u/pavlo_vancouver

In Ottawa the cheapest basket and the priciest basket belong to the same company: $115.98 at Real Canadian Superstore, $142.76 at Your Independent Grocer, both Loblaw. Same 21 brands, same pack sizes, no substitutions.

Every Thursday I price that list at every grocery chain within 15 km of downtown in a few Canadian cities. Seven cities this week - the full tables are in the images. Toronto does the same thing, $33 apart.

Which banner you walk into is doing more work than which company you're buying from. The other surprise is that the gap inside one city is bigger than the gap between cities.

Prices come from the stores' own websites and flyers, read today, sale or regular, whichever is lower. Where a store didn't list an item, it's charged the highest price anyone in that city listed for it, so a gap never makes a store look cheap - each image says how many of the 21 that store actually listed. In-store prices can differ from listed ones.

Want a city or an item added? See my comment below.

The cheapest of these baskets came to $103.76 and the priciest to $165.75, and both are in Canada this week. Same 21 brands, same pack sizes, no substitutions.

Every Thursday I price that list at every grocery chain within 15 km of downtown in a few Canadian cities. Seven cities this week - the full tables are in the images.

What surprised me: the gap inside one city is bigger than the gap between cities. And in both Ottawa and Toronto, the cheapest basket and the priciest basket are Loblaw banners - same owner, roughly $30 apart. Which banner you walk into is doing more work than which company you're buying from.

Prices come from the stores' own websites and flyers, read today, sale or regular, whichever is lower. Where a store didn't list an item, it's charged the highest price anyone in that city listed for it, so a gap never makes a store look cheap - each image says how many of the 21 that store actually listed. In-store prices can differ from listed ones.

Want a city or an item added? See my comment below.

**Correction (edited in):** the "whole basket" total under the images only counted items that *every* store in that city listed, so each city's total covered a different number of items — Victoria 16, Hamilton 17, Ottawa 9, Vancouver 10. That makes the totals fine within a city and wrong between cities: Ottawa is not 2.6x cheaper than Victoria. The item-by-item rows are not affected. I've fixed the tool and posted the corrected totals in a comment below. Sorry for the bad number.

Someone here said most of these chains are one company so comparing them is pointless, so I ran Ottawa, where six of the nine chains are Loblaw, and three more cities with it: Vancouver, Victoria and Hamilton, Oct 6, 21 brand-name products at exact pack size, every chain within 15 km of downtown. No store wins every row.

The tables are from PriceBite, a free Android app I made, on the Play Store under that name. Your own list gets a basket total at each store near you.

Prices from the stores' public websites and flyers.

**Correction (edited in):** the "whole basket" total under the images only counted items that *every* store in that city listed, so each city's total covered a different number of items — Victoria 16, Hamilton 17, Ottawa 9, Vancouver 10. That makes the totals fine within a city and wrong between cities: Ottawa is not 2.6x cheaper than Victoria. The item-by-item rows are not affected. I've fixed the tool and posted the corrected totals in a comment below. Sorry for the bad number.

The tables are from PriceBite, a free Android app I made, on the Play Store under that name. Your own list gets a basket total at each store near you.

Prices from the stores' public websites and flyers.

Sept 21, I checked 24 brand-name products, exact pack size, at all 13 chains within 15 km of downtown Vancouver. No store wins every row.

The table is from PriceBite, a free Android app I made, on the Play Store under that name. Your own list gets a basket total at each store near you.

Prices from the stores' public websites and flyers.