The Grocery Store Comparison Project

I have shopped at the same grocery store basically my entire life. Seriously. I have always been a Safeway kind of girl and no matter where we lived, I always shopped at the local Safeway. Recently I have been told that it's quite possible that I am overpaying for my groceries, which surprised me because we are pretty diligent about coupon use and club card savings. Not to mention I am usually on top of what is a less expensive alternative to an ingredient and can easily switch things out if something happens to be a great price.

With the amount of stores popping up all over, I became intrigued as to what other options were out there. As I visited the other stores, I realized that we could realistically cut Safeway out all together since these stores do have all the ingredients you could need, really with very few exceptions. But I wasn't about to transition right over without giving Safeway a fair shot. After all, it is known to have coupons and club card specials, which not all stores have. Plus it's a big chain so you can get on board with their products. But at the same time, we are the type of people who love to save a few bucks, so thus came the Grocery Store Project.

I started this project this week. I typically shop on Monday's so after this week, except the updates then, however since this week was the start, I wanted to do an intro post before I posted my first shopping trip adventure. So I will post my findings tomorrow from week 1 but first let's talk about how it works.

I am going to go to a different store each week, then the last week will be a combo of the stores, so I will see what I found for the best price and piece together stores and see how that adds up. Right now the stores I have on my list are Safeway, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, 99 Ranch Market, Target (they sell groceries now, ya know), Costco (although this may be tricky, I think it's worth a shot), Fresh and Easy, Grocery Outlet and Sprouts Yep, that many weeks, y'all. I am serious about my comparisons. If you happen to think of another store to add, I would love to hear your input and add it on my list.

Here's how the grocery lists will work...obviously we don't eat the same meals each week, and definitely won't want to do so for weeks on end, but you can assume that if I am doing a comparison that week it will have similar characteristics, as in it will include meals for 7 dinners per week, a couple of items that are stock up items that we only need to buy sometimes (cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc), and it will always be based off of some items that we have at home like frozen meat that we bought in a previous week, etc. But that will all balance out since we will always be taking from the freezer, and always buying something that goes in. Get what I mean? That may be hard to explain but I think you will see how it works as the weeks go by.

I will also include the items I bought, coupons I had, my basic meal plan for the week, store I went to, total amount spent and what my overall shopping experience was like. Feel free to ask any questions along the way.

Well I think that sums it up! Let's get started! Week 1 was Safeway (my old fav) so you will get to see that tomorrow!