Grocery Cart Compare: Whole Foods v. Giant Eagle, week 3

This is my third week of price matching. In the interest of space and time, I've eliminated from the list items that have appeared before, which we typically buy every week, as long as the prices at both stores were the same as previously reported. So this week is shorter.

I also noted where items were on sale. Whole Foods does not have a loyalty card like Giant Eagle for sale access, which is a benefit if you are skeptical about giving companies information for their marketing purposes. When I mark prices for Giant Eagle, I take the Advantage card price if something is on sale and mark it. It seems their organic items don't go on sale very often.

Item	Whole Foods	Giant Eagle
Organic homestyle waffles	1.99	3.79
Conventional frozen blueberries	2.99	3.99
Organic Valley Sour Cream	3.19	3.69
Organic unsalted butter	4.79	4.99
Cindy's Kitchen fresh ranch	5.99	N/A
Organic green pepper	2.99/lb	N/A*	*Conventional, 2.99/lb
Organic saute greens medley	6.99*	3.99**	*12 ounces, **5 ounces
Organic avocados (4)	4.99	5.99
Near East rice pilaf	1.67*	2.59	*on sale
Frontera taco sauce	2.00*	2.99	*on sale
Organic tomato paste	0.89	1.09

Whole Foods has the edge on this week's groceries too. I'm going to do this for one more week with Giant Eagle. I'm curious this spring to compare prices for produce with local farm markets.

I also thought it would be interesting to "price check" the items we get in our CSA against the average cost per share for the summer. This wouldn't be an exact comparison, since there are many benefits besides cost to using a CSA, but it is often praised as a way to save money on produce, and it would be interesting to see if that's strictly true.