…now for the results (click to see full-sized):

A few things to note:

• The highlighted prices are the ‘best prices’ for the particular items.
• Market basket does not sell 90% grade ground beef….they sell 93% so it’s difficult to compare. I believe based on this they should be considered ‘on par’ with the Shaw’s price
• Jackson’s Star didn’t have the same size cereal (they only had a smaller box) so I extrapolated their price to account for it.
• Realize that on one item Shaw’s beat out Market Basket by a penny.
• The ‘Outright Best Price’ notations count the number of items where they have the best prices. I didn’t count items where several stores shared the best price.
• The ‘Percentage Above Base’ shows how much more expensive the other stores are than Market Basket (the clear winner).
• The ‘Cost Above Base’ figure assumes a $200 grocery bill at Market Basket (typical bi-weekly grocery bill for a family of 4). and calculates how much the same groceries would be at the other supermarkets.

This analysis is not overly scientific but it does have reasonable validity.

Posted in Food / Beverage, Household Stuff | 4 Comments »