News flash: Seattleites pay more at PCC
Monday, August 18th, 2008Most readers probably won’t be too surprised to hear that food at PCC costs more than it does at Safeway. Buyers there put the premium on local, organic and whole foods and those just cost more than the Kraft Mac and Cheese and Frogurt you won’t see there.
It probably also won’t come as a shock that the same brand of grocery store charges different prices in different neighborhoods. According to a P-I Article that ran today, a group of volunteers studying grocery store prices in different neighborhoods found a $31 split between identical items sold at the White Center Safeway and the Admiral Safeway in West Seattle.
That can probably be explained by a combination of land values and market factors, though company reps told the P-I that the company doesn’t alter prices by neighborhood.
But those two “identical” green peppers they compared weren’t actually the same. The story gets interesting when the surveyers comment on the quality of the food they found at the stores, a factor that they didn’t actually survey.
One person is quoted as describing the cheaper stores as “the place where food goes to die.”
I also expected the survey to find more of the FDA’s recommended 68 basket items missing from the cheaper stores. But those were actually relatively comparable, with four foods missing at that White Center Safeway, 1 at the Safeway on Admiral– and 5 at PCC. Trader Joe’s had 22 items missing.
Surveyers also noted some of the unhealthy placement they saw at cheaper stores– like a Hershey’s chocolate bar display standing in front of canned vegetables.
