Consumer's Checkbook survey of Puget Sound grocery prices

[Brian Lutz]

http://www.komonews.com/news/consumer/S ... 36431.html

A local consumer group has just released the results of a new study comparing relative prices for different grocery stores in the area. Based on a comparison of a selection of national brands, they compared the relative cost of a specific set of items in each of the major local stores, with the following results:

Walmart Supercenter: $78
WinCo: $79
Walmart neighborhood market :83
Fred Meyer: $91
Target: $91
Albertsons: $100
Safeway: $101
QFC: $104
TOP Foods: $106
Whole Foods: $154
PCC Natural Markets: $158

There's a lot more in the full survey, available (temporarily) at the link (you do need to give an e-mail address to access it though.) In general, the Kroger stores seem to be rated highest of the major chains for overall quality, and Fred Meyer seems to be the best "bang for the buck" store on the list, and Safeway is the most overpriced in relation to the level of service. In general, the smaller local stores (Metropolitan Market, Central Market, etc.) are rated very highly, but come with much higher prices to go with it.

[Super S]

The fact that TOP Foods is higher than Albertsons, Safeway, and QFC illustrates a big reason why that chain has struggled recently.

[SamSpade]

I was doing some poking around hoping to find a more recent writeup of the information from Consumer's Checkbook after reading about Cub Foods in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Unfortunately. I didn't find anything since the Albertsons-Safeway merger / division blend but I do find it interesting to see how stagnant our market truly is in the northwest...
2003 (Seattle Post-Intelligencer):

A shopping cart full of produce, meat and other items that costs $100 on average at Safeway, Quality Food Center and Albertsons -- the Puget Sound area's three largest chains -- costs $90 or less in Boston and the Twin Cities, according to the survey.

Fred Meyer's prices were 10 percent lower than QFC's. Krughoff said that for a family spending $125 every week at the supermarket, the difference between Fred Meyer and QFC could total $650 in a year -- even though The Kroger Co. owns both stores.
"At Fred Meyer, our goal is to be competitive with the lowest-priced food retailer in every market we serve," Rob Boley, assistant vice president of public relations said.

In 2003 there was only one Whole Foods in the entire Puget Sound region, in north Seattle.

Whole Foods also had the highest prices in the survey. Consumers' Checkbook estimates that the annual difference between making weekly visits to Fred Meyer and shopping at Whole Foods is the price of a used car -- $2,500.

2006 (Seattle Times):

shopping at Fred Meyer, a family might expect to save $500 to $900 per year compared with shopping at Albertsons or Safeway, and more than $1,400 per year compared with shopping at QFC.

The lowest priced of the surveyed stores was Fred Meyer, with prices about 11 percent lower than the prices we found at Safeway, the area's largest chain, and about 18 percent lower than Quality Food Centers (QFC), the highest priced of the area's largest chains. For a family that spends $150 per week at the supermarket, an 18-percent price difference might be expected to total more than $1,400 during the course of a year.

Intra-chain price differences were small for Safeway and QFC. But we did find some store-to-store price variation at surveyed Albertsons stores. Prices at the lowest-priced Albertsons store surveyed were about 5 percent lower than at the chain's highest-priced store surveyed.

The highest prices among stores we surveyed were found at Whole Foods Market and PCC Natural Markets, whose prices were 54 percent and 40 percent higher, respectively, than the average for Albertsons, QFC and Safeway.

2013 data above, notes the encroachment of WinCo Foods and Walmart, which I would say started on the south end of the region and slowly moved north (Tacoma, Auburn, Renton, Federal Way) ... now kind of skipped the city to the north and west by covering Snohomish County and the Kitsap Peninsula.