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A few years ago my favorite store in Folsom, Save Mart, went out of business. They weren't making a good enough profit at that location. So I had to choose between the three other stores in town to determine which one of them would become "my store". The choices were Safeway, Raley's, and Winco. After about a month, it became obvious that Winco, the huge store that doesn't even try to give you some sort of luxury shopping experience, was significantly cheaper than the other two on average. They almost never had sales on anything, but their regular price was often as good as the best sale price at either of the other two. And they had a good selection of products and the best bulk foods section I've seen (for nuts and raisins and stuff).
So a few years later when I had to move back to Pleasanton, we needed to figure out which grocery store was going to be "our store" here. The nearest Winco is dozens of miles away out in the Central Valley, so that wasn't a choice.
My wife and I picked eight stores in the area (Pleasanton and Dublin) that sell groceries and decided to do some comparison shopping at all of them. We made a list of 17 items that we regularly buy, found each of those at each of the stores, then wrote down the price on a grid. The photo of the final result is linked below.
It took pretty much all day to do this. It was a pretty good husband-wife activity, though. We checked four stores in the morning and four in the afternoon. We were worn out when we were done, but I sat down and marked up our comparison sheet and was rather surprised at the final result.
Here is a list of what we checked for, including the price range that we found at the stores.
On the chart, I marked the lowest price for each item in green, prices that were still close enough to lowest in yellow, the highest price in pink, and other high prices in orange indicating enough more expensive to be not desirable. I didn't mark the ones in the middle of the price range. Items we couldn't find in a particular store were marked in blue to better visualize how good of a selection each store had.
These are the eight stores that we comparison shopped at (in the order we visited them):
Of the three regular grocery stores, I was expecting Lucky's to have lower prices than the other two major stores, Safeway and Raley's. What I found is that the prices were not significantly better there and all were too high.
I hadn't done any real grocery shopping at Walmart or Target, but they both came out with better prices than the regular grocery stores scoring many of the lowest prices. That's still not a good enough reason for me to shop at either of them, though. There were a few items on our list that they didn't carry.
Smart & Final came out ahead overall and now they're "my store". They usually have better produce prices than even the specialty produce store, Sprouts Farmers Market, and I'm not sure the quality is better at Sprouts. Sprouts definitely has the worst selection of the group.
Finally, Gene's Fine Foods came in last place by a significant margin and I'm not sure how they can keep enough loyal customers to stay in business. There must be a lot of people who have always shopped there and won't change. Kind of how my mom was with Dan's in Salt Lake. If you care about how far your grocery dollar goes, you might want to try something like this to find out once and for all who has the best prices in your area. We had unexpected results when we did it.
Here's a photo of the resulting chart - probably too small to read, but it's one way to do it.
Comparison.jpg
So a few years later when I had to move back to Pleasanton, we needed to figure out which grocery store was going to be "our store" here. The nearest Winco is dozens of miles away out in the Central Valley, so that wasn't a choice.
My wife and I picked eight stores in the area (Pleasanton and Dublin) that sell groceries and decided to do some comparison shopping at all of them. We made a list of 17 items that we regularly buy, found each of those at each of the stores, then wrote down the price on a grid. The photo of the final result is linked below.
It took pretty much all day to do this. It was a pretty good husband-wife activity, though. We checked four stores in the morning and four in the afternoon. We were worn out when we were done, but I sat down and marked up our comparison sheet and was rather surprised at the final result.
Here is a list of what we checked for, including the price range that we found at the stores.
- Orowheat Country Potato Bread ($2.98 - $4.99)
- Wheaties - 15.6 oz ($3.24 - $5.99)
- Yoplait Yogurt - 6 oz ($0.58 - $0.89)
- Milk - 1 gal ($2.39 - $3.99)
- Butter - 1 lb ($3.49 - $4.99)
- Tomatoes - best price ($0.99 - $2.49)
- Lettuce - romaine - 3 hearts ($2.48 - $3.99)
- Chicken breasts ($1.99 - $4.98)
- Hamburger ($2.49 - $5.99)
- Eggs - 1 doz ($1.39 - $3.49)
- Brianna's Poppy Seed Dressing ($3.14 - $4.59)
- Heinz Original Cocktail Sauce ($2.23 - $3.95)
- Keebler Club Crackers ($2.88 - $4.69)
- Kraft Mac & Cheese ($0.95 - $1.99)
- Nalley Chili - 14 oz ($1.79 - $2.59)
- Dreyer's Vanilla Bean Ice Cream ($4.29 - $6.49)
- Mission Tortilla Chips - 20 oz ($2.99 - $4.49)
On the chart, I marked the lowest price for each item in green, prices that were still close enough to lowest in yellow, the highest price in pink, and other high prices in orange indicating enough more expensive to be not desirable. I didn't mark the ones in the middle of the price range. Items we couldn't find in a particular store were marked in blue to better visualize how good of a selection each store had.
These are the eight stores that we comparison shopped at (in the order we visited them):
- Target
- Sprouts Farmers Market
- Walmart
- Smart & Final (has stores in CA, AZ, and NV)
- Raley's (same as Bel Air and Nob Hill)
- Safeway (their headquarters is here, by the way)
- Gene's Fine Foods (a local store that has been around a long time)
- Lucky's (same as Save Mart that I liked in Folsom)
Of the three regular grocery stores, I was expecting Lucky's to have lower prices than the other two major stores, Safeway and Raley's. What I found is that the prices were not significantly better there and all were too high.
I hadn't done any real grocery shopping at Walmart or Target, but they both came out with better prices than the regular grocery stores scoring many of the lowest prices. That's still not a good enough reason for me to shop at either of them, though. There were a few items on our list that they didn't carry.
Smart & Final came out ahead overall and now they're "my store". They usually have better produce prices than even the specialty produce store, Sprouts Farmers Market, and I'm not sure the quality is better at Sprouts. Sprouts definitely has the worst selection of the group.
Finally, Gene's Fine Foods came in last place by a significant margin and I'm not sure how they can keep enough loyal customers to stay in business. There must be a lot of people who have always shopped there and won't change. Kind of how my mom was with Dan's in Salt Lake. If you care about how far your grocery dollar goes, you might want to try something like this to find out once and for all who has the best prices in your area. We had unexpected results when we did it.
Here's a photo of the resulting chart - probably too small to read, but it's one way to do it.
Comparison.jpg
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