This past Tuesday King Soopers posted a sneak preview of one of the sales in their ad this week. Who wants FREE MILK?? At first glance I thought, "WOW what a great deal!" We have 3 kids and 5 people at our house and we drink 3 to 4 gallons of milk every week at least, so the idea of getting milk for FREE made me look twice. I decided that before I run to King Soopers and stock up on cereal and milk, maybe I should check out the other stores prices and see just how good of a deal this actually is.
Here's the Facebook post from King Soopers...
Now keep in mind that this was not a full scale investigation and more of a quest of curiosity, so I didn't gather all of the prices on every variety of cereal included to get an exact level of overall value.
The milk is Colorado Proud milk and has a shelf value for the week of $2.49 which gives this FREE deal an added value of $4.98.
The problem I had when I got to the store was that all of the GM cereals are at full retail shelf price with a range of $2.99 all the way up to $6.69. The only cereal I found with the $2.99 shelf price was the 11.8oz Cocoa Puffs. The other varieties went up to $3.49 and $4.00 until the 21.25oz box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for $6.69.
Based on everything I saw, I set the average of all of these prices to be $3.89 each. This makes the purchase of 4 boxes of cereal to be $15.56 + 2 gallons of milk free. When you take into consideration the value of the milk your final value would be $10.58 or $2.65 per box of cereal on average. The per item price value at Kings would be $2.59 per item. You could buy only the $2.99 Cocoa Puffs for $11.96 and a final (after milk) value of $1.75 per box (or $1.99 per item)to really maximize on this deal, but for the sake of having a variety of choices for breakfast I'll use the average price instead.
Next stop was Safeway, they usually have pretty good deals on their dry goods especially cereals. I found the range on GM cereals here to be as low as $2.49 for some and all the way to $5.79 for the big box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Cocoa Puffs (11.8oz) sat at $3.19 per box.
The average price of GM cereal at Safeway came to $3.39 each. If you bought 4 boxes, you'd spend $13.56. Add in the value of the free milk at Kings that you would need to purchase at Safeway and your total comes to $18.54 making the cost per box $4.64 in comparison to the Kings Soopers Deal. Even if you counted in the milk as a factor in this, your cost per item on this deal would be $3.09 each.
My last stop on this cereal tour was Albertsons. I grabbed an ad on the way in and the first thing I see on the front page is...
General Mills Cereal
$1.77 thru Aug 2 8.9-12.8 oz. Select Varieties |
Limit 6
I checked the shelf and found that pretty much all of the GM cereals within the size range posted were at $1.77 each. They still had the Cinnamon Toast Crunch (21.25oz) for $5.99, but who would buy that one when you can buy 2 small 12.8oz boxes and get 25.6oz for $3.54?
Obviously at Albertsons the average price per box was $1.77 and $7.08 for the purchase of 4 boxes. Adding in the value of the free milk at Kings brings the total to $12.06 and a per item price value of $2.01.
So what does all of that mean?
I will break it down as a per item price value. This is your out the door price for 4 boxes of cereal and 2 gallons of milk at all 3 stores using the average price for a variety of cereals and milk valued at $2.49.
King Soopers... average price per box $3.89 and a per item price value of $2.59 each.
The total cost at Kings.... $15.56.
Safeway........... average price per box $3.39 and a per item price value of $3.09 each.
The total cost at Safeway... $18.54.
Albertsons........ average price per box $1.77 and a per item price value of $2.01 each.
The total cost at Albertsons... $12.06.
Save $3.50 on the same products at Albertsons!
Even if you only bought the $2.99 cereal at Kings to get the free milk, you are only saving .10¢ over the Albertsons deal, and at Albertsons you have a much wider selection of flavors at the lowest price.
Though this is a very enticing sale in the Kings ad this week, it turns out that Albertsons has a far better deal on the very same products. You'll save yourself $3.50 total and have a better selection of cereal for the kids. Very clever marketing for the King Soopers guys, but they weren't counting on the Peanut Butter List!
