Which store is the cheapest?
There's a recurring debate across Canadian personal finance and grocery communities about which store is actually the cheapest. Is it No Frills? Walmart? Food Basics? FreshCo? Everyone has their own horror story from one of these stores and will side with another for those reasons. Here are some statistics pulled directly from the Q1 basket searches from SAVR.
The Parameters
The parameters of these data are as follows: Any price comparison that included at least 2 of No Frills, FreshCo, Food Basics, Walmart. The breakdown of those searches in number of lists can be seen below.
Total searches with 2+ discount stores compared: 1,750
Compared exactly 2 of the named stores: 1,334
Compared exactly 3 of the named stores: 416
The Clear Winner
Truth is, there is no clear winner. It would be very rare for multiple consumers to have the exact same items on their list. Given that, each unique list offers an opportunity for a unique store to capture a win on the lowest priced basket. Below are the win-rates from those 1,750 comparisons specifically including the named discount banners.
No Frills: 481 wins (27.5%)
Walmart: 476 wins (27.2%)
Food Basics: 422 wins (24.1%)
FreshCo: 61 wins (3.5%)
No Frills, Walmart, and Food Basics compete side by side with rotating winning totals. This is likely due to a loss leader sale on particular items included in searches on those baskets.
There is an interesting caveat to this information. In all searches where exactly 2 of the named stores were considered in the comparison, a third, non-discount banner was included and the success of these outliers is quite surprising.
Non-discount store won: 310 (17.7%)
This means that 17% of the time a non-discount banner was compared to two of the named discount banners in this study, it won! The discount banners hold strong majority of the time but there are those cases where more premium stores compete on baskets.
What does this mean?
The point of all of this is that there is no one "cheapest store". Some Canadians may only have access to 1 of these locations or the decision appears to be obvious. But it might not be as straightforward as it seems. Based on different needs of unique shoppers, a different store on any given week might have the most cost-effective basket for you.
How does SAVR help?
SAVR allows you to compare ALL items on your grocery list in real time. These lists include both discounted and regular price items. SAVR helps consumers save time and money by discovering the best single store to shop at for their given list. OH and of course, know your exact subtotal before even stepping foot in the store.
Know before you go.