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Read The News & Observer for tips and advice to make the best choices while shopping for groceries — and more — at traditional grocers and wholesale clubs in North Carolina.
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Editor’s note: N&O subscribers get exclusive first access to our 2026 grocery store price check. To become one of them, visit newsobserver.com/subscribe.
Everyday essentials from gas and groceries to water and electricity are reaching record-breaking premiums.
Endless reasons are behind the ways consumers choose to spend money when it doesn’t buy as much. Whether convenience or brand loyalty, a preferred grocer for the most common items in your fridge can either help you save or spend your money.
With so many stores to pick from in the Triangle area, The News & Observer compared the prices of 30 generic and brand-name food items at 12 central Raleigh grocery stores to help the average consumer get more bang for their buck.
The findings, presented in a searchable database, can help shoppers and their families spend less time dreading their next trip to the grocery store.
We checked 15 name-brand and 15 store-brand items at each store for a total of 30. The 15 store-brand options were common products found in most grocery stores, like Kraft mac & cheese and Jif peanut butter. To determine the store with the best “value” for customers, products were broken down to their price per unit to compare items at a uniform size.
Grocery stores like Weaver Street Market and Sprouts Farmers Market were taken out of this year’s price check to ensure stores sold as many items on our list as possible. (In previous years, The News & Observer included these grocers in their price check, and we hope to price check wholesale clubs and organic grocers in the future.)
With this method, we found ALDI to have the lowest prices of all comparable grocery stores in Raleigh. While prices were low, the Illinois-based retailer occasionally lacked popular name brands such as Coca-Cola, Eggo Waffles and Heinz.
Here’s how the 12 Raleigh grocery stores stack up (ranked least to most expensive):
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To determine the best value, we simply added up all 30 comparable items, adjusted to price per unit, and sorted those total numbers from lowest (the best value) to highest (the worst value).
Out of 30 items, ALDI had the best value for 23 items. Lidl had the best value for four products. Trader Joe’s for two with Lowes Food and Walmart both having the best value for one product each on the list.
In 1976, the first ALDI was opened in Iowa. With German origins, the concept behind the store was always to offer customers discounts, according to their website.
“At ALDI … we avoid non-essential services like banking, pharmacies and check cashing to bring more savings to you,” the grocer said online. “From USDA Choice meats to gluten-free and organic foods, we are committed to bringing you the highest quality products at considerably lower prices than other grocery stores. ”
ALDI’s shopping cart system is another way customers avoid paying extra for their products, its website says. Insert a quarter to unlock a shopping cart, and get your quarter back when you put it away — helping ALDI avoid paying for staff to collect parking lot carts.
Many of the stores The N&O price checked offered all 30 items, but a few didn’t.
Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods carry mostly store-brand items or a specific selection of items, so they didn’t have quite a few of the name-brand items chosen to represent a typical weekly shopping list. Stores like ALDI and Lidl didn’t carry as many name-brands as other stores, but in most cases had a cheaper alternative.
Our default item was non-organic and a smaller size, to mirror most consumers’ shopping habits. Among our list, this looked like medium avocados (not large) and large eggs (not jumbo). When a grocery store did not have options and only sold one item (i.e. only selling jumbo eggs or organic potatoes), we used the available item in our price check.
We only looked at in-store regular prices, never using an online price or a sale price in our reporting. Online prices may be higher, as shipping and other fees could be added to the items themselves. Sale prices listed in store are often exclusive to rewards memberships (which The N&O can teach you how to unlock).
We visited these stores the second week of September, snapping photos of each available product on our 30-item list to record prices in real time.
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