9 ms·

This rings pretty true to me. I live in Manhattan, and my wife is a personal chef, so she has to be one of the world's foremost collectors of anecdotal grocery

This rings pretty true to me. I live in Manhattan, and my wife is a personal chef, so she has to be one of the world's foremost collectors of anecdotal grocery price data you'll ever meet. She's noticed a lot of weird dissonances in the way people think about grocery pricing over the years I've known her. For example, despite its reputation, Whole Foods has some of the cheapest prices on staple pantry items in the city. Things like flour, sugar, eggs, butter, olive oil, milk, and rice, as well as many of the "365" branded packaged products are actually much cheaper than "low end" grocery stores like Gristedes or Key Food. Trader Joe's has a reputation as a high end grocery as well, but they have incredibly cheap produce and other perishables. If you go to Gristedes and buy a box of corn flakes you're going to spend $4-6. For that price you can buy 24 eggs! At Key Food you can buy pork chops for $2 / pound. Canned beans and other non-perishables can also be incredibly cheap. With the exception of the corn flakes, which - while delicious - is actually loaded with corn syrup - everything I just listed is perfectly healthy when prepared at home. Anecdotally, my mother spends an absolute fortune on nasty weight watchers meals because she believes they are "healthier" than just cooking herself a piece of chicken and some broccoli. My sister will eat a $3 lara bar that is "made with real fruit!" instead of a 25c banana. It doesn't surprise me that within the universe of packaged foods, people think that the expensive ones are healthier than the cheap ones. But I just wish people would figure out that within the universe of foods, the packaged ones are both more expensive and typically less healthy than cooking your own food.

