What to Buy Where in 2022 (an Updated Guide to the Best Grocery Prices in New Jersey)

Recently, Money Crashers assigned me to work on an article (which you'll see shortly) about how to cope with rising food prices. In the course of working on it, I learned that grocery prices overall rose by over 10 percent from April 2021 to April 2022. That inspired me to go back and look at our expense records for the past year to see how much our grocery spending had increased over that same period. I found that from April 2020 to April 2021, our average monthly grocery bill came to $267. A year later, in April 2022, that same 12-month average was...$244. In other words, while grocery prices all over the country were rising, our average spending on groceries went down.

Now, if you look at our overall spending on food, including food eaten out, the trend went the other way. Our average monthly spending on food was $274 in April 2021 and $282 in April 2022, mostly because we resumed occasionally eating out after getting vaccinated. But by occasionally, I mean maybe once every month or two. That one restaurant meal doesn't seem like enough to explain the entire $23 drop in our monthly grocery bill.

So why did our grocery spending go down while most people's was going up? Thinking back over the past year, the biggest change I could think of in our grocery shopping habits was the arrival of Lidl. Since we first discovered the store about a year ago, it's become our go-to store for a lot of the staples we used to buy at Shop-Rite, H-Mart, and Trader Joe's. At this point, we're buying more of our groceries there than at any other store in our regular rotation. 

This made me realize that the grocery shopping guide I wrote in 2018, outlining which foods we typically buy at different stores, was now out of date. Both the list of foods we buy and the stores we buy them at have changed significantly. So I thought perhaps it would be useful to post an updated version showing how we shop these days. Based on our grocery figures for the past year, this shopping strategy seems to be saving us money during a period of rising food prices, so perhaps it can do the same for you.

Rather than listing the stores in alphabetical order as I did last time, I'll take them in order based on where we shop most often. All brands are store brands unless otherwise noted. All prices are the price we paid last time we bought the item; some may have gone up since then. I haven't included prices for most produce items, as those tend to fluctuate, but I've included the ones that remain fairly stable.

Lidl

• Almond milk: $2.19/half gallon
• Brussels sprouts: $2.98/pound
  
• Canned beans: 50 cents to $1/can, depending on variety
• Chocolate (Fairtrade): $3.49 for 6.3 ounces ($0.55/ounce). This is for the large bar of the Way to Go! house brand, with cocoa sourced from the Kuapa Kokoo collective in Ghana. Lidl also stocks a cheaper, smaller bar that's also made with Fairtrade chocolate, but it's decidedly inferior in flavor.
  
• Chocolate chips (Fairtrade): $1.98 for 12 ounces ($2.64/pound)
• Cocoa powder (Rainforest Alliance certified): $1.95 for 8.8 ounces ($3.55/pound)
  
• Coffee (Rainforest Alliance certified): $3.28 for an 11.3-ounce can ($4.64/pound). Thanks to this bargain, I've started drinking coffee regularly again.
  
• Distilled water: $1.08/gallon
  
• Eggs (Certified Humane, large): $2.79/dozen
• Orange juice (not from concentrate): $2.65 for a 52-ounce bottle ($1.63/quart)
• Peanuts: $1.95/pound
• Whole wheat flour: $2.49 for 5 pounds ($0.50/pound)
  

These are all our staple items, but we also tend to shop here for pantry items we buy less frequently, such as vinegar, salt, and corn starch. Lidl is also one of our favorite stores for produce. The selection is pretty good and the quality is much more reliable than Aldi's. The only downside is that most things come in plastic packaging. However, there is a section near the front of the store where you can find marked-down produce for incredible prices (we once bought a box of lemons for less than $0.30 per pound), and it's usually loose.

Trader Joe's

• Coconut whipped cream: $3.49 for a 6.5-ounce can
  
• Dairy-free chocolate chips (for when we want to feed baked goods to our vegan friends): $1.99 for 12 ounces
• Dijon mustard: $1.69 for a 13-ounce jar
  
• Frozen peas (organic): $1.99 a pound
• Frozen spinach (organic): $1.99 a pound
• Greeting cards: 99 cents apiece. I don't like the little plastic sleeves they come in, but for that price I'll put up with a little plastic waste.
  
