Fact & Fiction at the Grocery Store
I recently had a conversation with a co-worker in which I wound up defending Whole Foods as a reasonable place to shop when watching your budget. I insisted it was cheaper than QFC, if you shopped for quality nutrition, and not for price alone. I said this based entirely on a single brand of cereal I know to be a full $2 cheaper at Whole Foods than at QFC, however, and couldn’t back up my argument with facts.
But today, I can, and I’d like to share those facts with you.
Here’s how it worked. We shopped the three closest grocery stores: QFC on Broadway, Madison Market, and Whole Foods on Denny. We compared exact products. We did not take into account member discounts, specials or sales; the prices shown are the base price to the best of our knowledge. All pricing was done between February 7th and February 17th of 2009.
We chose 22 products that we purchase all the time, that we have already vetted as having a good quality for value ratio. Yes, we’re food snobs. Yes, we’re aware of the whole corporate-organic political situation: all we’re trying to do is eat whole, healthy foods with ingredients we can pronounce that haven’t been proven to cause cancer in small rodents. Your mileage may vary if these aren’t your preferred products.
I’ve highlighted the cheapest price for each product. Specifically, I’ve broken out a separate line for the cheddar because we were shocked at how much it cost at Madison Market, and I wanted to highlight just how much closer Mad Market would have been to Whole Foods if not for that one ridiculous price tag.
Results: Well, we began with the premise that QFC was more expensive when you’re shopping for organics and “naturals”, but we truly didn’t expect this kind of difference: that’s nearly a full $15 difference between Whole Foods and QFC. You could get a whole second block of cheddar (at Madison Market, no less!) for that.
Thanks for reading. If you'd like to give it a try, or just play with our numbers, you can download the raw data here.
But today, I can, and I’d like to share those facts with you.
Here’s how it worked. We shopped the three closest grocery stores: QFC on Broadway, Madison Market, and Whole Foods on Denny. We compared exact products. We did not take into account member discounts, specials or sales; the prices shown are the base price to the best of our knowledge. All pricing was done between February 7th and February 17th of 2009.
We chose 22 products that we purchase all the time, that we have already vetted as having a good quality for value ratio. Yes, we’re food snobs. Yes, we’re aware of the whole corporate-organic political situation: all we’re trying to do is eat whole, healthy foods with ingredients we can pronounce that haven’t been proven to cause cancer in small rodents. Your mileage may vary if these aren’t your preferred products.
I’ve highlighted the cheapest price for each product. Specifically, I’ve broken out a separate line for the cheddar because we were shocked at how much it cost at Madison Market, and I wanted to highlight just how much closer Mad Market would have been to Whole Foods if not for that one ridiculous price tag.
Results: Well, we began with the premise that QFC was more expensive when you’re shopping for organics and “naturals”, but we truly didn’t expect this kind of difference: that’s nearly a full $15 difference between Whole Foods and QFC. You could get a whole second block of cheddar (at Madison Market, no less!) for that.
Thanks for reading. If you'd like to give it a try, or just play with our numbers, you can download the raw data here.
posted by -m at
10:21 AM
3 Comments:
We're going to replicate your results with our Safeway and PCC. We've been astonshished at how the organic and natural foods have a huge mark up at Safeway. Worse, we were actually sicked to see that QVC adds a dollar to the price of any item they mark as "gluten free." (Further evidenced by their saner prices on gluten-free products they don't mark as such.) Way to take advantage of my disease, bastards! Anyhow, I won't be surprised to see similar result up here in North Greenlakewood.
- J & Q
Yay!! If you add more prices to my spreadsheet, I'd love to see the new data -- we're really curious about how the specific products change price by store.
What we learned is: shop more at Madison Market.
WoW - Nice work Megan...You sure know how to make a woman happy! Laurie has been wanting to do this for some time. She's now inspired to add to your data with some Trader Joe's info. Stay tuned!
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