Grocery prices in person, for pickup and for delivery: What NBC’s national experiment found

The average family spends more than 12% of its income on food. News4 wanted to know, does how you shop – in person, for pickup or for delivery – affect how much you get charged?

We teamed up with “TODAY” and NBC stations across the country, from Los Angeles to Boston, to find out.

The shopping experiment

Our D.C. shopping team included Consumer Investigative Reporter Susan Hogan and producers Rick Yarborough and Katie Leslie.

They each shopped for the same 12 items on the same day at the same three retailers: Walmart, Target and Whole Foods.

The shopping list was: milk; eggs; butter; cheese; sandwich bread; cereal; fresh chicken; coffee; spaghetti sauce; pasta; frozen broccoli and orange juice.

The shopping results

Our News4 shoppers didn’t use loyalty cards. Susan shopped the old-fashioned way: in person. Rick ordered his items online for pickup later that day. Katie ordered online for delivery.

No matter how they shopped, all the prices for each item were the same for that retailer.

Of course, when having items delivered, you have to consider extra delivery fees, service charges, taxes and tips. Delivery fees in the D.C. area ranged from $9.95 to $13.95.

There weren’t any extra fees when ordering items for pickup. The convenience of having a shopper put items together saved the team time at no additional cost.

‘They don’t want to annoy customers’

News4 took the results to Kevin Brasler, executive editor of Washington Consumers’ Checkbook, a nonprofit that conducts undercover price research across the country.

“I guess I’m not surprised,” he said adding what the News4 team found tracks with what they’ve seen.

“Our undercover shoppers are always shopping around online, in-store, and we find that the big chains typically offer the same prices online as they do in-store. They don’t want to annoy customers. They want to make a sale,” Brasler said.

Nationwide price check

The results we found here in D.C. weren’t unique. In nearly all of the 14 NBC markets across the country where our shoppers went to stores, their prices matched at each retailer no matter how they shopped.

But there was a difference when it came to price based on where people live. Our NBC shoppers found the highest average costs for groceries were on the West Coast, including the Bay Area.

The lowest prices were in the middle of the country, including Milwaukee. On average, groceries in parts of the South cost as much or more than in the Northeast, where median incomes are significantly higher.

In Virginia, we saw a 20% price difference for the same item – orange juice – when shopping at Walmart stores in Fairfax and in Richmond. The price was higher in Richmond. Our shoppers also noticed when ordering online at Target that a gallon of milk showed up as “out of stock” in a number of nearby stores. But Susan found milk available while shopping in person.

A Target spokesperson said if a product is running low, online shoppers might not have access, in order to keep a certain amount on store shelves since it’s all from the same inventory.

Here’s what the stores said

Walmart said in a statement to NBC News that its “pricing strategy is built on Every Day Low Prices. We focus on delivering the lowest total basket price with stable, transparent pricing across stores and online.

Most grocery items are priced nationally to ensure consistency and simplicity for customers across the country. In certain regions, we may lower prices further to be competitive on the essential items that matter most to our customers.
We manage prices to remain competitive on the total grocery basket, not just individual items. Certain commodities (e.g., dairy, eggs, meat, and produce) can vary regionally due to localized cost and distribution differences.

Individual stores may occasionally apply short-term, local price reductions, but those adjustments are temporary and operational in nature.”

A Target spokesperson said prices can vary between stores and online based on factors including inventory levels, local promotions and competition with nearby retailers.

Whole Foods said in a statement: “We work hard to provide competitive pricing on all the products we sell. As is common with grocery retailers, different parts of the country may have different prices for certain grocery items due to factors such as region-specific promotions, regulatory compliance, as well as variances in transportation and operating costs.”

A spokesperson added that some products can be marked higher in different states because of specific regulatory compliance.

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The final takeaway

The bottom line is, if you don’t have time to shop in person, you’re not paying more for the groceries themselves when ordering online for pickup or delivery.

The real extra cost comes from delivery fees, bags and tips. That’s where loyalty programs can save you a lot. Walmart and Target offer free same-day delivery to members. Whole Foods offers a cheaper delivery fee if you’re a Prime member.