The cheapest grocery store depends on what you buy. Below we compare bananas, milk, and chicken across eight different stores in the city.
Unfortunately as an Amazon Associate, we are not allowed to track Whole Foods prices. But Whole Foods consistently has one of the least expensive bananas. You can see the current price here.
The following graph is able to show that Trader Joe's doesn't seem to sell chicken wings, and Star Market and Foodie's sell the most expensive milk.
🍌 Some stores only sell bunches instead of single bananas. Bunches typically range from 4-6 bananas and are outlined in the product description. We took the bunch price and divided it by the highest amount of bananas in the bunch to get the lowest price per banana.
🥛 Milk price is for 1 gallon of whole milk from the store brand.
🐓 Price is for chicken wings per pound (from the store brand). Please know some stores sell the same brand. For example, Whole Food's and Roche Brothers sell Bell & Evans chicken, which is less expensive than their store brands. Star Market and Shaw's are both owned by Albertsons, so their store brand (Signature Farms) is often priced the same and sold at both stores.
🛒 Some stores do not display prices online, such as Tropical Foods and Daily Table. Stores like Market Basket, Cotsco, BJ's, Wegman's, and Walmart, may have cheaper prices, but weren't included because they are outside of the city. And for the stores that we did include, their online prices may be higher than the in-store prices for the same product. You can learn more about why online prices are higher than in-store prices here.
In our home, we used to shop at different stores to get everything off of our list. For example, we used to buy our plantains at Tropical Foods, it's a local supermarket that sells hard-to-find Caribbean and African foods. We also loved buying bulk nuts from Trader Joe's. They were delicious, raw, and had an excellent price. Finally, Cotsco (which is a small drive outside of Boston) has the best toilet paper. It's thick, soft, and also comes at an unbeatable price.
As our family grew, driving to different stores wasn't fun anymore.
How Many Grocery Stores Do You Use?
1
2
3+
None! We grow our food or use the farmers' market.
We ended up using grocery delivery, and saw our grocery spending almost double. We believe this is partly due to naturally rising costs over the years due to inflation.
In short, many frugal shoppers rave about Price Rite. In 2023, the budget grocer sold bananas over 200% lower than Foodie's Market. While produce may be cheaper at the supermarket, their milk prices are largely on par with their peers.
If you want to know where our family prefers to grocery shop — it’s here. And if you're curious how much the average family spends on groceries? We broke it down here.
Until next time...
Love The Journey,
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