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Village Squire, 1978-04, Page 27Where to save on food, Big or small, near or far, there's little difference in food prices If you want to get a good argument started among a group of housewives, ask them where the best bargains are to be found in food prices. Nothing is quite so mythologized on the part of ordinary people as savings in food shopping. Some people will swear that they save 20 per cent or more by shopping at this store over that one. People in a city will drive right past a Dominion to shop at a Loblaws because they swear it's cheaper while others take just the opposite route driving past a Loblaws to shop at a Dominion for exactly the same reason. People in town A will drive 15 miles to shop in town B because of all the savings they'll make and on the way they'll pass people from town 8 going the other way for all the savings they expect to find in town A. Some people will tell you that the bargains are to be found in Targe supermarkets because of the Targe volume while others say the savings are at the small store because of the lower overhead. It's pretty hard to prove just where the savings are because although you may shop in two different stores you're unlikely to buy exactly the same things in exactly the same quantities in both places. You may remember that one particular product was remarkably cheaper in this store. than the other, but are all the items? Was that item just a loss leader and was made up for higher prices in other items? Probably the argument will never be settled until someone someday gets complete co-operation of all the food stores and the use of a computer and programs in each and every price from each store for comparison purposes. It's a fascinating question, however, and one on which we couldn't resist doing a little research. So this past month our researchers skulked around a number of stores in the region marking down prices for items on a mythical shopping list of 20 items. We don't pretend that this survey is definitive of where the bargains are to be found because it was taken on one week only and on a limited list of items. Although the list was drawn up well in advance with no knowledge of what items might be on the specials list of the various stores it may be that it is unfair because it fit into the promotion of one store better than the others for that particular week. We also ran into many unforeseen problems which made comparison hard. For one thing, we tried to pick the best price available at each store for the given item. This is hard in the first place seeking out the prices for individual items especially in some of the bigger stores which no long mark the item individually but only put a small sticker on the shelf (this was particularly hard to decipher at Dominion in Stratford which had tiny computer -printout signs which were very confusing). There is also the problem of judging quality for price. Is it fair, for instance, to compare the brand name at one store with the house brand at another? We ended up being a little eratic in this. For the pricing of ketchup for instance, we took the best price available while with canned corn we took the price for the same brand: Green Giant niblets. We ran into problems of co-ordination also such as when two researchers were faced with a value judgement each making a different decision. There were problems in that some stores didn't stock certain items so that you'd start out comparing the price of Robin Hood Quick Oats, only to find halfway through the survey that one of the stores didn't stock Robin Hood at all. Some stores sell oranges by the pound and others sell by the dozen and the price can vary widely as to the quality and origin of the oranges. It was virtually impossible to compare in this category. It was also impossible to properly compare such things as ground beef because of the different blends of beef and the different way each store packages and sells its product. We also tried to do a comparison of the price of steak but found it hard to be definitive because of the different ways of cutting and trimming and particularly because the same cuts weren't on display in all stores (we judged only by items that were on the counters at the time the survey was taken. If a store had let the shelf supply of a product run out we had problems). Anyway. despite all the problems, it as an interesting experiment and our researchers now feel like R.C.M.P. spies. What did it prove? Well, you can judge for yourself from the table presented but it didn't seem to prove too much actually from the way of prices. What was saved on one product in one store seemed to be made up for in another product in the store. We chose a wide cross section of stores to sample. Loblaws was represented by the Lowlaws store in Stratford and Dominion in Stratford was also surveyed. A&P was represented by its beautiful store at the Suncoast plaza in Goderich. Zehrs representative was the big store at the Sutton Park Mall in Kincardine. We chose a larger independent in the person of the Red Front grocery in Wingham and a small independent, but one VILLAGE SQUIRE/APREL 1978. PG. 25.