Consumer Reports deems Costco least expensive supermarket

With the Winter Olympics underway, Consumer Reports staged its own competition—albeit with less aerodynamic uniforms—to determine the least and most expensive supermarkets in the US.

Working with the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consultancy, the publication compared prices for a grocery haul of dozens of items across six metro areas over the same 48-hour period.

Since Walmart is, as the article states, “the largest and most ubiquitous grocery retailer in the US,” the comparison used prices at Walmart as a baseline. Other supermarkets were ranked by how much cheaper or more expensive they were than Walmart.

Among the 31 supermarkets it ranked nationally, the most expensive—you’ll never guess—was Whole Foods, with a basket that averaged 39.7% higher than Walmart’s. The next most expensive was Shaw’s, which was 31.9% higher than Walmart, followed by El Rancho (+30.1%) and Jewel-Osco (+29.7%).

As for the least expensive, the gold medal went to Costco, where the shopping list was 21.4% cheaper than Walmart, followed by BJ’s (-21%) and Lidl (-8.5%).

Befitting a story about groceries, comparison-wise there are plenty of apples and oranges here. For starters, of course, BJ’s and Costco require annual membership fees ($60 and $65 a year for basic memberships, respectively), which are not accounted for in the comparison.

Also, as CR notes in the article, many of the grocery items that were compared were national brands, meaning the comparison was not as “robust” with supermarkets with more private-label offerings.

“In the Chicago-area analysis, baskets comparing prices at Food4Less, Jewel-Osco, Marianos, Meijer, Target, and Walmart all contained 56 items,” the article stated. “By contrast, baskets comparing Trader Joe’s prices to Walmart’s in Chicago contained 23 items.”

So take it with a big Morton’s private-label grain of salt when it comes to the magazine’s comparative ratings for Trader Joe’s prices (24.6% higher than Walmart) and Aldi (8.3% lower).

According to recent rankings from Numerator, Trader Joe’s sells the greatest share of private-label products at 79%, followed by Aldi, with 77%.