Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by Bagels »

Most grocery stores are running their weakest Thanksgiving sales ad in modern history. Not long ago, Albertsons pointed out that discounting wasn't necessary to attract people into its stores status quo -- and I assume such is true for most grocers -- so it's not completely surprising. My nearest Ralphs temporarily moved most of the floral from the produce department, and has stacks of produce in the additional selling space, so obviously they're anticipating a banner year.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by storewanderer »

I have priced out items and the pricing is terrible all around. I cannot even believe Safeway's prices for various unadvertised items. Unreal outrageous prices. Luckily there are options in my market and I will be visiting many of them. I found Safeway to be very weak aside from the frozen turkey price and the .19/lb yams- problem is with the turkey you need to do a $25 spend and with the awful pricing to get there you will still come out behind.

Curiously both Save Mart/Food Maxx and Raleys are not requiring a minimum $25 spend for their turkey frozen promotion. Food Maxx has the best deal. .39/lb straightforward and out the door with no minimum purchase. I assume WinCo will match them too.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by storewanderer »

Did shopping for Thanksgiving at various stores and priced out Safeway's prices as I went to Safeway first, and ended up leaving with almost nothing due to the terrible pricing. They were way out of line on basically everything. Everyone is beating their prices on key items and the unique/harder to find items, even Raleys, on various items. All stores I went to which represented basically every chain in the area except Save Mart were well stocked and all set to go for Thanksgiving. Did go to Food Maxx and it was in great shape, strong price points. Conditions at Smiths looked pretty rough but I was able to get what I went in for and items were in good supply.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by CalItalian »

I found fantastic prices at Vons & Albertsons Southern California over the last two ad weeks (including current).

This week & last:

Whole Pineapple .99 cents each this week. If you buy $1 or more in produce, weekly $1 off digital produce coupon also applies. Ralphs price 2/$3. Stater Bros. .99 cents per pound. All advertised this week.

Challenge Butter 2/$5. Ibotta .75/1 rebate on sticks only this week. Limit one on the rebate which makes it $1.75. $3.49 advertised at Ralphs (but if you buy 3, third package is free making them 3/$6.98). Last weeks Vons/Albertsons ad had Land O Lakes for $1.99, limit 2. There were printable .50/1 coupons up to 2 making them $1.49 each which I used to stock up on spreadable butter. Ralphs does have Kroger Butter 16 oz. sticks for $1.97 this ad week. Purely on shelf price they are the lowest.

Dryer's Ice Cream $1.99 1.5 qt. digital coupon price this week. This ad week the $1 any frozen item coupon makes it .99 cents.

Red, Black, Green seedless grapes. .88 lb. digital coupon price this week. There is an additional $1 off $1 or more grapes digital coupon plus the $1 off any produce coupon.

Knudsen Sour Cream $1.49 16 oz. on Fab 5 this week. Ibotta has .75/1 cashback up to 5 making them .74 cents each.

Cool Whip 8 oz. tub $1.49 on Fab 5 this week. $1 off frozen digital coupon this week makes it .49 cents. 2/$3 at Ralphs without the minimum purchase of 5 items as Fab 5 requires at Vons/Albertsons.

Blueberries 18 oz. were $1.99 last ad week. The weekly $1 produce coupon makes them .99 cents.

SS Purified Drinking Water $1.99 24 pack last week. Not a historically great sale price but no SoCal chain has had water on sale in recent weeks.

Ribeye Roast. $6.99 lb. at Vons/Albertsons, $7.99 lb. at Ralphs. Both advertised this week.

California Cuties 3 lb. bag 2/$5 Vons/Albertsons. Using the $1 off $1 or more digital produce coupon makes one bag $1.50.
$2.99 Ralphs (ad this is their biggest featured item other than turkey this week).

Ocean Spray Cranberries fresh 12 oz. bag $1.99 Vons/Albertsons. $1 off $1 or more digital produce coupon makes it .99 cents. Stater Bros is also $1.99. Ralphs 2/$5. All this week.

Items I found at the same price or lower other than Vons or Albertsons:

Mrs. Cubbison's is 2/$5 advertised at Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs but 99 Cents Only has it advertised for $1.99. There's also various $/$$ off purchase coupons in the 99 Cents Only app.

Yams .99 lb. Same price, all chains.

