Walk into any grocery store, and chances are you’ll see a very ubiquitous price setup. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re buying, you will probably encounter something similar to this:
“1/2 gallon of milk, $1.79!”
“1 gallon of milk, $2.79!”
“VALUE PACK 2 gallons of milk, $4.79”
The reason being for the proliferation of value packs in grocery chains and supermarkets seems to be very straightforward. The store buys items in bulk, sells to you in bulk, and claims to “pass on the savings” to you. Looking at the three deals above, most consumers would buy the value pack. Mathematically speaking, the big package gives you the most gallons of milk per dollar. If you could buy milk at $2.36 to the gallon, why buy it at $2.79 or $3.58 to the gallon? Even if you are spending more, the savings kick in when you don’t have to make a trip to your grocery next week for milk.
That’s what the grocery store wants you to think.
When value deals aren’t deals
Remember that time when you were starving to death, so you bought a gigantic party size bag of your favorite flavor of chips? (If you don’t, pretend there was such a time.) What happened after a couple of weeks? The bag was still 1/4 full, and you said to yourself, “I don’t really like these chips any more, I’ll save them for a later time”. A month later, and they were stale as rocks.
If that large bag of chips cost you $4.99, and a quarter of the bag went to waste, you just wasted a good $1.25. On your food splurge, you could’ve paid around $3.99 for a smaller bag of chips. But no, that party size bag was calling your name from the shelf, begging you to buy it in the name of saving dollars per ounce. Unfortunately for you, your attempted savings per ounce have translated into complete waste.
$1.25 may not sound like much, but it’s more than enough to feed and provide healthcare for a child in need for one day. If you count up all the times you’ve bought value packages, one dollars times many times equals many dollars down the drain. In the past, I’ve bought huge chunks of cheese, only to see half of it grow mold before I get a chance to eat it all. Large packs of perishables are especially bad for your wallet, as they have such a limited shelf life. In my fridge right now, out of two dozen eggs, 16 of them have just passed the point of no return that is the expiration date. Unless you have an insatiable appetite for a certain food, it’s a good bet to stay away from value packs.
When value deals are deals
Given all of this, there are times where you should buy the big boxes. One obvious case would be the big party, where it would be nonsensical to buy 50 individual cans of Coke in lieu of a couple large two-liter bottles of the same. Another is for large families, where consumption of foods can be particularly high. The two-gallon value pack of milk, in this case, would be just right.
What do these scenarios have in common? You’re almost guaranteed to run out of all the food that you’ve bought. This is in fact the only instance when value deals are actually value deals. Any food left over to spoil is simply wasted.
The next time you visit a grocery store, give the smaller packages a second chance. Will you really drink one gallon of milk, or eat 2 pounds of uncut pepper-jack cheese before expiry? If not, it’s best to buy in small quantities.
