I got tired of seeing all the vibes based opinions on grocery store prices so I decided to go to 5 stores in one day to compare prices. These were the results. (TJ/Whole Foods/Safeway/Grocery Outlet/Costco)
I feel like there are a lot of posts/threads that go on that feel like they are 100% vibes based and come off as corporate proselytizing rather than actual reality. So I decided I was going to pick a single day and go to 5 of the top grocery stores and physically compare all the prices so I could cut through all the bullshit and just gather the numbers. I am not a influencer, I have zero online presence outside of Reddit, and I have no "skin in the game". I have no reason to try to sell one store over the other, but I felt like I was constantly seeing flat out misinformation about groceries online so felt like taking a day to do this.
Why go in person? Because stores like Trader Joe's and Costco don't post a lot of their prices and other online prices often vary from in store prices.
Where did I go? I went to Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Safeway, Grocery Outlet, and Costco. Four of them were the ones near downtown Oakland, the Costco was the San Leandro Costco.
It took me a couple hours, I picked 15 things that I figured were common house place food items that most people probably have stocked in some measure.
I have a pic I grabbed of every item on this list except one. If you don't believe one of them feel free to ask and I can post the picture.
Im doing my best to avoid "quality of food" talk. It's subjective, and generally most of this produce comes from the same places anyway.
Here are my thoughts on each individual store.
Trader Joes - They have a weird slant towards single item produce. Bananas are sold per banana not by the pound, potatos are the same etc making it hard to compare the prices of these items. Size of banana and all that starts to become an issue so without bringing a kitchen scale to each grocery store I can't really compare them well. Trader Joes probably has the best make-at-home frozen/refrigerated stuff. If you're the person that just wants one or two bananas and some pot stickers to reheat at home, you probably love Trader Joes. Price wise, they are pretty ass. The only place they competed was spaghetti for some reason but basically everything else was either the most expensive or second to Whole Foods. This is about what I expected, and what I believed before going in, but Reddit has an army of posters that will tell you not to believe it and Trader Joes is cheap. It's not.
-edit-
There seems to be A LOT of vitriol over my price listed on milk and eggs at TJs. I took a pic of the milk aisle and this was the cheapest I saw, people are saying it's a lot cheaper, i might go back to see if I missed it or if someone is going today id love to see a pic of it. I made a clear note on the sheet to show that I missed the lowest egg price and was using what they have online and fully disclosed this on the sheet before posting it. Next time I need milk im going back to TJs to make sure, so if I meesed that one up, my bad.
Whole Foods - Expensive. Consistently the worst of the lot for prices. There was a place where I snapped my neck alittle because for some reason they have really cheap Milk, not the cheapest, but cheaper than Safeway/TJs which is big deal for them. Whole Foods has two things really going for it. First, the actual food court lunch food is easily the best. If you're going to grab something to eat while shopping then it's good. Second is if you're looking for something, for lack of a better word, exotic, it probably is your best bet of finding it unless you want to make the trek to Berkeley Bowl. The cheese section is huge and if you are looking for some good cheese they will have it, they will have stuff like whole Duck etc.
Generally though I can't bring myself to shop here.
Safeway - Safeway catches heat on here for now ludicrously expensive it is. Which is bullshit and I don't know what people are talking about. The only place I found it the most expensive was Avacados for some reason. Seventeen more cents per Avocado here. Not sure what's up with that. It tied TJs for most expensive Blueberry.
After that it was the cheapest for Strawberries, Chicken Breast, and Ground Meats. It was also the cheapest for sliced cheeses if you use the digital coupon. If you're not trying to buy giant bags of stuff from Costco then it was the cheapest Rice too.
Safeway has a member system that requires you put your phone number in so I assume that is the thing that upsets people. I put the price of digital clipped coupons in (parenthesis) on the spreadsheet to make note of some of it.
The flip side of that being when you shop at Safeway, you get points on your account that you can use towards further savings. If you shop exclusively at Safeway it probably ends up being like $20-30 a month in extra savings.
Yes, Safeway is the only store that removed the handles from the paper bags. I don't know what the deal with that is, I don't like the handles on the bags, they rip and suck, but I don't like that they took them away. That is also upsetting.
Grocery Outlet - Wasn't sure if this was cheating but I wanted to make sure to visit one of the discount food stores. They have good deals. They put A LOT of effort into posting their price directly next to another stores price to emphasize how cheap it is, alot of those prices are bullshit and since I just left the other store I know it's bullshit.
It was tied with Safeway on cheapness for a lot of things but there was one place that made me go "wait what the fuck?" and that was eggs. I don't know how they do it but 99 cents for a dozen eggs is insanely cheap. Weirdly cheap. I really wonder what's happening on that front.
Costco - I felt compelled to make sure to include Costco even though it's a bulk store and generally you have to buy a shit ton in order to make use of these deals and you need a membership, but for science let's do it.
So one word for Costco. Liquids. If something is a liquid, Costco is the spot. Milk? Cheapest. Liquor? Cheapest. Soda? Cheapest. Gasoline? Cheapest. Sauces? Cheapest.
If you need shit by the gallon, Costco is your spot.
I usually only go to Costco to stock up a months worth of diet soda and fill up my gas tank so this was in line with that. The Avacados were super cheap, and even though I said I wasn't going to talk about quality, I struggle with Costco Produce. They are those bags of 6 super hard Avacados that are really difficult to mash up and I find their produce goes bad way faster than any other store for some reason or comes with some parts of the berries already turning. Just my personal opinion and not based in anything but vibes, sorry.
Meat prices at Costco are pretty underwhelming and generally not worth making the journey for them.
So thats all of them.
Stop telling people Safeway is overpriced, it's not. Stop telling people TJs is cheap, it's not. Don't buy everything from Costco, it's not worth it.
Everyone seems to agree Whole Foods is overpriced. It is.