lintiness 10y ago
people pay for weight watchers because it systematically manages their caloric intake, not because they believe the food is healthy.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  Some people do.
- crottypeter 10y ago
  citation needed. Maybe you mean people should ... I have had people hopefully ask me "It must be healthy because it's weight watchers, mustn't it?" when the food in question was a chocolate mouse.
  - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
    Mice are pretty lean, you know.
maxerickson 10y ago
Branded Corn Flakes are nearly pure starch but contain 0 corn syrup (and not all that much sugar). It's just cooked corn.
tootie 10y ago
Gristedes is a complete mystery to me. The one near me is incredibly expensive. The 24-hour convenience store is cheaper.
- avn2109 10y ago
  Gristedes is awful and I shop there all the time. They survive by maximizing the quantity (proximity * selection). Though they cost the same as the bodega, they have more stuff and are just as close (right across the street from my apt). Ten minutes closer than Whole Foods, and sometimes that's enough to lure me in.
kuschku 10y ago
Btw, the reason Trader Joe's is so cheap: It belongs to ALDI Nord, the sibling company of ALDI Süd, which runs the US ALDI markets. Founded by two brothers, the ALDI chains have the concept of insanely cheap products, but no rebates, no coupons, no extra - usually saving money by just rolling the entire pallet directly into the store from the truck, having no storage space, nor having to pay anyone to unload it.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Aldi is insanely cheap, and I mean that literally: I feel as if I am insane to spend my money elsewhere. As much as I love Wegmans, those "helping hands" corralling shopping carts in the sprawling parking lots have to be paid, and it comes out of my purchase.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Ive also found that US Aldi is also carrying some Trader Joes products. I was quite thankful, given we do make a trek to the Trader Joes about 1:20 away. Our Aldi is 10 minutes away. I've also found fresh foods, cheeses, some wines to be of really good quality. And if something's bad, they have a "replace+money back" guarantee - as in, 'were sorry you had to come back, here's your money and the goods for your hassle'.
  - xherberta 10y ago
    OK, but do think through how you might be better off with a little less in your account and the people around you having jobs, as opposed to having more in your account while unemployed grocery workers throw rocks at your shuttle service and vote in a ridiculous gov't. But if you want to buy local beer and local socks and support local jobs in other ways with the extra $, coolio.
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      I'm from Ithaca. We don't have shuttle services or unemployed grocery workers throwing rocks or a ridiculous government, unless you find it ridiculous that our mayor literally walks the walk on reducing CO2 emissions by selling his car and having turned his dedicated parking space into a teeny tiny park with benches and potted plants. You may be thinking of somewhere else.
justinator 10y ago
Are these grocery stores you're comparing to also in Manhattan? If so, there may be other pressures at work to keep prices in most all stores high, with perhaps the boutique store (Whole Foods) being able to have slightly lower prices for strategic reasons. I've worked in a store that never, ever pulled a profit, but felt like more advertisement for another location that certainly did. I mean, you did mention the store by name, here. The most expensive food I've ever bought were in small bodega stores (unhealthy food), or like the pantry of a camping place (where else am I going to?) Your post piqued my interest with your price of 2 dozen eggss: $4-$6 seems on the steep end. Lots of prior HN discussion on chicken egg economics ;)
- dustinmr 10y ago
  For what it's worth, I recently compared orders using Instacart between a Whole Foods and Publix (in Miami if it matters). I chose equivalent items from each (I.e., if I got the organic version, that's what I got at both stores). Whole Foods was about $3 cheaper on an $80 order. It wasn't an exact comparison, as they don't always have the same products/weights, etc. But it was indicative of how I would buy at each store.
dominotw 10y ago
>Whole Foods has some of the cheapest prices on staple pantry items in the city But they price gouge you if you don't stick to these items. I am eating their small soup atm, which I bought at outrageous price of $8 . You have to put on blinders and stick to the script if you go to whole foods, there is a reason this place is mockingly called 'whole paycheck' .
- matwood 10y ago
  > But they price gouge you if you don't stick to these items. This is pretty much any grocery store. Margins in grocery are incredibly thin so they have to sell some things near cost to get people in, and then selling other things above to make some money.
kurthr 10y ago
I agree in CA, and if you follow their SPECIALS you can do even better... they explicitly price some things to be competitive, but I would guess that a lot of it is just that they are making their profit on the specialty items ($20 crackers) than on the bulk food or everyday staples. There are full time moms who comparison shop at WholePaycheck, and they know it.
tacon 10y ago
Where are those social app systems that process your grocery receipts and show where the savings on things you buy are at the moment? I remember a Mixergy interview from years ago where a Techstars team was working on processing receipts to share, but then they pivoted. If they captured all the data and gave me back a detailed breakdown of what I bought in machine readable format (the stores aren't going to do that), I'd be happy if they used the collected data to rate stores on prices, rate my purchases on healthiness, etc. Basically, I want your wife's brain and memory in an app.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  >> Where are those social app systems that process your grocery receipts and show where the savings on things you buy are at the moment? The major supermarkets in the UK did something like this (they might still do it). If you shopped online, after your order had been delivered you would receive an email telling you whether your shop would have been cheaper or more expensive at their biggest competitor and by how much. If your shop in Tesco for example worked out £3 more expensive than if you'd done the shop in ASDA they would refund you the difference or give you a coupon. The limitation was that it did not apply to own-brand items I believe. The problem I think with a third party doing something like this is that it'll just lead to a price war. Supermarkets are able to squeeze their suppliers pretty hard and while you might save 10p on your milk some local farmer ends up totally screwed with no bargaining position.
