Average cost for Utah shoppers drops 2.2%

Not much changed this month when the Deseret News went on it imaginary shopping spree, filling a virtual cart with commonly purchased items like milk and gasoline, a movie ticket and treats, laundry soap, diapers and hamburger.

This month, the average cost of those items is actually down a little bit, 2.17 percent, helped by slight decreases in milk, bananas and laundry soap and more substantial decreases in cereal, ice cream and carry-out pizza. But they were offset somewhat by increases in the price of bread, hamburger, orange juice, cookies and diapers.

The goal of the monthly shopping jaunt is to track the fluctuations and get a sense of what's happening at the stores along the Wasatch Front. And it gives readers a chance to do a little tracking of their own. By presenting the range of prices and the average for a specific item, a shopper can reconcile to see where the store he or she typically shops fits in for commonly used items.

You could probably save a lot of money — if time and mileage were no object — by buying each item at the lowest price. And there's quite a range, when even a loaf of same-brand bread ranges from $1.78 to $3.39. But it's simply not realistic because nobody shops that way. What is surprising is how much difference there is between the lowest and highest bottom-line cost of the full cartload of just grocery items when you look at five different stores. Our 12 grocery items were a steal at $53.64, compared to the $64.83 at a different store. For example, laundry detergent ranged from $10.94 to $17.39 — neither being sale prices.

But it's worth noting that the least-expensive store this month was not the least-expensive last month. And none of the stores consistently had the lowest or the highest average total.

Sometimes the difference was a really spectacular deal, like the half-price sale at one pizza franchise for a large take-out pepperoni pizza. Too bad that's not something you can load up on when you find a real bargain.