Marie Calendars Pies $4.99 Ralphs and Stater Bros. 2/$11 Vons/Albertsons. All advertised this week.

Green Beans fresh .99 lb. Stater Bros, $1.99 lb. Ralphs (advertised) & Vons/Albertsons (unadvertised)

Asparagus $1.99 lb. Stater Bros, $2.99 lb. Ralphs, $3.99 lb. Vons/Albertsons

Ralphs $1.88 lb. Farmer John Full Half Ham. Closest match Signature Select Boneless Half Ham $3.99 lb. at Vons/Albertsons but they do have Signature Farms Spiral Sliced Ham for $2.99 lb. and Cooks Ham portions for $1.99 lb.

Butterball frozen turkey $1.37 lb. Ralphs, $1.99 lb. Vons/Albertsons this ad week (was .97 lb. last ad week). Aldi still the lowest at .87 lb. Friday on after the .45 lb. sale on Wednesday & Thursday.

Ralphs is lower on soda, 4/$11 on Coke, Pepsi 12 packs. Vons, Albertsons and Stater Bros. are each $2.99 (4/$11.96) wyb 4. Lay's Chips are the same price at all chains $1.99 each wyb 3.

Vons & Albertsons are closing on Thanksgiving Day at 3 PM. Both Ralphs and Stater Bros are open until 10 PM. I don't believe I've ever seen Vons & Albertsons close as early previously.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by storewanderer »

CalItalian wrote: November 19th, 2021, 3:02 am
Vons & Albertsons are closing on Thanksgiving Day at 3 PM. Both Ralphs and Stater Bros are open until 10 PM. I don't believe I've ever seen Vons & Albertsons close as early previously.
Most stores seem to be closing at 3 on Thanksgiving. Smiths is closing at 3 on Thanksgiving also. However Safeway is closing at 6 PM. Safeway probably will reopen at Midnight on Friday though so it only closes for six hours. That may vary by location.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by Bagels »

CalItalian wrote: November 19th, 2021, 3:02 am I found fantastic prices at Vons & Albertsons Southern California over the last two ad weeks (including current).
Great post, but many of these deals require what you list as a weekly J4U offer. I haven't gotten $ or % off (e.g. $1 off any produce purchase; $2 off $10 meat purchase; 50% off any frozen entree, etc.) coupons since shortly before last Thanksgiving, and I haven't gotten any $ off a basket coupon since J4U was relaunched. However, two weeks ago -- which marked three weeks without spending a penny at Albertsons -- we received a coupon for a free 8 oz. Lucerne shredded cheese (on sale for $1.67 that week), the first (non-weekend) offer in over a year.

I use to get personalized J4U offers like 39c/lb for bananas, or 88c/lb for apples. My offers this week included 94c for a donut (save 5 cents!!!), $3.36 for a pineapple (on sale for 99c) and my personal favorite -- 96c for a single serve Yoplait Yogurt (shelf price = 70c).

IMO, Ralphs has offered far better promotions in recent weeks. In the two previous ads, they had (off the top of my head):
-- Marie Callender Pies for $4.77 (up to 5x) - $1.25 digital coupon (single use). Albertsons best price = $5.50 this week.
-- 18ct large eggs for $1.99. Albertsons last ran an egg promotion more than a month ago: 24ct for $3.49 (BOGO dozen large eggs).
-- 16 oz. Kroger-brand sour cream for 77c. Albertsons had 8 oz. Daisey and Lucerne for $1.
-- 10 lb. bag of potatoes for $1.99. Albertsons had a 5 lb. bag for $1.50.
etc.

I have found a few good unadvertised prices at Albertsons: two or three ads ago, they had ~100 oz. Gain laundry detergent for $5.99 - $2 digital coupon. Last week, they had single rolls Value Corner Paper Towel 4/$1 -- but this appears to be a de facto clearance price, as it looks like they're no longer carrying this product. They also had 120ct. Holiday-themed napkins for $1 (now $1.25; price is great only considering the Holiday print). And this month they have Signature Select 75 sq. ft. aluminum foil for $1.99. There's also a coupon on the J4U app good all month for any variety of 1 gallon Value Corner Milk for $2.49... but I suspect the reason this coupon exists is because as on November 1st, they hiked the shelf price and were probably concerned about not moving product. Thankfully for them, Ralphs quickly matched.

