The Big Pricing Secret That Grocery Stores Don’t Want You to Know

Every single week that I go to the grocery store, it seems like everything gets more expensive. Even if you’re great at shopping the sales and scoring deals with coupons, the data seems to line up with the pinch that most Americans are feeling at the grocery store: Prices are higher than they were just one year ago, especially for staple goods, thanks to a wide range of factors that include tariffs and bad weather.

Economic forces aside, though, your neighborhood supermarket could be employing a strategy called dynamic pricing that further hikes up your bill. In some ways, this has existed in grocery stores for a long time in the form of discounts.

Think about the day-old baked goods that are marked down on the clearance aisle, or “manager’s special” meats that are marked down because they’re only a day or two away from expiration. In that sense, dynamic pricing can be beneficial to both grocery stores and consumers, allowing them to clear shelves of old inventory while offering a bargain to patrons.

What Are the Downsides to Dynamic Pricing?

The flip side of dynamic pricing, though, is that it also offers stores the opportunity to raise prices as certain items become more in demand, like baking essentials during holiday cookie season. Also, as digital price tags become more common, changing prices is easier than ever: Instead of printing hundreds of paper tags, grocers simply need to change some data in a spreadsheet. They monitor metrics, like foot traffic and demand for specific products, which provide valuable insight for price adjustments—for better and for worse on the consumer end.

This data allows grocery stores to adjust their prices as often as they choose, which can sometimes result in higher prices. Most grocers insist that they only use dynamic pricing tools to make groceries more affordable to consumers, and many outright deny that they’ve ever engaged in surge pricing, or the practice of making in-demand items more expensive.

Tips to Avoid Overpaying for Groceries

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to make sure that you’re not overpaying for anything in your grocery basket.

The first is good old-fashioned price-matching. If you think the price of an item in your supermarket seems a little high, check that same item in another store. Even if you’re not the type of data nerd who would keep a spreadsheet to track the prices of their most frequently purchased goods, it’s also good to monitor the average price of your staples so you can keep an eye on potential surges.

When it comes to dynamic pricing, unfortunately, technology isn’t always your friend. While there's certainly a convenience to curbside pickup, groceries can use this to their advantage—my go-to grocery store charges a premium on every single item I order online. When the budget is especially tight, it’s almost always worth it to head into the store and save a little cash.