- matheweis 10y ago
  A partner and I (failed when we) founded Groceree, an app that did almost exactly this. The biggest problem we were unable to solve was incentivizing users to use the app and give us the data. Users of smartphones tended to be well off and not interested in the savings. Less well off users that were interested in the savings had very busy lives and/or lacked the discipline to do the planning before shopping. Potential users would be excited about the idea but didn't want to follow through at scale. Anyhow, there is another app that has come out since (Basket), that is very similar to what we wanted to build. They seem to have done better on the incentivization front. Might check Basket out and see if it does what you want. (I have no relationship with them). Incidentally, our data suggested that if you were willing to shop at 3 or more stores you could save on average more than 85% on your grocery bills... the savings are potentially huge.
matwood 10y ago
I was just arguing with co-workers about WF the other day. I was trying to explain that for a lot of the staples (even some beers!) they were in fact cheaper and much higher quality. I do all of the grocery shopping and cooking in my house, so I know prices on certain things at the various stores around town. I had written off WF until going in one day on a whim, and I was pleasantly surprised. Right now, my most cost effective yet high quality ingredient shopping trip consists of going to Walmart for anything in a package and WF for produce/fresh things.
cgvgffyv 10y ago
What if you eat packaged foods because you're too scared of making yourself sick because you've missed something very obvious while cooking that everyone else knows about? Are there any YouTube videos of paranoid cooking? ie they'd teach where to look to see if you've screwed up etc. Asking for a friend.
- summarite 10y ago
  There's pretty much no food in a modern supermarket that will be unhealthy/kill you if you don't cook it. Like, even meat you could pretty much eat raw. But it is easier to digest and healthier when prepared properly and that comes with practice. Start cooking. Any vegetable can be boiled and any meat or fish can be grilled/fried. You'll figure out with time how to make things tasty, just avoid too much sugar and too much salt. And don't eat anything if it tastes like crap, that will save you from most unhealthy things.
  - richardjs 10y ago
    What's your source for that? The CDC estimates 1 in 6 people a year get sick from food eaten in the US, and I can't imagine that none of that food is from a modern supermarket. Poultry, for example, "often contains harmful bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter." [1] That said, it's not hard to cook food safely. The USDA publishes guidelines [2], which you can then adjust with your own experience and research. (The guidelines are just guidelines, and lack nuance. For example, chicken cooked lower than 165 can still be safe, but takes longer to pasteurize. [3]) Of course, despite all this, cooking isn't a high-risk activity. People everywhere of mixed (or lax) skills and safety have been doing it for thousands of years, and yet foodborne illness is not mankind's single greatest existential threat. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-1998-2008.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-... [2] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/basics-for-handling-food-safely/ct_index https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety... [3] http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-gui...
rz2k 10y ago
I believe that Whole Foods made a strategic decision to avoid large suppliers like Kraft Heinz and Procter & Gamble, because they have too little bargaining power with large companies. The same people who may have defaulted to picking whatever brands their parents or even grandparents chose, were willing to choose new brands in Whole Foods. Not only were the old brands missing from the shelves, but the friendly people working there all seemed to think these new brands were about treating your body like a temple. In the case of these new brands, they probably meet the same sanitary standards most of the time, and may be more healthy or better for the environment a lot of the time. However, I am convinced that their biggest feature is being that it lets Whole Foods feel like it is as big as Walmart when its purchasing managers negotiate with their suppliers. -- On another subject, while it may not help, Wolfram|Alpha lets you quickly approximate a consolidated "nutrition facts" for any recipe. It could be easy to compare to the weight watchers meal. For example: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F4+lb+chicken+breast+%2B+1+broccoli+bunch+%2B+1%2F2+lemon+%2B+1%2F2+onion+%2B+3+tsp+olive+oil+%2B+2+tsp+butter+%2B+1+tsp+of+thyme+%2B+1%2F4+tsp+salt https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F4+lb+chicken+breas...
- hfsktr 10y ago
  Thank you so much for that link. I've been searching for every ingredient and having to guess at some and that is really helpful. I didn't realize you could do that.
  - rz2k 10y ago
    I find it difficult to find out the explicit operators in Wolfram|Alpha. Using '+' seems obvious once you see it, but it wasn't to me before. Adding modifiers, like "steamed broccoli" might improve the accuracy of some of the statistics, but it took me a while to even find out that "head of broccoli" confuses it, while "bunch of broccoli" does not.

