Grocery Prices Going Up, According to Consumer Group

Gas prices are trending down this summer, but if you are driving to the supermarket, you’ve probably been spending that extra money on groceries.

A survey released by ConsumerWorld.org yesterday shows that prices have been going up at supermarkets across the region since last summer.

Those increases vary between three and nine percent for the items checked by ConsumerWorld.

The largest increase was at Market Basket, which made headlines last summer with an employee and customer boycott.

One of the big reasons for the increase at Market Basket was the elimination of its extra 4 percent across-the-board discount that was applied to all orders throughout 2014.

Higher beef and egg prices accounted for most of the rest of the increase there and at all chains, according to ConsumerWorld.

Chain price increase for surveyed items:

• Market Basket 9%
• Star Market 8%
• Stop & Shop 7%
• Price Rite 7%
• Aldi 6%
• Save-A-Lot 3%

“While Market Basket is perceived by many to be the lowest-priced supermarket, smaller limited assortment stores have even lower prices, but they have yet to be discovered by most shoppers,” commented Consumer World founder Edgar Dworsky.

The chain with the lowest prices in the survey was Aldi, where a basket of common store brand items was 19% less than Market Basket, 30% lower than Stop & Shop, and 37% lower than Star Market. Price Rite and Save-A-Lot, two other limited assortment stores, were 12-14% cheaper than Market Basket.

Salem is home to a Market Basket on Highland Avenue.

Consumer World checked the prices of nearly two dozen common store brand grocery items on August 5, 2015 at Market Basket (Chelsea), Stop & Shop (Chelsea), Star Market (Somerville), Aldi (Medford), Save-A-Lot (Chelsea) and Price Rite (Revere), and compared them to prices it found on August 6, 2014 at those same stores. Sixteen of those items were stocked by each of the six grocery chains in both 2014 and 2015.

Consumer World is a public service consumer resource guide with over 2000 links to everything “consumer”. It was founded by Dworsky, formerly the Director of Consumer Education at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation in Boston, in 1995.