Shoppers can you smell a bargain?
The Great Plains Examiner has compiled a price survey of nine local supermarkets to help shoppers sniff out the best prices and save money on their grocery bills.
The Examiner sent reporters to the stores to record grocery prices on Saturday, August 27. Only regular prices, not sales prices, were recorded during the survey. We did our best to compare apples-to-apples by using the same brands, weights when possible. And our goal was to both entertain you and save you the legwork this extensive supermarket survey requires.
In all, we’ve provided you with a feast of 40 item comparisons that clearly demonstrate that local supermarket managers sharpen their pencils before posting shelf prices. A cursory look at all of the prices from all of the stores will help you determine how your favorite store measures up when it comes to leveraging your grocery dollars.
A quick review of these prices shows that every store can claim the lowest price for at least one of the 40 grocery items listed in the survey. And we’ll let you decide which stores are the most competitive. Of course, some stores offer better customer service than others, but we’ll save that comparison for a future edition.
We added up the total cost of all 40 food items to see which store had the lowest and highest total price. In our survey, the north-side Walmart turned out to be the least expensive with a total cost of $107.27; Dan’s Supermarket at Arrowhead Plaza was the most expensive with a total bill of $142.13. The rest of the supermarkets fell somewhere in between.
We did the leg work, but shoppers will have to do the math because you may not buy all of the food items we have listed. Also keep in mind that sale prices may lead to different supermarkets having the highest and lowest total costs.
-Matt Bunk is publisher of the Great Plains Examiner. He can be reached at .
Excellent article, something that you would never find in Bismarck-Mandan’s other newspaper.
I rarely shop at Dan’s, at Arrowhead Plaza, as it is just inconvenient for me to do so and the selection is limited.
I do shop, at the recently remodeled south Washington Street store on a daily basis but that store is convenient for me.
The two Walmart stores could be on the Moon for all I care and they are just too large and walking in them makes me very weary. Although I do admit I like their prices.
Keep up the excellent work Great Plains Examiner I look at your online edition daily.