New price comparison grocery service saving shoppers hundreds

Let’s face it. Not everyone is caught up in the coupon craze. Knowing you’re not overspending is satisfaction enough for people like C.J. Remboldt. She doesn’t use coupons and never has, she said. But she likes saving, which is why one of the newest businesses in the grocery world has been her shopping companion of choice.

Photo: Joey Ivansco

The Grocery Czar, owned by Marietta’s David McKeone, does the comparison shopping many don’t care to do themselves. The subscriber service compares prices on as many as 80 items, twice a week. The majority of the products are not the circular sale items. Four shoppers armed with the same grocery list head into Publix, Kroger, Walmart and Aldi twice a week. Then, McKeone does a side-by-side comparison on everything from laundry detergent and trash bags to skinless chicken breast and tomatoes.

The findings might look like this: The same brand of a 5-pound bag of red potatoes one week this month was $3.99 at Publix, $2.47 at Kroger, $3.77 at Walmart and $1.19 at Aldi. Sure, no one is going to run from store to store to save a few dollars, but you might choose the store you’ll do your shopping at that week based on which has the lowest prices on most of the items you need. And that store changes from week to week. With or without coupons, shoppers are saving.

“I was thinking that I was shopping at Walmart and getting the best deals,” said Remboldt of Roswell. “It was fascinating to me to see that that was not necessarily the case. The prices within grocery stores fluctuate so much that you can’t say one over the other is a better deal regularly.”

McKeone won’t declare the least expensive store, either. Retired from a career in the automotive industry, McKeone, 62, said he was driven to create this business by his passion for food.

“I’m trying to help some people who right now need some help,” he said.

It appears to be working, with nearly 1,000 paying at least the $8.47 monthly fee since The Grocery Czar launched in November.

“We don’t impulse shop anymore,” said Edward Phillips of Woodstock. “We used to go to just one grocery store and buy everything we wanted. Now, we’re a little more selective.”

Holly Lundberg logs onto the site on Thursdays and Sundays and sees that an item that was cheapest at one store one week might be a lot more at the same store two weeks later. She and her husband are saving $100 a month, she said.

“The biggest thing for me is to learn that I can’t just be a store shopper, but I have to be a price shopper,” she said.

How do you compare prices for items not listed in the circulars? Is coupon shopping a headache?

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