I was wandering through some American online grocery store websites, and it seemed to me that some things were quite pricy compared to the UK. So I did a slightly more systematic survey, of the following online stores: Safeway, Albertsons, Buehlers (an Ohio chain) and Tesco (UK). I chose those stores either because they were simply ones I’d heard of, or they had usable websites (not all of the big chains do). I used Tesco for the UK comparison because it is right in the middle of the UK market - not especially cheap like Aldi, nor expensive like Marks & Spencer.
I looked up a selection of mundane grocery items, and always went for the store-brand options rather than name brands, but avoiding the super-cheap economy brands, such as Tesco Value. I avoided temporary offers such as two-for-one, loyalty card bonuses etc., which all of the stores offered. I also avoided anything up-market like organic, free-range, artisan etc. In several cases I had to adjust the UK price slightly because we don’t use the same standard sizes - sometimes the UK standard sizes are larger, sometimes they’re smaller.
Anyway, here’s what I got, which on the face of it bears out my impression that groceries are actually more expensive in the US than here (all prices in dollars):
I don’t know if food is more expensive in the US than in the UK, but do have a couple of notes.
A few of these items would be very hard to compare without looking at the same brands. Bread for example. I can get a loaf of bread for under a dollar at my local grocery store, and I can get one for about $4. It’s hard to control for this, even if picking house brands.
I’m not sure how prevelant this is in the UK, but in the US most grocery stores now use “Affnity” or “Membership” cards. The basic purpose of these is to track customers’ usage (both individual and aggregate). In order to make the customer use them, there are a large number of things at any given time that have a special price if you use your card. For example, I went to the store today, and the bill came to $103. After I scanned my card, it went down to $74. I would guess that, in average, by bill comes out 10% to 20% lower than the “list” prices. If these cards aren’t used in the UK, this might explain much of the difference.
I gotta think too…the US is a huuuge place compared to the UK. Every item must have a vastly different route from producer to market based on the location of the producer and the market.
Seems to me that grocery prices vary a lot across the US. Even for one chain, even for a local chain. Getting an avocado to California is much different than getting an avocado to Ohio. But getting an avocado to Manchester or London is pretty much the same. In the grand scheme of things.
I would suspect that grocery prices in the UK are more level across-the-board than in the US. You’ve also got different brands, different sources for fresh foods, different delivery costs…I don’t know that they could really be compared.
Heck, we’ve done gas price, milk price and tax comparisons on this board for the US. Those things vary a lot in price by state.
So what 'cho doin on this fine Saturday night, Clark?
Same as me I guess… Comparing grocery prices, and visiting the SDMB.
You may very well be right. But Ximenean makes a good point.
I live in the mountains, everything is trucked in from far away. But today I did end up buying 10 lbs of potatoes for $1.99.
Now, I did need to buy potatoes for some soup, but I sure didn’t need 10 lbs. But I will put them to use.
As I was considering buying just a few bakers for the job, or the big bag, it just stunned me that these tubers could be grown, harvested and shipped for all of 2 bucks.
This isn’t true in my experience. I lived in the U.K. from 1987 to 1990 and often discussed with other Americans living in the U.K. the comparative prices of food (and other things). Food in grocery stores, like other items in most stores, cost 40% more in the U.K. than in the U.S.
The following question just occurred to me: Are you sure you remembered to convert dollars to pounds (or the other way around)?
I live in the States and do business in the UK. My experience has been that it seems like for every dollar I spend in the US, I spend a pound in the UK. So a 2 dollar loaf of bread is 2 pounds in the UK. Which makes it more expensive to be in the UK.
But I will add this disclaimer: I never really looked that closely, this is just a perception and maybe if I wrote everything down and really compared I would be very surprised.
I’ll add this as well: My business partner in the UK, who spends a much more even amount of time in both countries, often says how much cheaper it is to be here.
It all depends on if you’re going to the store to grab a couple things, or if you’ve carefully planned out a shopping list and looked for the sales.
Bread here runs from 4 to .50 a loaf. Pop can be $5-$3 per 12-pack. Today I saw buy-one-get-one free on roasts, and a sticker error got one customer over 7 pounds of roast for less than $6.
It also depends where you shop. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods is going to make your wallet cry, but places like Kroger and Save-A-Lot are a little less harsh. Kroger has a customer card that you ring up with your order and it takes some money off of items that are advertised as being on sale. Not using a card really jacks up the costs. It’s believed that they intentionally jack up the prices just so you’re forced to use the card (it keeps track of your purchases) to bring them back down to what used to be normal- whether this is true or not I’m not sure but the cynic in me wouldn’t be surprised.
