by Megan Minnick, Purchasing Director
Just how competitive is the pricing at your Co-op?
Periodically, we venture out to our competitors’ stores to record their prices and answer that question with some hard data. We use this information to ensure that the prices we charge are as competitive as possible. Though we know we will never be the cheapest option for everything in the store, we aim to at least be in the middle of the pack in terms of pricing, while continuing to offer a depth and breadth of local, organic, and fairly traded offerings that you just can’t find in any other store in Madison.
Below are some of the findings from our most recent price comparison, which took place in March 2018. We compared a total of 147 of our top-moving items from all departments of the store against the pricing at four of our main competitors: Whole Foods, Metcalfe’s Market (Hilldale location), Hy-Vee (East Washington Ave. location), and Woodman’s (East location).
This first graph is a comparison of the total price difference for all of the 147 items we looked at. Whole Foods was overall 2.76% more expensive that our Co-op, and that store carried 80% of the items we were looking for. Metcalfe’s Market was 11.99% more expensive than Willy Street Co-op, and carried 78% of the products.
The Hy-Vee we visited was 0.5% less expensive and carried 82% of the products, while Woodman’s was 12.92% less expensive, but only carried 64% of the products.
Though I don’t have room to show you all 147 of the products we compared, the graph below shows 20 example items from around the store, and how their pricing stacks up against the competitors we visited.
On average, our pricing on Annie’s Real Aged Cheddar Mac & Cheese was 28.11% higher than our competitors average. Our pricing on bulk organic whole wheat flour was 50.25% less (plus ours is local!).
