Welcome to Soda Wars Episode XXIX.
Soda Wars: Revenge of the Thirst is a weekly blog presented by the Peanut Butter List. Every Wednesday (and sometimes a little later, sorry) we illustrate which store has the best price on your favorite brands of soda. We price compare Pepsi, Coke and 7up in the 2 liter, 12 pack and 20/24 packs at ALL Colorado King Soopers, Safeway and Albertsons locations. With this blog you'll 'know before you go' who has the best deal on your favorite brands of soda each week before you head off to the stores.
I know, I know... this is not Wednesday and I'm sorry about that. Wednesday was dinner at Grandma Marylin's house, (thank you Marylin, love you) and Thursday turned into a very long day at work. Please forgive me for being a few days late on Soda Wars and understand that I truly do make every effort to get this published for you by Wednesday evening.
Today is Friday the 22nd, so hopefully you get a chance to read this before buying any soda this weekend. There are some pretty good deals out there but they're kind of scarce. When you 'know before you go' this week, you could save substantial money as some prices are at or near their best deals while others are close to their highest historical prices.
Before I break down the packages this week...
I'm implementing our PBL SCORE system to the prices on this blog. This SCORE allows for a quick snap shot of how well this item is priced for the week.
The SCORE is determined with an algorithm using the following variables:- Current sale price versus the items historically lowest price in all stores.
- Current sale price versus the items current available options in all stores.
The higher the SCORE, the better the sale. The goal would be to buy all of your items at a GREEN or BLUE level and stock up when an item is GREEN.
Avoid the RED items at all costs because they are priced far higher than what they're worth.
Let's take a look at this weeks soda prices and our new SCORE system...
12 packs
12 pack winner: 7up at Safeway (4/$10 WYB4)
For the SCORE system I've set the lowest historical price at $2.50 even though it is slightly higher than a few of the rare sales. $2.50 is a common sale on 12 packs and the best sale and price that comes up regularly.
The 7up 12 packs at Safeway are the only GREEN item this week in all categories. It also gets marked with the 'running man' icon to indicate that this item is at its lowest historical price.
Coke drinkers can get a good deal at Albertsons this week, with a SCORE of 91, you're paying only $2.75 per 12 pack.
Safeway has an interesting ad for Coke 12 packs and might very well be the best deal out there this week even over Albertsons. They are priced at 4/$11.98, which by itself scores a fair 63, but when you buy four 12 packs of Coke you also get a FREE Oreo cookies. I did not take the value of the Oreo cookies into consideration when calculating the SCORE, so the actual value of this deal might be closer to that of $2.50 and a SCORE of 98 to 100.
Does everyone who likes Coke like Oreo's? I'm willing to bet that there's a few people out there who don't like the Oreo's. These people are probably rare as Oreo's are filled with deliciousness, but because of these few people I couldn't include this deal as part of the overall value for the Safeway ad.
I was on the Safeway Facebook page where they posted about this sale and read some of the comments. People are really upset over this ad and letting Safeway have it on Facebook. As if this was just the last straw and now people need to speak up... that's just too much sugar in one special price deal! 