• Nutritional yeast: $2.99 for a 4-ounce bag ($11.96/pound)
  
• Popcorn (organic): $2.49 for 28 ounces ($1.42/pound)
• Soap: $1.69 for 2 bars
• Smoked herring: $2.49 for a 4.4-ounce can ($9.05/pound). More sustainable than smoked salmon, and about half the price.
  
• Tawny port: $5.99 for a 750-mL bottle
• Toilet paper (recycled, 80% post-consumer material): $4.99 for 12 rolls, 250 sheets per roll ($0.17/100 sheets). Not a foodstuff, but very much a necessity of life.
• Toothpaste (cruelty-free and SLS-free): $2.49 for 0.6 ounces

Costco

• Birdseed: $13.99 for a 40-pound bag
• Canola oil: $13.99 for 6 quarts ($2.33/quart)
  
• Honey: $16.99 for 5 pounds ($3.40/pound)
  
• Oats (Quaker): $10.99 for 10 pounds ($1.10/pound)
  
• Olive oil: $29.99 for 6 liters ($5/liter). I don't know why olive oil is measured in liters and canola oil is measured in quarts.
  
• Peanut butter (natural organic): $9.99 for two 28-ounce jars ($2.85/pound.)
  
• Quinoa: $9.59 for 4.5 pounds ($2.13/pound)
  
• Raisins (Sun-Maid organic): $11.59 for 4 pounds ($2.90/pound)
  
• Raisin bran (Kellogg's): $8.49 for 4 pounds ($2.12/pound). We wouldn't normally buy it at this price, but it was marked on the shelf at $1.80/pound, and we didn't discover the discrepancy until we got it home. If the price remains this high, we might drop the store-bought cereal entirely and rely on homemade granola.
  
• Sugar (organic): $10.99 for 10 pounds ($1.10/pound)
  
• Walnuts: $11.49 for 3 pounds ($3.83/pound)
• Yeast (Red Star): $6.49 for 32 ounces ($0.20/ounce)

Ocean State Job Lot

This is a discount retailer that sells everything under the sun, but we go there mainly for food.

• Blackstrap molasses: $3.99/pint
  
• Coconut oil (refined, organic): $4.99 for a 30-ounce jar ($2.66/pint)
• Coconut oil (unrefined, organic): $2.99 for a 15-ounce jar ($3.19/pint)
  
• Sourdough pretzels: $1.39 for 12 ounces ($1.85)
  
• Wheat bran: $2.59/pound

Shop-Rite

• Blue Bonnet spread: $1.29/pound 
• Pasta (whole wheat): $0.99/pound
• White flour (unbleached): $2.50 for 5 pounds ($0.50/pound). Lidl has cheaper flour, but it's bleached.
  

Stop & Shop

• Dish soap (Ajax): $2.29 for 28 ounces
• Dry beans: $1.25/pound

H-Mart

• Tofu: $1.09/pound

This is the main thing we buy at H-Mart these days, aside from produce such as garlic, scallions, and lemons. 

 

As you may notice, some stores that used to be in our regular rotation have now dropped off it completely. We now visit Aldi about once a year to stock up on canned pumpkin for our cats (in the fall, since it's a seasonal item) and almost never go there for anything else. We used to visit the PA Dutch Farmers' Market mainly for free-range meats, so we have little reason to go there since cutting meat out of our diet almost entirely. 

As for the Whole Earth Center, it still has the best prices on bulk-bin items such as spices, but it's very difficult for us to get there since it changed its hours. It now closes at 6pm, much too early for us to stop by on our way to Morris dance practice on Thursday, so a visit to the store requires a specially planned trip. We manage it a couple of times a year, but for most of our Whole Earth favorites (such as wheat bran, yeast, and mushrooms) we've found other suppliers.

I realize this list won't be useful for everyone. Food prices can vary widely by location, and so do the grocery stores that are available. So, depending on where you live, there might be another store in your area that offers better prices on some of these foods than the ones I've listed here. And if you regularly eat meat or dairy products, this list won't help you much with finding deals on those. But if you live in the Northeast and eat a mostly plant-based diet, this should provide a pretty good guide to making the most of your grocery-shopping dollars in the current high-priced environment.