Here Are The Cheapest Places To Buy Groceries Today

Most investors have heard of the pricing war going on in the grocery space in the past year after Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN began aggressively cutting prices at Whole Foods last year.

Bank of America recently took a closer look at grocery store prices in three major markets: Denver, Dallas and Atlanta. The firm used Walmart Inc WMT as the benchmark, and compared the overall price of a basket of 40 commonly-purchased goods at Walmart to the same basket of goods at several of its major competitors. Here's a look at when the analysts found:

• Walmart itself was clearly the gold standard, underselling all of its other competitors overall.
• Among the stores found in all three markets, Sprouts Farmers Market Inc SFM gave Walmart the biggest pricing threat, averaging just a 4.6 percent premium to Walmart prices.
• Kroger Inc KR was the only other grocery store able to come within 10 percent of Walmart prices, averaging an overall 8 percent premium in three markets.
• The next closest pricing competitor was Target Corporation TGT, which was about 12.6 percent more expensive that Walmart overall.
• Amazon and Whole Foods clearly has some work to do. In the three markets tested, Whole Foods prices were 32.6 percent higher than Walmart’s.

In addition to the companies mentioned above, Bank of America included basket prices for Safeway in the Dallas market and Publix in the Atlanta market. Walmart beat out Safeway prices by 28 percent and Publix prices by 22 percent.

While Walmart was the clear winner of the price comparison, U.S. shoppers are all winners based on current trends. Despite rising costs and inflation, total basket prices were flat overall in all three markets over the past year.

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