Food Experiment: My Trip to Wal-mart

Posted on | September 6, 2009 | 5 Comments

Check out my original article in this series here.

Wal-mart happens to be a fascination of mine. Any business that can start from a small store on the corner of a rural town and grow to practically encompass every small and large town across the U.S. is a topic of interest in my book, regardless of whether or not you believe in their practices. Being the sole outlet for the majority of consumer purchasing decisions in the U.S. means that your decisions as a corporation has worldwide implications for people, retailers/manufacturers, and even politics. Let’s just say, I consider them a force to be reckoned with.

As a consumer, I am left with a difficult decision each time I go shopping. I could shop at a Wal-mart, where I know that even without coupons, I will probably get the best prices around (this is not a sure thing, but it is guaranteed—if you bring a sales flyer from another store that has the same product for cheaper, Wal-mart will charge you the cheaper price). But what am I supporting when I shop at Wal-mart? Wal-mart makes products cheap so that everyone can afford them, but at what cost are they providing this service to their consumers?

I shopped at Wal-mart when I lived in Florida a few years ago and had sticker shock at the hike in living costs. Since moving to Houston, I have only shopped there twice now: once a few months ago, and last month for this experiment. One thing I am particularly happy to report is it appears Wal-mart has taken strides in the last several years to incorporate more natural and organic products within their stores. In this case it is very positive that Wal-mart has such influence on consumers’ pockets; the potential implications on the food chain are great if Wal-mart continues down this path.

I was able to purchase the following organic/fresh/minimally processed/non-HFCS products at what I consider to be a decent price:

  • Nature Valley Granola Bars
  • Preservative-free Chicken
  • Sun Chips
  • V-8 Fusion Juice
  • Kashi Cereal
  • Kraft Natural Cheese
  • Hormel Natural (No Preservatives) lunchmeats
  • Back to Nature Crackers
  • Organic Yogurt
  • Bread

 

These are the following items that I looked for to meet my above criteria, but did not find:

  • Ground Beef, Flank Steak, beef of any kind
  • Cornish Game Hens
  • Sour Cream
  • Blocks of Cheese

 

My total bill came in at $97.43. I was only able to use $1.05 in coupons. I have to say, I certainly bought extras during this trip (like flank steak), and we needed to stock up on meats, so I feel like I could have knocked the price down by $20.00. I also spent $20 at Froberg’s on fruits and veggies.

Overall, that puts us at $233.73 for our groceries for the month of August. This is $66.27 less than what we used to spend on groceries before couponing and sales shopping, so I still saved us money from this high while buying mostly fresh, natural, organic, non-HFCS and minimally-processed foods. Still, I was not able to use as many coupons as I thought I could during this experiment due to the much lower availability for coupons for products with these characteristics. Also, while Whole Foods certainly has a much broader array of these types of products, I was still pleasantly surprised by what I found at Wal-mart and optimistic about what the implications could be for the food chain in the United States.

Small Signature

Comments

5 Responses to “Food Experiment: My Trip to Wal-mart”

  1. AlexAxe
    September 7th, 2009 @ 6:19 pm

    Hi, http://www.frugalconfessions.com – da best. Keep it going!
    Thanks

    [Reply]

  2. Amanda
    September 8th, 2009 @ 12:53 am

    Hey AlexAxe: Thanks for the encouragement! Keep reading:)

    [Reply]

  3. BluSky
    September 8th, 2009 @ 2:20 pm

    I don’t have much time to write but try this if you are interested in the subject: http://www.walmartmovie.com . The name of it is The High Cost of Low Price. Have a great day.
    : )

    [Reply]

  4. FruGal
    September 8th, 2009 @ 9:34 pm

    Thanks BluSky! Will do.

    [Reply]

  5. Roberto
    October 4th, 2009 @ 10:15 am

    cool blog

    [Reply]

Leave a Reply





CommentLuv badge

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.


Previous article: «
Next article: »