Which Grocery Store Is The Cheapest?

Hello! Welcome to Feed That Nation!

My name is Natalie Nation. I’m a grad student, future RD, educator, content creator, and mac and cheese expert. I love talking about college and health issues to help college students to be successful, confident, and healthy!

In this episode of Feed That Nation, I went to a bunch of different grocery stores to figure out which one was the cheapest!

About The Episode

Listen to this episode on Anchor, OR click HERE!

I had SO much fun working on this episode. It was more research-heavy and investigative than several others that I’ve made, and that meant that I was learning all along the way!

After all the work I did with food insecurity at St. Kate’s, and talking about food shelves as a part of the solution, I started to think.

Most food shelves and food pantries are meant to be supplementary resources; they are generally not meant to provide 100% of the food that a person or a household needs. Which presumably means that a person visiting a food shelf is also going to another store to get the rest of their items.

And I wanted to know: What is the cheapest grocery store? Where could a person go to get the groceries they need for the least amount of money.

Naturally, I focused on grocery stores in the twin cities. Given where I live, in the south metro, I focused on the stores nearest to me. I made my list, picked my stores, and went exploring.

I think, honestly, this experiment raised more questions than answers. Yes, I figured out which store(s) are going to be the least expensive (and you’ll need to listen to the podcast to find out!).

But now I’m wondering: Is there a difference in price between different stores in the same chain? Would Target on Lake Street have different prices than the Target in the Quarry? And what about farmers markets and co-ops? Convenience stores? Are grocery stores more expensive in affluent areas? Or are they more expensive in areas with food deserts, because they have no competition.

Who knows. Maybe there will have to be a part 2 for this episode in the future?

EDIT: Yes, I did create a part 2. Listen below, or click HERE!

Watch “Which Grocery Store Is The Cheapest” on YouTube (audio only!)