For those of you in the Dayton area that are interested in which store has the better prices, I spent a couple weeks visiting the stores and writing down prices. Here's what I found:
I made a list of products that my family commonly uses. Having shopped predominantly at the Commissary the last 12 years, I wanted to compare their prices with that of other stores, to see if I could save a little money.Some products I am very brand oriented. For instance, I only use Charmin toilet paper-tried all the rest-it's the best. So I’ve listed “Charmin” by the product category so you know that I ONLY compared this brand. IF there is NOT a product name by the category, then I picked the lowest price product I could find. For instance, on condensed soups, I believe that it’s Campbell’s at the Commissary, but Store Brand at the rest. If I were to only compare the same exact product-like Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, 99% of the time the Commissary wins out. That’s because they only charge us what they paid to get the food from the Manufacturer. But store brands, or generic brands, sometimes beat out the Commissary. Really just depends. In addition to the brand of product, I also did NOT take into account size. So I may be comparing a 120 ct Fabric softener from Meijer to a 240 ct at Sam’s Club. I’m not lacking in where to store stuff, so I didn’t mind what size. But how I figured out the best deal was to calculate the “per oz”, or “per count” price. The boxes highlighted in yellow are the lowest price (per oz/per ct/per sq. ft.). So if you look at Hand soap, you see that the Commissary is yellow/$.90. But if you look further in that row, you’ll see a red $.88 at Kroger. The red means that it will beat the yellow box, but it’s a SALE price! So that’s something I’d have to keep an eye out for. But for every day shopping, the yellow is what you go by. Kroger’s was the hardest for me to get the prices for. They have very confusing tags. There may be a white tag, a yellow tag (some had what seemed to be “effective sale dates” while others didn’t) and some even had two yellow tags because of the March Madness sale. ARGH! Even if I got the prices a little mixed up, I believe Kroger is the most expensive-over all- unless you catch the $10 for $10 sales (get the 11th free). Then, if you have coupons to add to that sale, you can get some dirt cheap groceries. Meijer is also running the 10 for 10 sale right now and I know that both of these stores have seasonal sales that beat the Commissary, like on canned soup. It’s in November so if you can store a year’s worth, and can wait, shop then.
Download my Excel sheet here:Download Grocery Store Price Comparison 2010
