This Is The Cheapest Grocery Store Chain In The US (No, It's Not Walmart)

Affordable groceries are on the front of everyone's minds these days, which is why it's good to keep an eye on what's best for your household. Consumer Reports recently did a study on which supermarket has the best price for an average grocery basket across the United States, and the answer is surprisingly not Walmart despite the megastore's ubiquity and reputation for low retail prices. 

The winner in this category was overwhelmingly Costco. Consumer Reports used six areas to represent different regions of the United States (Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, L.A./Southern California, and Virginia Beach). In each area, Costco unanimously ended up being the cheapest for commonly purchased items at chain grocery stores. Using Walmart's prices as a baseline, Consumer Reports found that, on average, Costco's grocery basket prices were roughly 21% lower than that of Walmart's when adjusted for store package sizing (to reflect the difference in things like bulk sizing at Costco). The next closest chain was B.J.'s Wholesale Club — but the issue with this store is that even though its pricing is similar to Costco's, they didn't have a footprint in all the markets sampled.

Not everyone's got a Costco or B.J.'s membership, so it's important to note that other grocery stores also beat Walmart's pricing. Putting Costco and B.J.'s Wholesale aside; Lidl, Aldi, WinCo, and H-E-B also came in cheaper than Walmart, in that order. Lidl's sample basket was 8.5% cheaper than Walmart, while Aldi's was 8.3% cheaper. (WinCo came in at 3.3% cheaper, while H-E-B. was just 0.2% cheaper.) I'll also note that WinCo has a bulk section, but you don't need a membership to shop there.

Out of all of these stores, Aldi is the most accessible countrywide — Lidl is concentrated on the East coast, WinCo towards the West, and H-E-B is focused primarily in Texas. So for smaller batches of groceries, Aldi would be your best bet, as it came in well under Walmart's prices. With Aldi you do need to make some concessions as some of the cheapest goods there are under some of its house labels, but price-conscious shoppers already know that name-brand items rarely come in as the cheapest option. Though we think of Walmart as the titan of cheap groceries, it turns out that it's not quite the bargain bin we thought.