A few weeks ago we ran a story marking the 10th anniversary of the riots in Midtown St. Petersburg. Staff writer Alex Pickett interviewed residents and found one in particular who hurled scorn at the new Sweetbay supermarket in Midtown, which has been hailed as a cornerstone of the district's resurgence.
"Fuck that bitch," the 25-year-old man, who gave his name as Jeremiah, said, pointing at Sweetbay. "The bitch is the highest damn thing. You can go to any other supermarket and it's cheaper. Man, we live next door to that bitch and we don't even shop there."
We'd heard it before: Groceries are more expensive in the 'hood. We figured it would be easy enough to find out.
So we did some price checking. And then we did some more. By the time we were done, we had hit five Sweetbays, seven Publixes, two Albertsons, a Winn Dixie, a Super Wal-Mart and a Super Target — from all over the Bay area. We checked prices on 11 products, most of them staples (bread, eggs, coffee … beer, of course).
Then we did some more checking. We were curious about another truism: that prices in specialty markets dwarf standard grocery stores. So we hit Wild Oats and Fresh Market in Tampa and Rollin' Oats in St. Pete, and price-checked foods that we chose as counterparts to those in the mass-market stores. That made 20 food outlets in all.
Here's a few things we found out:
• Groceries don't cost more at supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods. In fact, one basic fact about grocery-store pricing emerged in our survey: Most chains have the same prices for the same products from store to store. Kinda makes sense, huh? Almost everything we checked cost the same in the Midtown Sweetbay as the one in the upscale Hyde Park section of Tampa.
• Most prices fall in the same general ballpark among all supermarket chains. The exceptions came at the big box stores, which had prices all over the map. During the week we surveyed, Fuji apples cost $1.99 a pound virtually everywhere. At the Wal-Mart in Pinellas Park, they ran 88 cents. A dozen extra-large eggs cost $1.09 nearly across the board — except at Super Target, where they were 77 cents. Most house-brand milk cost $3.35-$3.39 a gallon at supermarkets. Wal-Mart ($3.48) and Target ($3.49) were slightly higher.
• With a handful of products, we found large price spreads. The one that stood out most was a three-quart plastic jug of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice: $4.29 at the Sweetbay; $5.49 at the Publixes, a 28-percent difference. That's like gas costing $1.10 at one station, and $1.41 across the street. "Why?" we wondered.
Steve Smith, vice president of merchandising for Sweetbay, explained in an e-mail that supermarkets either have Everyday Low Price (EDLP) (like Sweetbay) or High/Low pricing philosophies. "Sweetbay's everyday price on this product is $4.29 — and that is every day, every week," he continued. "For all other supermarket chains in this area, Albertson's, Winn-Dixie, and Publix, all of whom are High/Low, they have a very high everyday shelf price and then once a month or so they drastically reduce the price to try to drive traffic or drive a customer to stock up on an item. In this case, any of these other High/Low operators could advertise a price of $3.99 once a month."
Publix spokeswoman Shannon Patten begged to differ: "The man from Sweetbay, not being a Publix associate, it's hard for him to know how we do our business. At Publix, we have fresh orange juice products in our ad flyer every single week, and we give our customers excellent value."
A couple of weeks after our survey, news hit that orange juice prices were rising due to the worst Florida citrus crop in more than a decade. Last week, Sweetbay's price had risen to $4.69, while Publix's had remained at $5.49.
• Super Target edged Super Wal-Mart in our price comparison. Excluding the Fuji apples (Target didn't have them), our 10-item shopping list cost $31.08 at Walmart, $28.90 at Target.
• You do pay more at specialty stores for most products, presumably because they're better for you. A few were eye-openers, though. Wild Oats didn't stock Oscar Meyer beef franks, which topped out at $3.79 at Sweetbay, but you could substitute Coleman Natural Uncured hot dogs and pay $7.29 for a one-pound package.
Coffee was another pricey proposition at specialty outlets. Neither Fresh Market nor Wild Oats stocked Maxwell House, which ranged from $3.29 to $4.29 in supermarkets for an 11.5-ounce package. At Fresh Market, Peet's House Blend cost $9.99 for a 12-ounce package; at Wild Oats, Green Mountain Organic House Blend ran $8.49 for a 12-ounce pack. And as far as OJ, Rollin' Oats in St. Pete, the most bona fide health food store of any we surveyed, stocked Organic Valley Orange Juice at $6.49 — for a half gallon.
Check out the shopping list
.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.