How do the prices compare to other grocery chains?

FALL RIVER — Last month, Stop & Shop’s parent company announced that an as-yet-undetermined number of its grocery stores in the Northeast were at risk of closing due to underperformance. A company executive blamed part of the blame on Stop & Shop losing customers to cheaper competitors, saying the store’s prices were too high.

“The value proposition and pricing offered by Stop & Shop is simply not strong enough,” said JJ Fleeman, U.S. managing director of Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch company that owns Stop & Shop. Speaking during an investor webcast on May 23, Fleeman promised that the company would “step up its pricing investments.”

So how competitive is Stop & Shop? Let’s take a supermarket roundup to find out which grocery store chain in Fall River is the cheapest.

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What was on our grocery list

We visited six Fall River supermarket chains on June 25 with a shopping list and a calculator. We were looking for six basic products that an average family could buy:

Milk: one gallon, whole
Eggs: a dozen large, brown or white ones
Bread: a 20-ounce loaf of sliced white
Bananas: £1
Chicken: boneless, skinless breast, packaged but not frozen, one pound
Ice: 1.5 litre carton, because you deserve a little treat

In all cases, we preferred store brand products and, if we had the choice between organic and non-organic foods, we opted for the cheap regular products. With food prices rising, you have to save money.

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What stores did we look at in Fall River?

We checked the Stop by and shop at 501 Rodman St. against:

Shaw’s4171 N. Main St.
Market basket, 600 William S. Canning Boulevard.
Aldi, 485 William S. Canning Boulevard
Walmart Supercenter638, Quequechan Street
Rite Price, 866 Pleasant Street

There are, of course, other good stores in the area—Tom’s Market in Tiverton, Auclair’s in Somerset, Amaral’s and Seabra in Fall River, among others—but for the purposes of this survey, we stuck to these six.

How does Stop & Shop compare to its competitors?

Stop & Shop wasn’t the most expensive, with that honor going to Shaw’s, with a price of $20.42 for all six items. Its prices for almost every item were higher than other stores, and significantly higher for eggs and chicken. One item was cheaper than a competitor, its Signature Select ice cream, but only because it was running a sale with a digital coupon.

However, Stoppies was the second most expensive store among those surveyed, with a bill of $16.94 – and that was about $3 more than its nearest competitor.

What was the cheapest supermarket?

Walmart was slightly cheaper than Stop & Shop, with a total of $13.95 boosted by surprisingly expensive eggs.

In fourth place, perhaps surprisingly, was Price Rite. The limited-assortment grocery store near Flint sold a total of $12.84, practically offering chicken breast for just $1.99 per pound.

Market Basket took fifth place by less than 50 cents, with a total of $12.36 thanks to low prices for meat, fruit and eggs.

But the cheapest store was discount chain Aldi. The bill came to just $11.22, a little more than half the price of the shopping list at Shaw’s. She even managed to cut the price of bananas by a penny per pound. The downside? The selection and availability of produce at Aldi was significantly lower.

For a complete list of items and their prices, see the table below.

Shaw	Stop by and shop	Walmart	Rite Price	Market basket	Aldi
milk	$3.99	$3.99	$3.17	$3.19	$2.59	$2.59
eggs	$4.99	$2.99	$3.38	$2.99	$2.00	$1.92
bread	$1.99	$1.79	$1.42	$1.39	$1.50	$1.29
chicken	$5.99	$3.99	$2.67	$1.99	$2.49	$2.19
bananas	$0.69	$0.59	$0.53	$0.49	$0.49	$0.48
ice	$2.77	$3.59	$2.78	$2.79	$3.29	$2.75
Total	$20.42	$16.94	$13.95	$12.84	$12.36	$11.22

Elements of a Providence Journal article were used in this report.

You can contact Dan Medeiros at [email protected]. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to the Herald News today.