There’s always coupons and deals going on. This week we’ve had a deal going where if you buy ten of specifically selected items (ten altogether, not ten of each) you get a bonus $5 at the end. People have really been taking advantage of that, I’ve seen $80 drop to $40. After work I bought 10 of the items- 5 frozen meals and 5 juices- and used a $2 off coupon. What would’ve cost me $18 without sales cost me just $8.
So if you’re a smart shopper, it’s not too bad. But if you’re not, yeah, it really does add up quickly.
Do the sizes and weightd he put in the OP not count as package size?
I found groceries in Florida way, way more expensive than in the UK. I was shopping with a Floridan friend who was very budget-conscious, not doing tourist shopping which would inevitably end up being more expensive.
I adjusted for package sizes where necessary. E.g. loaves of sliced bread come in 800g (28oz) packs in the UK, but the US stores only seemed to go up to 24oz before getting stupidly expensive. I ordered everything by price so that I could pick out the “basic, non-fancy” option in all cases. I did avoid loyalty card bonuses (which seem similar in both countries) and yes, I converted pounds to dollars. It’s all in the OP.
As a Brit in the US, I too find this: especially for basic food items like bread and fresh meats and fruit and veg, America is surprisingly expensive, at least on the East Coast.
Junk food (pop, crisps, chocolate) and eating out are extremely cheap.
One weird thing about shopping for food in America is that you either get the dirt cheap crap from walmart, or the very expensive organic hipster stuff from whole foods or a coop. There’s very little middle ground – decent stuff that tastes OK, like you get at tesco.
For comparison, a nice (not crap plastic, but not organic either) loaf of bread will cost you under $1 at tesco in the UK. If you want noncrap bread in the Chapel Hill, NC area, expect to pay $3.
It really depends on where you’re living… notice that put down the sabre finds groceries expensive on the east coast. Well, I also found groceries expensive when I stayed in East Kensington, compared to what I pay at home in the midwest. I also find groceries expensive in New York City.
In general they’re going to cost much more at smaller markets than at bigger ones, so you’re going to pay through the nose in small towns and in dense metropolitain areas that the big box stores can’t sprawl in… the IGA in my small town charges almost twice as much for some items as does the Meijer ten miles away, in the city.
A few useful prices I can remember off the top off my head, at the Meijer where I do most of my shopping, are
Loaf bread: can get a spongy soft whole wheat loaf for $2 or slightly less
Gallon of milk: about $2
8oz block cheddar cheese: about $5, but Americans are expected to want shredded cheese, which is cheaper
Large-size box of breakfast cereal: about $4
Oops, got lost in my own post and forgot my original point: websites for store chains seem to want to charge the most expensive price they can. Drugstore.com, I know, charges way more than my local CVS, and a heck of a lot more than the Meijer ten miles down the road.
So what you’re seeing are the worst case scenario prices, I’d bet.
Really? That’s weird. The Tesco prices online are the same as the ones instore. Of course, we have very widespread home delivery and (according to a thread I read on here) that’s not been very successful in the US; if the prices were different, there’d be an uproar.
I travel a lot to the states with work and holidays and I know that the US supermarket prices certainly feel more expensive to me. With a couple of exceptions.
Standard cupboard items are pricier, pasta, rices, sauces, bread, cereal, vegetables and fruit etc.
However, raw meat and seafood are cheaper as are certain ethnic foods (mexican particularly…duh!)
Again, that is anecdotal as I don’t have the figures to hand though I do have a bunch of expenses receipts that I could dig out.
I do think we are spoiled in the UK in terms of access to cheap groceries and stuff. TESCO gets a load of flack but for example, I know I can get good quality toiler paper there for the equivalent of $1.75 for 12 and dishwasher tablets $1.50 for 30. I do shop around in the US stores and can’t find equivalent value.
Grocery prices here are also pretty volatile. Produce and meat prices have a huge range, and even staples seem to change a great deal–soda, for example, varies from $2/12 pack to $5/12 pack, and the type of bread I buy is normally $2.75 a loaf at my local Tom Thumb but goes on sale for $2/loaf every third week or so. (Of course, at my local Wal-mart it’s always $1.78, so I try to buy it there.) I bet that at any given time, a third or more of the things they sell are “on sale”, which means that the normal listed price is really the upper limit of how much the item ever costs.
I think this volatility comes from too much market research–there are lots of loss-leaders (or near loss leaders) in American grocery stores to get you in the door. I am wondering if that’s why our junk food is cheaper–they get us in there with cheap chips and soda, and then sell us basics at a higher profit margin.