lintiness 10y ago

people pay for weight watchers because it systematically manages their caloric intake, not because they believe the food is healthy.

WalterSear 10y ago
Some people do.
crottypeter 10y ago
citation needed. Maybe you mean people should ... I have had people hopefully ask me "It must be healthy because it's weight watchers, mustn't it?" when the food in question was a chocolate mouse.
- ConceptJunkie 10y ago
  Mice are pretty lean, you know.

maxerickson 10y ago

Branded Corn Flakes are nearly pure starch but contain 0 corn syrup (and not all that much sugar). It's just cooked corn.

tootie 10y ago

Gristedes is a complete mystery to me. The one near me is incredibly expensive. The 24-hour convenience store is cheaper.

avn2109 10y ago
Gristedes is awful and I shop there all the time. They survive by maximizing the quantity (proximity * selection). Though they cost the same as the bodega, they have more stuff and are just as close (right across the street from my apt). Ten minutes closer than Whole Foods, and sometimes that's enough to lure me in.

kuschku 10y ago

Btw, the reason Trader Joe's is so cheap: It belongs to ALDI Nord, the sibling company of ALDI Süd, which runs the US ALDI markets. Founded by two brothers, the ALDI chains have the concept of insanely cheap products, but no rebates, no coupons, no extra - usually saving money by just rolling the entire pallet directly into the store from the truck, having no storage space, nor having to pay anyone to unload it.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Aldi is insanely cheap, and I mean that literally: I feel as if I am insane to spend my money elsewhere. As much as I love Wegmans, those "helping hands" corralling shopping carts in the sprawling parking lots have to be paid, and it comes out of my purchase.
- kefka 10y ago
  Ive also found that US Aldi is also carrying some Trader Joes products. I was quite thankful, given we do make a trek to the Trader Joes about 1:20 away. Our Aldi is 10 minutes away. I've also found fresh foods, cheeses, some wines to be of really good quality. And if something's bad, they have a "replace+money back" guarantee - as in, 'were sorry you had to come back, here's your money and the goods for your hassle'.
- xherberta 10y ago
  OK, but do think through how you might be better off with a little less in your account and the people around you having jobs, as opposed to having more in your account while unemployed grocery workers throw rocks at your shuttle service and vote in a ridiculous gov't. But if you want to buy local beer and local socks and support local jobs in other ways with the extra $, coolio.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    I'm from Ithaca. We don't have shuttle services or unemployed grocery workers throwing rocks or a ridiculous government, unless you find it ridiculous that our mayor literally walks the walk on reducing CO2 emissions by selling his car and having turned his dedicated parking space into a teeny tiny park with benches and potted plants. You may be thinking of somewhere else.

justinator 10y ago

Are these grocery stores you're comparing to also in Manhattan? If so, there may be other pressures at work to keep prices in most all stores high, with perhaps the boutique store (Whole Foods) being able to have slightly lower prices for strategic reasons. I've worked in a store that never, ever pulled a profit, but felt like more advertisement for another location that certainly did. I mean, you did mention the store by name, here. The most expensive food I've ever bought were in small bodega stores (unhealthy food), or like the pantry of a camping place (where else am I going to?) Your post piqued my interest with your price of 2 dozen eggss: $4-$6 seems on the steep end. Lots of prior HN discussion on chicken egg economics ;)

dustinmr 10y ago
For what it's worth, I recently compared orders using Instacart between a Whole Foods and Publix (in Miami if it matters). I chose equivalent items from each (I.e., if I got the organic version, that's what I got at both stores). Whole Foods was about $3 cheaper on an $80 order. It wasn't an exact comparison, as they don't always have the same products/weights, etc. But it was indicative of how I would buy at each store.

dominotw 10y ago

>Whole Foods has some of the cheapest prices on staple pantry items in the city But they price gouge you if you don't stick to these items. I am eating their small soup atm, which I bought at outrageous price of $8 . You have to put on blinders and stick to the script if you go to whole foods, there is a reason this place is mockingly called 'whole paycheck' .

matwood 10y ago
> But they price gouge you if you don't stick to these items. This is pretty much any grocery store. Margins in grocery are incredibly thin so they have to sell some things near cost to get people in, and then selling other things above to make some money.

kurthr 10y ago

I agree in CA, and if you follow their SPECIALS you can do even better... they explicitly price some things to be competitive, but I would guess that a lot of it is just that they are making their profit on the specialty items ($20 crackers) than on the bulk food or everyday staples. There are full time moms who comparison shop at WholePaycheck, and they know it.

tacon 10y ago

Where are those social app systems that process your grocery receipts and show where the savings on things you buy are at the moment? I remember a Mixergy interview from years ago where a Techstars team was working on processing receipts to share, but then they pivoted. If they captured all the data and gave me back a detailed breakdown of what I bought in machine readable format (the stores aren't going to do that), I'd be happy if they used the collected data to rate stores on prices, rate my purchases on healthiness, etc. Basically, I want your wife's brain and memory in an app.

k-mcgrady 10y ago
>> Where are those social app systems that process your grocery receipts and show where the savings on things you buy are at the moment? The major supermarkets in the UK did something like this (they might still do it). If you shopped online, after your order had been delivered you would receive an email telling you whether your shop would have been cheaper or more expensive at their biggest competitor and by how much. If your shop in Tesco for example worked out £3 more expensive than if you'd done the shop in ASDA they would refund you the difference or give you a coupon. The limitation was that it did not apply to own-brand items I believe. The problem I think with a third party doing something like this is that it'll just lead to a price war. Supermarkets are able to squeeze their suppliers pretty hard and while you might save 10p on your milk some local farmer ends up totally screwed with no bargaining position.
matheweis 10y ago
A partner and I (failed when we) founded Groceree, an app that did almost exactly this. The biggest problem we were unable to solve was incentivizing users to use the app and give us the data. Users of smartphones tended to be well off and not interested in the savings. Less well off users that were interested in the savings had very busy lives and/or lacked the discipline to do the planning before shopping. Potential users would be excited about the idea but didn't want to follow through at scale. Anyhow, there is another app that has come out since (Basket), that is very similar to what we wanted to build. They seem to have done better on the incentivization front. Might check Basket out and see if it does what you want. (I have no relationship with them). Incidentally, our data suggested that if you were willing to shop at 3 or more stores you could save on average more than 85% on your grocery bills... the savings are potentially huge.

