Variation in Grocery Prices

Food policy often addresses questions of food access and availability, but an equally important consideration lies in whether food is affordable. While the East End hosts a number of affordable food retailers, grocery prices in the area vary tremendously, with high-price retailers often operating in hamlets and villages with high levels of food insecurity. In 2020, there were an estimated 210 food insecure individuals living in Wading River. Yet in a study involving six common basket items, we found that groceries in the hamlet’s King Kullen supermarket were above median prices for the area. This was also the case in the hamlet of Hampton Bays, which is home to 780 food insecure residents and a supermarket in the highest quintile with respect to variation in food prices.

For individuals and households struggling with food instability, there may be grocery providers within a reasonable distance, but if food prices represent a barrier to access, meeting food needs may require a long commute. Such realities are doubly challenging for individuals and households living in poverty or those that do not own a vehicle—in such circumstances, a trip to the grocery store can pose a significant undertaking that necessitates factoring in the cost of travel and time in exchange for fair value food. Variation in grocery prices between neighborhoods has been observed in New York City and foregrounds food access issues centering affordability rather than physical access only [1].

On the East End, the cost of food and other household items varies significantly across geographic locations, in part due to differing market demand, variable commercial rents, and different costs of doing business, levels of competition, and the structure of the food retail sector within communities. Grocery prices, however, do not correspond to the number of food insecure individuals living within close proximity, which means that for those who struggle to put food on the table, the closest full service supermarkets may be inaccessible. The presence of unaffordable grocers in areas with a high incidence of food insecurity necessitates a reconfiguration of local planning strategies that can center these disparities. It also underscores the need for accessible and resilient emergency food providers, such as soup kitchens and food pantries, which can fill critical gaps in times of severe need. 

We visualized food price data via convenience sampling from 17 supermarkets whose grocery prices were available online. Then, we recorded the lowest in-store prices for 6 common food items. The visualizations below show the spatial distribution of stores surveyed, color-coded according to the cost of the food basket (calculated as the summed price of the 6 items) and mapped on top of the geography of food insecurity by village/hamlet. A basket of 6 food items ranged in price from $11.25 to $24.05. To the right of the map, box-and-whiskers plots visualize the distribution of the prices for each pre-selected food item. For example, the largest variability in price was recorded for a carton of a dozen large eggs ($1.48 to $6.39) and lowest for a cucumber ($0.66 to $2.19). The visualization represents a narrow look of the vast number and variety of items that are sold. It is meant to illustrate the importance of capturing the variability in food prices (even for a subset of goods) on the East End of Long Island. 

[1] Crossa, A., Cooperman, E., James, B., Ma, S., & Baquero, M. (2023). Data on location and retail price of a standard food basket in supermarkets across New York City. Data in Brief, 48, 109222.