Grocery Store Rip-Off

Details: Published on Monday, 06 May 2013 22:38; Written by Regie Simmons, MP Competitor & Body Fuse Sponsored Athlete

Want costco to hear a secret? Can you be trusted? No seriously, can you keep a secret? Ok, here goes. Grocery stores are a rip-off! Let me restate that. Grocery stores are a HUGE friggin’ rip-off.

Well maybe this isn’t a surprise to you but it certainly was to me after doing a little comparison shopping between my local grocer, a big box warehouse club and a “food service” store. I did my comparison shopping because I was spending money hand-over-fist to support my diet while shopping at a local grocery store. If your diet is anything like mine then you’re consuming “large” amounts of foods and can benefit from a couple of tips to save a few bucks.

Just for clarification and full disclosure the grocery store was Publix, the warehouse club was Costco and the food services store was Gordon Food Service. The names of the stores are fairly irrelevant as these types of stores can be found from coast-to-coast under various names.

As promised here are a couple of tips to tame your grocery bill:

1. Skip the grocery store and purchase the bulk of your items from warehouse clubs like Costco, BJs or Sam’s Clubs. The warehouse clubs typically offer favorable prices on fresh/frozen meats, fruits and rice.

2. Restaurant supply stores like GFS, Restaurant Depot and CBI have reasonable prices on items like eggs, nuts and potatoes. I have also found that these stores tend to have fresher produce in large quantities at reasonable prices.

3. Purchase the store brand or off-brand versus the branded products. I have been eating Quarter Oats oatmeal since I was a child, but I honestly can’t tell the different between Quaker and the store brand. In some cases the store brand products actually taste better than the more expensive brand counterparts.

4. Utilize grocery stores for “niche” items like Ezekiel bread or in a pinch if you are unable to make it to one of the aforementioned stores.

Regardless of where you buy your groceries, comparison shopping is important. The best way to do this is to reduce everything to a unit cost so that you have an apples-to-apples comparison. To determine unit cost, divide the total cost of an item by the number of units in the package. To calculate unit cost of a dozen eggs, for example, you simply divide the cost by 12.

$2.99 / 12 eggs = $.25 per unit

The calculation is similar for things that are sold by weight (i.e., meats, nuts, rice, oatmeal, etc.). To determine the unit cost you just divide the cost by the total weight.

$18.81 / 6.29 lbs. of beef = $2.99 per unit

Good luck and happy shopping.

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