The truth about grocery store fliers
Posted
Jun 25 2009, 10:56 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from Trent Hamm at partner blog The Simple Dollar.
One tactic I mention regularly for saving money on food purchases is to watch the grocery store fliers for sales, then plan your meals (and shopping lists) around those sales. This tactic really works. I've saved quite a bit doing this over the years.
However, things aren't quite that simple. You can't always trust the store flier.
Over the last several months, I've been keeping track of prices on several key items that we buy all the time: garbage bags, fresh spinach, toilet paper, grapes, Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers, etc.
I know what the typical price is on these items. I even have a small price list that has the usual prices for them.
A few weeks ago, when I took a long look at the fliers from my grocery stores of choice, I happened to notice that some of the big sales listed in the flier weren't a sale at all. The price was exactly the same as what I usually pay.
What gives? I did some research -- calling and e-mailing a few people I know in the grocery business -- and I came up with a few interesting facts about grocery store fliers.
For starters, a large portion of the spots in a grocery store ad are actually paid placements by the product manufacturers. That "sale" on Coca-Cola? It's likely that Coca-Cola or a local distributor paid your grocery store to have their product inserted into the ad. The price of that "sale" item is often unchanged from the normal price. The only reason it's in the flier is to put a few more bucks in the pocket of the grocery store.
Why would a company pay for such placements? According to Tod Marks of Consumer Reports, a mere mention of a product in a grocery store flier can send sales of that product up as much as 500%. Thus, in many cases, the small cost of the product mention in the flier can easily be recouped by a big bump in sales.
Another technique often used in fliers is a quantity-based trick. Let's say, for example, that you typically buy a quart of cottage cheese for $1.49. In the flier, you might notice that cottage cheese is on "sale" for 99 cents, but this is for the pint container, not the quart. Without careful reading, you might head out to the grocery store and grab that 99-cent "bargain" without thinking about it, actually paying more for cottage cheese than you normally would.
These two factors lead to the real question: How can you trust grocery store fliers at all? Here are some tactics I've found that work well for finding the real deals in the fliers.
- Ignore brand name products. These are placed by the large food companies and don't actually reflect much of a bargain at all. Just skip right past them. Occasionally, one of these might be a loss leader, but you can usually find them only if you're really good at filtering out all the noise.
- Focus on the fresh items. Fresh produce and fresh meats are rarely branded. These items tend to be the real sales in the flier (but not always -- you should always have a good grasp on what the real prices are).
- Quantity sales are often tricky. Let's say you see a particular item on sale at two for $5. That could mean a lot of things. It might mean that the items are actually $2.50 each and you don't actually need to buy two items to get the discount, or it might mean that just buying one item will cost you $3.29 or so -- which isn't really a deal at all. Read the fine print and don't just immediately buy more than you need or assume it's a great deal.
- Know your quantities. Sometimes, "sales" loudly proclaimed in a flier are for very small sizes. Once you're actually in the store, however, you'll find that the larger size is actually the better deal, even though it's not on "sale." Sales on small-quantity items often indicate something that's not really a bargain (unless you can couple a coupon with it and get it for free).
Fliers have a lot of good deals, but there's a lot of noise as well. Figure out how to filter through the noise and you'll save a lot of money on groceries.
Related reading at The Simple Dollar:
The personal-finance chore list
Avoiding spending is not the same as saving money
When is a child ready for an allowance?
