Recently, I stopped at Stanley's at North & Elston for a little bit of produce. It was just a small, mid-week re-stocking trip. Ten minutes, in-and-out.
Stanley's has been selling produce at that same corner for as long as I can remember, and they've recently renovated the store. It's bigger, brighter, better stocked, and a little more interesting to browse through. They have expanded refrigerated and dry-goods sections. A vegetarian could easily do all of their shopping there.
I walked out with some standard stuff: white button mushrooms, a bag of spinach, a couple apples, a Spanish onion, some red potatoes, a green pepper, and a couple jalapenos. The total bill was $7.32. While looking over my receipt, I was reminded of a post I read at FCG concerning Stanley's post-renovation prices. I'm pretty price-conscious and I didn't think my bill was particularly high, but I remained curious. Was $7.32 a good price for all this stuff? It "felt" like a decent price, but what do other people charge?I figured that the items I bought that night were pretty standard, so I started a price survey. Over the course of the next two weeks, I compared the prices of the items that I bought at Stanleys to the prices at Dominick's, Whole Foods, and my favorite, Marketplace on Oakton. This is a simple price survey, entirely unscientific, and does not account for the quality of the product in any way. (Note: All Whole Foods prices were taken from conventionally-grown products).
The results are not surprising. Marketplace is the most inexpensive of the four, with Stanley's about 20% more expensive. Dominick's is about twice the cost of Marketplace, and Whole Foods is about triple. The products that had the biggest price discrepancy were peppers. Green peppers were $0.89/lb at Marketplace and $3.99/lb at WF. Jalapenos went from $0.98 to $3.99.
What's the moral of the story? Nothing that you probably don't already know:
Shop local, shop independent, shop smart.