The market basket, revisited

Back at the end of April I did a post called "The market basket" where I compared the local grocery store prices. In that post, I noted that I would continue this on a semi-regular basis, and since six months has elapsed I decided to revisit the stores and see how they stack up.

In the interim the Salisbury area has lost a store (the Giant at North Pointe) and plans are afoot to build a Food Lion in Crisfield. If this pans out, the residents of Crisfield will have the next-best option behind Wal-Mart insofar as price goes, and given the distance between Crisfield and Pocomoke, it may be very competitive as long as they hold the Salisbury stores' prices for the new location.

As a total food bill of the 20 items selected, here's how the stores compare. (Individual items can be found here on this Word Perfect document.)

Wal-Mart $42.21 (up 0.9% from April) Food Lion $50.56 (down 3.3% from April) Giant $55.61 (down 0.3% from April) Super Fresh $60.40 (up 5.9% from April)

Obviously, a lot of this depends on how many sale prices were in effect in April vs. October (my shopping date was October 29, I just held this for post-election posting.) But the trend has been prices staying pretty much the same over the six month period (except for Super Fresh), which is good news for Delmarva shoppers like myself.

So next April I'll do this once again and see how prices react, and if Super Fresh can remain in the market. I didn't know that the Giant that was closed was once a Super Fresh and twice now they've been the highest priced competitor in this survey. So it makes me wonder how long Super Fresh can stay in the game.