Price Patrolling: Who Has The Cheapest Groceries?

The news caused an uproar in households across suburbia. Heated debates were sparked between housewives in supermarket frozen food sections all over the city. Trusting shoppers were shocked. The Kroger Price Patrol had been caught cheating.

Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission has issued a formal complaint charging Kroger with “deceptive and misleading” advertising practices. Furthermore, the FTC claims, the Kroger Price Patrol survey is “methodologically” unsound. Could it be true? Are Bonnie, Judy, Jimmie and Paula holding out? Is nothing sacred?

The Kroger Price Patrol is comprised of four well-scrubbed local housewives who are paid less than $75 a week to check 600 national name brand items in the six largest grocery chains in Dallas-Fort Worth. Their findings are posted in all Kroger stores and aired to waiting housewives on TV commercials. And now the FTC has slapped their dutiful hands.

Enter the D Magazine Price Patrol, dedicated to lower prices and plumper produce. We set out one.Saturday in August to conduct our own survey. Armed with a “typical” shopping list, we surveyed eight major food stores, including Kroger. Prices were checked on everything from Doritos to Campbell’s chicken noodle soup to Purina Puppy Chow to grapefruit to Oscar Mayer all-meat weiners. Very methodologically. The totals were calculated, checked and rechecked. Of the eight stores, Treasury (a division of J.C. Penney’s) came in with the lowest total. But before you rush for your baskets – all three Dallas Treasury stores are closing their grocery departments effective November 19, 1977. Seems they’re losing money.

Number two in the survey was Skaggs-Albertson, another grocery-discount center operation. Kroger placed number three, a mere penny higher than Skaggs-Albertson. And, just like the TV commercial says, lower than any other major food chain in the metroplex. Well, well, well. The FTC has charged specifically that the Kroger Price Patrol did not include house brands, produce or meat in their survey. It would be easy to suspect that Kroger might have conveniently omitted these items because these were the areas where Kroger made its money. But our survey showed Kroger lower on meat products, the same on most produce items, and higher on very few things.



Kroger was contacted to answer to the FTC charges. Larry Turner, manager of public affairs, offered the Kroger defense. “We only compare ’comparable’ items,” he explains. “Produce items differ in quality and size. Meat comes in different grades and involves different fat trim standards. House brands, well, every store has its own specfications on quality.” On the other hand. Turner points out, a 17-oz. can of Del Monte lima beans is the same from store to store. “In this case,” he chuckles, “you just can’t compare apples to apples.”

And Bonnie, Judy, Jimmie and Paula are clean.