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Loading groceries into her car outside the Wentworth Family Grocery Swan Lake in Swanville, Sharon Ellsworth said high grocery prices have her shopping much more carefully.
“There’s stuff I just don’t buy anymore,” she said.
Ellsworth used to buy organic cereal with dried fruits in it. Now she’s buying store brand shredded wheat.
“I can’t pay $7 for a thing of cereal,” she said. “I’m not poor, but I’m not foolish.”
Food prices in May were 2.7% higher than at the same time last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data released late last month. Ellsworth and shoppers across Waldo County say they’re feeling the pain at the checkout line.
We visited six grocery stores across Waldo County to see how prices for eleven staple items compare. We priced items at Belfast’s Hannaford, which is owned by Ahold Delhaize, a multinational food corporation based in the Netherlands, as well as stores owned by two local chains — Edwards Brothers in Unity and Searsport, and Wentworth Family Grocery stores in Northport, Brooks and Swanville. At each store, we chose the cheapest item in each category available.
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To be sure, grocery stores aren’t the only way to get food in Waldo County. There are dozens of farmers markets, roadside stands and farm markets, and two food co-ops, which some shoppers said they rely on for fresh local produce. But because of the diversity of their offerings, we focused only on grocery stores.
Butter cost exactly the same at all stores — $2.99 for a pound of the cheapest brand. Other items, like hot dogs, varied considerably — by up to $2 between the cheapest and most expensive. Bananas, which were very ripe, were on sale for 35 cents a pound at the Wentworth Family Grocery in Brooks, while they cost 89 cents per pound at the chain’s Swan Lake and Northport locations. And a pint of blueberries ranged from $3.99 at the Belfast Hannaford to $5.99 at Wentworth Family Grocery’s Swan Lake store.
In the Belfast Hannaford parking lot, Abby Olney of Isle au Haut said she stocks up for three weeks of groceries on the mainland at a time. With two young children, she said rising food costs are hard to ignore. She typically goes to the Blue Hill Hannaford and the Blue Hill Co-op as well as hits farmstands.
“We fill in the gaps everywhere,” she said.
Staples come from Hannaford, she said, but she tries to buy her vegetables where there are more local options. Since co-op prices can be “crazy expensive,” she tries to buy directly from farms.
As he packed his car at the Belfast Hannaford lot, Michael Bryant, a stay-at-home father of three from Montville, said that eating healthy on a budget is a challenge.
The family buys some groceries at the Belfast Hannaford, where he’s noticed the prices going up.
“Every time I walk out of there, it’s at least 200 bucks,” he said.
The family tries to eat more organic and local produce, and plant-based food so they get some food from the Belfast Co-op; his wife works there, so they get an employee discount.
They also try to save money by buying cheap but healthy food like beans and growing as much food as they can, though it’s hard to cover all of their needs through gardening alone.
Cheaper foods are often more processed, and avoiding unhealthy food often means paying more, he said.
“People who are in poverty are kind of stuck eating stuff that’s not really food,” he said.