Shenanigans at the Grocery Store: Watch Out!

April 24th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under • by admin

A lot of us have it ingrained in our minds that when we go to the grocery store, that much larger packages will be the best deal on the cost per a given amount of the product. It’s one of those things that’s very common knowledge and it just makes sense. It cost less to package the added amount of product and you’re buying more of it, so it makes sense that the grocery store should give you a better deal than for smaller purchases.

Of course we don’t live in a very logical world. Good things happen to bad people all the time, people do things that make absolutely no sense, and now even grocery stores are defying logic in hopes of making some extra cash. In many cases, larger packages and containers of products, you’re actually paying more per unit price. In fact, in some cases the deal is much worse. Now you’re buying more product and paying more per a given amount of product. You’re probably buying much more product because you think you’re getting a deal, but now your buying un-needed product, and doing so at an inflated price!

I decided to have some fun with this little tidbit and go around to a few local grocery stores and see if I could find any instances of this going on, and I was pretty shocked to see how many instances of this practice was actually going on in my local super markets. I won’t mention any of the super market’s names, since none of you will probably have heard of them anyway, but I found a small package of Cheerios going for 13.1 cents per ounce, and the large package was 20.8 cents per ounce! I eat the cheap malt-o-meal cereal, and found that the small package was being sold for 14.0 cents per ounce, and the large package was selling for 18.5 cents per ounce! I looked at about 50 products that I normally use and found 13 instances where the small package was cheaper on a per unit than the large package.

Remember that a bigger package does not necessarily indicate a better deal. If the store provides you the cost per unit basis, they’ll do the math for you. Sometimes you might need to bring a calculator with you and make sure you’re not getting taken on the products that you consume on a regular basis. You might be surprised at how much money you’ll end up saving by buying in smaller packages.