Check the list: Which Midlands grocery store has the best prices for Thanksgiving staples?

When it comes to shopping for the annual Thanksgiving spread — or just shopping for groceries, in general — “the list” is sacred.

My late grandmother, Edith McElrath, always had a list when she went grocery shopping. She was a Bi-Lo loyalist, and she typically wrote down the list of the things she needed on the back of an envelope. I can still see her flowing, cursive scrawl now, if I close my eyes and remember. My wife’s late mother, Ranelle Johnson, was also a grocery list maker. One such list — written on a page from a checkbook ledger — is framed and hanging in our kitchen.

As Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday approaches, folks across the Midlands are hitting the local supermarkets with their own lists, checking off all of the items they’ll need for the coming feast. After all, Thanksgiving, more than perhaps any other holiday on the American calendar, is a day when food takes center stage.

And these days, with inflation remaining stubborn and various supply chains still working out the lingering kinks from the COVID-19 pandemic, customers are no doubt keeping an eye on the prices at the grocery store.

With that in mind, we wanted to get an idea of what the pricing landscape looks like for some staple Thanksgiving items at various Midlands supermarkets. Which store has the best prices for that Thanksgiving buggy? (Yes, I call it a buggy. Sorry, “cart” people.)

The goal was to compare the prices of 13 key Thanksgiving meal items at six grocery stores, spread across various geographic pockets of the Midlands. Editor Sarah Ellis helped me with some of the legwork on this one, and we checked prices at local outposts of the following grocers: Lowes Foods, Walmart, Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly, Publix, and Kroger.

We decided to stick to more “traditional” stores for this one, rather than the house-brand heavy discount spots (Lidl, Aldi, etc.) or the more high-end specialty grocers (Whole Foods, Fresh Market, etc.). We did our price checks on Nov. 15 and 16, so any prices or totals are reflective of those dates.

And then there’s our list. Here are the 13 items we priced: A dozen pack of Hawaiian rolls, a 14.5 oz. can of green beans, a 14 oz. can of cranberry sauce, a 16 oz. box of elbow macaroni noodles, a 6 oz. box of Stove Top Stuffing, 10 pounds of frozen turkey, a 2-liter Coca-Cola, a frozen pumpkin pie, a gallon of milk, a 16 oz. pack (four sticks) of unsalted butter, a 16 oz. box of Velveeta, a 5 oz. bag of spring mix salad, and a dozen large white eggs.

For the most part, we tried to compare like vs. like. For instance, we opted for the name brand (Stove Top) when comparing stuffings. And we went with store brand when we were comparing gallons of milk. As best we could, we opted for the lowest priced offerings, and if we couldn’t match a brand or item exactly, we went with the closest comparable substitute. (For example, some places had Mrs. Smith’s pumpkin pie, while others had Marie Callender’s.)

Yes, I realize this list doesn’t constitute a “full” Thanksgiving dinner. And, no, this ain’t gonna make your mama’s special dressing. But this is a reasonably typical selection of items that could wind up in your buggy ahead of Thanksgiving.

One of the overriding themes I discovered in this journey is that the six area supermarkets were very competitive with each other on most of the items. And, to be clear, at stores that offer free “member” or “discount” cards, we used those prices.

Where the separation came, in most cases, was with perhaps the key item in any Thanksgiving celebration: The turkey. Not all turkeys are the same size, of course, so we priced it by the pound, then multiplied for 10 pounds. On Turkey Day, it seems, it’s still about the bird.

Here’s how the collective prices shook out at each of the stores we visited, listed from least expensive to most expensive for the full 13-item buggy, with a few highlights thrown in. Keep in mind, these totals reflect prices we observed, in-person, in stores on Nov. 15 or 16.

Food Lion: $42.28

4464 Devine St., Columbia

I’m not going to lie to you: Going into this little project, I thought for sure that Walmart would come away with the cheapest overall buggy. And yet, the Lion roars.

While there were good prices up and down the 13-item list (a $3.29 tag for a dozen Sara Lee sweet Hawaiian rolls gave my eyebrow a twitch), the thing that won the day for Food Lion was the price on turkey. On Nov. 15, it had Shady Brook Farms turkey for 49 cents per pound, which comes out to $4.90 for 10 pounds. Be sure to take your MVP card (or sign up for one) and you can find some good prices here.

Publix: $44.49

847 Highway 378, Lexington

As surprised as I was to find Food Lion on the top of this list, I was perhaps equally surprised that Publix was second. Don’t get me wrong, I like Publix. But let’s be real, they’ve always been a little...highfalutin. It’s those heartfelt commercials they put out every year at the holidays. You know, the ones you have to watch with a box of tissues close at hand.

But they flexed some good prices when I visited on Nov. 15. For instance, they had Publix brand frozen turkeys for 69 cents per pound, and 14 oz. cans of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce for $1 each. (We all know the best cranberry sauce still has the ridges on it when you shake it out of the can. I don’t make the rules.)

Walmart: $44.57

2401 Augusta Road, West Columbia

As you might imagine, Walmart, affectionately known as Wally World to many, had a number of low prices, and came in just 8 cents higher than Publix in terms of an overall buggy cost. The lowest frozen turkey price I found there on Nov. 15 was 98 cents per pound for Honeysuckle White, which comes out to $9.80 for 10 pounds. You could get a 14.5 oz can of Del Monte green beans for $1, and they were the lowest store on our list in terms of a 16 oz. box of elbow macaroni, at just 88 cents for the Great Value store brand.

Of course, the danger with Walmart is that you go in there for some grocery items for Thanksgiving, and you leave with those items, plus a KISS T-shirt, a fishing rod, some pool noodles, tires for a Ford F-150, and a new haircut.

Lowes Foods: $49.30

5222 Sunset Blvd., Lexington

Confession: Lowes Foods is usually my go-to in terms of grocery stores. Aside from the usual grocery fare, they’ve got a coffee shop, a Beer Den, a special counter just for sausage, and they yell out “HOT! FRESH! BREAD!” when loaves come out of the oven.

Lowes held its own in terms of pricing on the 13 items we checked, and on Nov. 15 they had one of the lowest prices on a dozen large white eggs of any store we visited, at $1.69. They also had Honeysuckle White turkey at 97 cents per pound, meaning 10 pounds would be $9.70.

Piggly Wiggly: $56.69

6325 North Main St., Columbia

I’ve always been “Big on the Pig,” as the saying goes. When I worked at a newspaper in Greenwood for a decade, I always appreciated the old school, hand-painted signs that one of their stores there had in the windows advertising the sales. (Those were done at the time by a man named Jyll Maddox. He had a brother named Jack. Yes, Jack and Jyll.)

As for our project here, this was truly an example where just one item — turkey — elevated the collective cost. Piggly Wiggly on North Main was very competitive with the other stores on 12 of the items. Their 2-liter Cokes were the cheapest of any we checked, at $1.66 each. But the best price we saw on Nov. 16 at the Pig for a frozen turkey was $1.88 per pound, which comes to $18.80 for 10 pounds.

Kroger: $59.86

10136 Two Notch Road, Columbia

This was the highest total among the six stores that we visited, but it comes with an asterisk. When we visited the store on Nov. 16, the lowest price we saw in-person for frozen turkeys was $2.19 per pound for Butterball, which translated to $21.90 for 10 pounds, which elevated the prospective total bill.

However, according to a Kroger circular for Nov. 15-23, the company is offering a house-brand turkey for 99 cents per pound. If you can find those, your bill would be significantly lower. Kroger also had the lowest price on eggs of the six stores, at $1.59 per dozen for large white.