Alas, neither chain is retorting to the heavy discounting that we've generally been accustomed to this time of year. Definitely a national trend not unique to the region although some other regions do have more heavy discounts.
Vons & Albertsons are closing on Thanksgiving Day at 3 PM. Both Ralphs and Stater Bros are open until 10 PM. I don't believe I've ever seen Vons & Albertsons close as early previously.
I'm guessing it's over staffing issues. I'm surprised Kroger is keeping Ralphs open until 10PM -- last year, only select locations were open and the labor pool has only tightened. IIRC, only Albertsons was open on Christmas Day. We will see...
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by Bagels »

One trend I've noticed recently with Albertsons/Vons/Pavilions milk... it spoils around the sell by date. I thought maybe they were stretching the Value Corner sell by date, but recently we bought a Lucerne branded version just to see and were met with the same result. Meanwhile, Ralphs milk doesn't spoil until 3+ weeks past the sell by date...
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by arizonaguy »

Bagels wrote: November 20th, 2021, 3:08 am One trend I've noticed recently with Albertsons/Vons/Pavilions milk... it spoils around the sell by date. I thought maybe they were stretching the Value Corner sell by date, but recently we bought a Lucerne branded version just to see and were met with the same result. Meanwhile, Ralphs milk doesn't spoil until 3+ weeks past the sell by date...
Out here in Arizona to avoid any issue with milk I just buy Milk at Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, or Winco.

Target, Sam's Club, and some Walmarts use Shamrock Farms milk (big local dairy in Phoenix)
WinCo and other Walmarts (as well as Costco) use Sarah Farms milk (big dairy in Yuma, AZ)

I've had good luck with both Shamrock / Sarah milk. In Arizona Fry's and Safeway also have their own dairy plants (Fry's in Tolleson and Safeway in Tempe).
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: November 19th, 2021, 4:42 pm
CalItalian wrote: November 19th, 2021, 3:02 am
Vons & Albertsons are closing on Thanksgiving Day at 3 PM. Both Ralphs and Stater Bros are open until 10 PM. I don't believe I've ever seen Vons & Albertsons close as early previously.
Most stores seem to be closing at 3 on Thanksgiving. Smiths is closing at 3 on Thanksgiving also. However Safeway is closing at 6 PM. Safeway probably will reopen at Midnight on Friday though so it only closes for six hours. That may vary by location.
In this area (of NY) 2 of the 3 supermarket chains are completely closed for Thanksgiving and the third says most stores open until 3pm. Seems they all used to be open until 3 or so at one time.
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Re: Albertsons’ Soaring Prices

Post by storewanderer »

arizonaguy wrote: November 20th, 2021, 7:37 am
Bagels wrote: November 20th, 2021, 3:08 am One trend I've noticed recently with Albertsons/Vons/Pavilions milk... it spoils around the sell by date. I thought maybe they were stretching the Value Corner sell by date, but recently we bought a Lucerne branded version just to see and were met with the same result. Meanwhile, Ralphs milk doesn't spoil until 3+ weeks past the sell by date...
Out here in Arizona to avoid any issue with milk I just buy Milk at Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, or Winco.

Target, Sam's Club, and some Walmarts use Shamrock Farms milk (big local dairy in Phoenix)
WinCo and other Walmarts (as well as Costco) use Sarah Farms milk (big dairy in Yuma, AZ)

I've had good luck with both Shamrock / Sarah milk. In Arizona Fry's and Safeway also have their own dairy plants (Fry's in Tolleson and Safeway in Tempe).
Smiths still has signs up guaranteeing milk is fresh for at least 7 (maybe it is 10) days after purchase. This basically means any milk that has a sell by date of less than 7 days gets marked down. I have used milk from Smiths a day or two after the sell by with mixed results. All of this milk is in plastic bottles.

The Safeway Lucerne Milk- has been interesting. Lucerne used to open date (meaning it was good 7 days past the sell by date printed) but I am not clear they do anymore. I have had plastic bottles that taste chalky or just off, cartons that taste watery (it wasn't Nonfat), and in general think their milk is poor and do not purchase it much. Lots of other people seem to be purchasing it without issue, so I am not sure what the deal is. I have noticed with the paper cartons of Lucerne they are usually good a day or two past the sell by date however.
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