In my last post I compared prices with my small regional grocery that has 215 stores and Wal-Mart that has 11,000 stores. That was a real eye opener.
This week I went to my larger national grocery store, Kroger, that has 3,700 stores. Surely they would be much less than my smaller grocery with all that buying power, right? Nope. Out of 50 items that I compared, Kroger was less than my other grocery and Wal-Mart only on 5 items! And not very much on each item, on average 30 – 40 cents. This is not enough to make me switch to them. Now I just read an article on comparisons between Kroger and Wal-Mart written by Cheapisms.com and although they agree that Wal-Mart beats Kroger prices, there were other factors to consider. A lot of people that commented said that they didn’t like shopping at Wal-Mart because the stores were dirty and the employees were not nice and too few to even find for any assistance. I didn’t find that at the one in my area. It was very clean and there was always someone walking around if I had a question. The article also cited Kroger’s loyalty card benefits and sales. My small grocery has a great fuel perks program that beats Kroger’s hands down. And although Wal-Mart doesn’t have a big weekly sales flyer, I found plenty of items on sale in the store, along with plenty of coupons to be found online.  So I guess the upshot would be for you to check things out if you are trying to trim your budget.
Next I want to check out Target. I never even thought of them for groceries but a good friend of mine just told me that she has switched from Kroger to Target. Especially for the meats! I’ll let you know!