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Holiday cuts give Walmart edge in Market Basket survey

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Walmart and Winn-Dixie recorded their lowest prices yet in our weekly Market Basket survey.

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By DENNIS JOYCE

djoyce@tampatrib.com

Published: October 23, 2009

TAMPA - Walmart set the stage Wednesday for this week's Market Basket when it announced price cuts on thousands of items, a week at a time, through the holiday season.

Bananas at 39 cents a pound is just one example. They've never been lower than 57 cents a pound at any of the five supermarkets we survey for Market Basket.

Every week, in the seven weeks since we started, Walmart has recorded the lowest total price on a market basket of 30 items.

And this week's Walmart total was the low-price leader's lowest total yet. Here are Walmart's weekly totals, week by week, beginning Sept. 10: $64.51, $64.05, $64.71, $65.11, $62.55, $64.01, $62.49.

Publix wasn't far behind this week, though.

Here's this week's Market Basket comparison, in order: Walmart $62.49, Publix $63.76, Target $69.60, Sweetbay $72.01 and Winn-Dixie $74.74.

Some highlights from our Thursday shopping trips:

Winn-Dixie

Shoppers might confuse their local Winn-Dixie with a Publix this week, given the large number of BOGO (buy one, get one) specials Winn-Dixie is running.

The deals include two-for-one Nilla wafers ($3.99), Campbell's Chunky soup ($2.89), Keebler cookies ($3.99) Betty Crocker cake mixes ($1.99) and Thomas' English muffins ($2.99).

These deals are great if you're buying what's on sale, but they come in for criticism when stores raise prices on other items to make up for the deals.

Case in point: Winn Dixie is running BOGO specials on more than 10 items this week while raising its prices on a head of iceberg lettuce (99 cents to $1.49), butter ($1.39 to $1.69), and store brand sandwich bread ($1.50 to $1.59).

Nonetheless, the total bill at Winn Dixie came to $74.74 this week – the cheapest it's been in six weeks.

Jeff Scullin

Walmart

I had noticed that the shelf space to the right of the Starkist tuna had been vacant for a few weeks. And that the price of the cheapest 5-oz. can of Starkist was steadily increasing. First it was 75 cents, then 86 and now 92.

Then it all became clear: This week, in that formerly empty spot, appeared dozens of cans of Walmart's store-brand "Great Value" tuna. For 72 cents.

It would make sense that when you introduce a new item in your store-brand lineup, you want the prices to be noticeably lower. It's likely that not many people would buy no-name tuna just to save 3 cents.

Janine Dorsey

Target

Target continues to tinker with milk prices.

This week, it's giving 2 percent milk drinkers a 10 cent break. A gallon of 2 percent costs $2.89. All other varieties: $2.99.

The Super Target we visited also made up for last week's lettuce shortage: It had tons of the green stuff this week, at 99 cents a head.

Shannon Behnken

Publix

If half the family likes chili and the other half likes fish, there are some neat sales at Publix this week.

Lean ground beef is $3.49 per pound and cans of Del Monte tomatoes are BOGO this week, a savings of $1.49 a can. Fish comes cheaper too, with 6 oz. mahi mahi portions $5.99 per pound, about $3 off. Salmon is $7.99 per pound, about $1 off.

Other notable savings: BOGO Kraft Mac n' Cheese, BOGO Planters nuts, Fuji apples about half off at 99 cents a pound, and BOGO Pepperidge Farm cookies. The coup of the week: General Mills cereals are BOGO, and an 18-oz. Cheerios box now contains one of five children's books – "What's Under the Bed," "Ballyhoo Boy," "Sleepy Head," "Tea for Ruby," and "Junkyard Fort." More on them is at spoonfulsofstories.com.

Richard Mullins

Sweetbay

Cute little purple circles pronouncing the store's trademark "Sweet Deals" popped up in every aisle this week.

But unlike the helpful and accurate price comparison sheets that Sweetbay posts now and then, or even the "Sweet Sale" circles that signal genuine price reductions, "Sweet Deals" are hard to figure out.

For example, a row of them appeared on each variety of 26-oz. Ragu pasta sauce. Sweet Deal? You decide: The price has been $1.89 for seven weeks.

Now, that price is indeed cheaper week after week than any of the stores in our survey except Walmart, where it's $1.56. But "Sweet Deals" aren't always cheaper than the competition.

The label doesn't appear to mean much.

This does: Vine-clustered tomatoes are on sale for $1.49 a pound, and that's as cheap as they've been anywhere since we started our survey.

Dennis Joyce

Editor Dennis Joyce can be reached at (813) 259-7604.

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