More about the ratings system for grocery deals

It’s been awhile since I debuted the ratings system for groceries, and thought it would be worth revisiting the method behind the madness.  I started “rating” grocery deals last fall in an effort to help you actually save money – I hope that by giving you a rating, you have an idea how good of a deal it is.  Unless you have been couponing for awhile, saying “here’s the item on sale and here’s a coupon” doesn’t really help you know how much to buy or if you should buy any at all!

To review, here’s what the ratings mean:

1 = Not even sale price, don’t touch it
2 = Buy it if you need it
3 = Decent price, comes around at least fairly often (probably about once per month)
4 = Great price, buy enough to last awhile (usually 2-3 months)
5 = Stock up big time!

Now, for some more information about what goes into the ratings!

There is no fancy computer system tracking prices and ratings. I would love to have this, but at this point I would want it to do so much for me that it would cost thousands of dollars to develop.  I could develop an Excel spreadsheet with lots of data, but in all honesty, there’s only so much a computer can track.

Outside of a very complicated custom computer program, a computer can’t really track the fact that well, we used to get mustard for free but that was with a 50¢ coupon and now they’re only putting out 30¢ coupons so I’ll bet we’re not going to get it for free anymore.

So, for now, the ratings system is dependent on my little brain and the archived information I have stored here in this site. (By the way, you can use the search tool in the right sidebar to search for items and kind of see what historical prices have been.)

The ratings system assumes you are willing to shop at multiple stores. In general, I try to compare the prices at all our grocery stores with each other.  There are certain stores that have lower prices than others – for example, Safeway and Albertsons tend to have better deals on meat, while Sunflower Market and Rancho Liborio have the best prices on produce.

I don’t assume that you shop at multiple stores every week – ideally, most shoppers look at all the ads, decide who has the best deals based on what they need, and then make a trip to one or two of the stores.  It’s probably going to be different stores every week.

If you are extremely loyal to a particular store, or only have one or two stores in your particular area, you need to realize that chicken breasts will almost never hit a ’5′ at King Soopers.  (Albertsons and Rancho Liborio are the best places to get the absolute lowest price on that item).

So, if you only shop at King Soopers, when I rate chicken breasts a ’3′, you’ll probably want to bump up that rating for yourself.  Same with any other product.

The ratings system assumes you are not terribly brand-loyal. Everyone is brand-loyal with some things, and there’s no problem with that, but in general, to save the most money, you need to be willing to try new brands.  But, who cares if you can get Kraft salad dressing for free if you don’t like it?  Of course you’ll pay more for Ken’s dressing.

So, in general the ratings assume that you aren’t brand loyal, but I typically try to indicate if something is a good price if you are brand loyal.  For instance, I’ll rate a jumbo package of diapers a 3 if it hits $6.99 or so, but I’ll usually include a note that says “if you are loyal to this brand, I’d rate it higher”.

This is another reason why a fancy computer program would take thousands of dollars in programming to develop – I’m not sure I’d ever want to give up saying “this is a decent deal overall, but a really good deal if you have to had this brand”.  Somehow Excel just doesn’t understand that. ;)

Organic matters, “all-natural” doesn’t. While I know some of you will disagree with this, I completely ignore product claims like “all-natural” when rating an item.  I do take into account when an item is certified organic, because this is an official standard that can be measured.

“All-natural” means about as much as “healthy”.  There’s no objective standard to all-natural.  Sunflower Market says their meat is “all-natural”, but you’ll have a hard time finding information about what exactly that means.  So, unless it’s organic, I rate “all-natural” meat the same as regular ol’ meat.  Same with milk or whatever else.

Seasonality factors into ratings. I’d never rate strawberries a ’5′ if they hit $2.50 in the dead of summer, but if we saw that price in December, I’d totally give it a ’5′.  As summer is approaching, we’re starting to see produce prices drop, so while I might have rated lettuce a ’5′ when it was $1 in the winter, as summer gets closer that $1 price is only going to be rated a ’3′, because we’ll see lower prices, and we’ll see them more often.

Seasonality doesn’t only affect produce, however.  The time to stock up on barbecue supplies is May through August, so if you’re just getting started you may be thinking “Hey, why won’t she rate $1 mustard higher than a ’3′?  It’s way cheaper than I’ve ever seen it!”  I know that we’ll be getting much better sales on mustard soon, so I won’t rate a $1 mustard sale very highly.

Of course, if you haven’t been doing this for awhile and don’t have a stockpile, you’re going to need to buy some things when they are only “OK deals” until you’ve gone through a year’s cycle of grocery sales and had a chance to stock up on everything when they’re at the lowest prices possible.  (The best thing to do with this is just to buy however much you need for the week or month, and hope for a better sale.  If nothing else, that same “OK” sale price should be back around soon.)

You can still use the ratings even if you don’t use coupons. If you don’t use coupons at all, you can still go by the ratings.  In general, if something is a ’5′ with a coupon, it’s probably still going to be a ’5′ for those who don’t use coupons at all.  Now, if you’re a couponer but just don’t have that particular coupon, it’s really going to be up to you as to whether or not you buy it.

Unfortunately, I don’t know your personal pantry stockpile and your family’s eating habits, so I can’t really tell you whether or not to buy something without a coupon, or whether you should use the one coupon you have and still buy more without the coupon.  That would be a fancy computer system, indeed! :)

I don’t usually include items with a 1 or 2 rating. If an item is not included in an ad review, you can assume one of two things: one, I completely missed it, which happens often!  Or, two, it’s such a low rating that it’s not worth mentioning.  I know that if you really need an item and it’s only rated a ’2′, you’re going to buy it anyway, regardless of what it’s rated.

It’s hard to rate toilet paper. Can I just say this?  I hate toilet paper sales.  It’s impossible to rate all the different brands and sizes, even giving caveats for brand-loyalty.  About $0.25 per roll is my “target” price, the price I’d stock up for awhile on, but if those are double rolls or triple rolls, I might say $0.50/roll is the “target” price.

Maybe I could hire someone to track square footages of all the different brands so that I could be more accurate on this, but for now… I hate rating toilet paper. ;)

The most commonly asked question: why won’t you ever rate chicken breasts a ’5′? Here’s the deal on chicken breasts: boneless, skinless chicken breasts go on sale for $1.66, $1.77, $1.88, or $1.99 at some store almost every single week.  Albertsons, Safeway, and Sunflower Market usually run this sale about once every month or once every month and a half each.

So, though I would totally buy chicken breasts at $1.66/lb, and maybe even buy an extra package or two and freeze it for the coming weeks, I would never say to stock up big time at that price.  In my opinion, there’s not a lot of reason to buy a bunch of chicken at $1.66/lb and fill up your freezer with chicken because you’ll be able to get that exact same price again in a week or two at a different store, or in another month or so at the same store.

Again, if you are “store-loyal” and only shop at one store, when I rate chicken breasts a ’3′, you may want to bump them up to a 4 or 5 for you personally.  King Soopers rarely has chicken breasts for less than $1.99/lb or less, so if you only shop there, that’s probably going to be a ’4′ for you, while I’d never rate it more than a 2.5 or 3.

So, there’s more about the rating system in a very large nutshell.  Please feel free to ask more questions in the comments!