matwood 10y ago

I was just arguing with co-workers about WF the other day. I was trying to explain that for a lot of the staples (even some beers!) they were in fact cheaper and much higher quality. I do all of the grocery shopping and cooking in my house, so I know prices on certain things at the various stores around town. I had written off WF until going in one day on a whim, and I was pleasantly surprised. Right now, my most cost effective yet high quality ingredient shopping trip consists of going to Walmart for anything in a package and WF for produce/fresh things.

cgvgffyv 10y ago

What if you eat packaged foods because you're too scared of making yourself sick because you've missed something very obvious while cooking that everyone else knows about? Are there any YouTube videos of paranoid cooking? ie they'd teach where to look to see if you've screwed up etc. Asking for a friend.

summarite 10y ago
There's pretty much no food in a modern supermarket that will be unhealthy/kill you if you don't cook it. Like, even meat you could pretty much eat raw. But it is easier to digest and healthier when prepared properly and that comes with practice. Start cooking. Any vegetable can be boiled and any meat or fish can be grilled/fried. You'll figure out with time how to make things tasty, just avoid too much sugar and too much salt. And don't eat anything if it tastes like crap, that will save you from most unhealthy things.
- richardjs 10y ago
  What's your source for that? The CDC estimates 1 in 6 people a year get sick from food eaten in the US, and I can't imagine that none of that food is from a modern supermarket. Poultry, for example, "often contains harmful bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter." [1] That said, it's not hard to cook food safely. The USDA publishes guidelines [2], which you can then adjust with your own experience and research. (The guidelines are just guidelines, and lack nuance. For example, chicken cooked lower than 165 can still be safe, but takes longer to pasteurize. [3]) Of course, despite all this, cooking isn't a high-risk activity. People everywhere of mixed (or lax) skills and safety have been doing it for thousands of years, and yet foodborne illness is not mankind's single greatest existential threat. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-1998-2008.html https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/attribution/attribution-... [2] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/basics-for-handling-food-safely/ct_index https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety... [3] http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-gui...

rz2k 10y ago

I believe that Whole Foods made a strategic decision to avoid large suppliers like Kraft Heinz and Procter & Gamble, because they have too little bargaining power with large companies. The same people who may have defaulted to picking whatever brands their parents or even grandparents chose, were willing to choose new brands in Whole Foods. Not only were the old brands missing from the shelves, but the friendly people working there all seemed to think these new brands were about treating your body like a temple. In the case of these new brands, they probably meet the same sanitary standards most of the time, and may be more healthy or better for the environment a lot of the time. However, I am convinced that their biggest feature is being that it lets Whole Foods feel like it is as big as Walmart when its purchasing managers negotiate with their suppliers. -- On another subject, while it may not help, Wolfram|Alpha lets you quickly approximate a consolidated "nutrition facts" for any recipe. It could be easy to compare to the weight watchers meal. For example: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F4+lb+chicken+breast+%2B+1+broccoli+bunch+%2B+1%2F2+lemon+%2B+1%2F2+onion+%2B+3+tsp+olive+oil+%2B+2+tsp+butter+%2B+1+tsp+of+thyme+%2B+1%2F4+tsp+salt https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F4+lb+chicken+breas...

hfsktr 10y ago
Thank you so much for that link. I've been searching for every ingredient and having to guess at some and that is really helpful. I didn't realize you could do that.
- rz2k 10y ago
  I find it difficult to find out the explicit operators in Wolfram|Alpha. Using '+' seems obvious once you see it, but it wasn't to me before. Adding modifiers, like "steamed broccoli" might improve the accuracy of some of the statistics, but it took me a while to even find out that "head of broccoli" confuses it, while "bunch of broccoli" does not.