Whose spices are cheapest?
While making out our grocery list last week, I mentioned to my wife that we were going to need to pick up some pepper. Imagine our surprise when upon perusing the spice aisle at our local Sobeys grocery store, we found that the best price they had for ground black pepper was $11.29 for the 540g container pictured here! Twelve dollars? We just could not understand how something simple like pepper could be so expensive.
You would not normally even think twice about throwing some pepper in your grocery cart, but twelve dollars seemed a little excessive considering what else might be bought for the same amount of money. Our surprise at the price of the pepper led us to do a little investigation into the prices of other various spices and herbs that we found were offered at Sobeys, the Atlantic Superstore and at our local Bulk Barn. We wondered: Whose spices are cheapest? The results are hard to believe.
To obtain our results, we conducted a price comparison of McCormick spices, ClubHouse spices, Atlantic Superstore “Atlantic” spices, Sobeys “Our Compliments” spices, Atlantic Superstore “No Name” spices and Bulk Barn spices. We packed up our digital camera and headed out to Sobeys to start our investigation. Then, an interesting thing happened. We had only been in the store for about ten minutes when an announcement was made over the speaker system asking all employees to do a “floor check”.
It was not long before a Sobeys employee came and informed us that taking pictures inside the store was a violation of their company policy and had to be cleared through their head office. I suppose this has something to do with corporate espionage, but we were a little surprised that we were not going to be allowed to use our camera even though we explained the purpose of our visit. Rather than try to bend the rules by having my wife pose for me in front of their displays, we respected their wishes, picked up a couple of notepads from their stationary section and began to write out all of the brand names, container weights and associated prices.
Note that there is no policy or law in this country that prevents you from using a pen and paper when comparison shopping. After recording the required information and speaking to various people about who we were and just exactly what we were doing, we paid for our notepads and struck out for the Bulk Barn.
In the interest of avoiding confrontation upon entering the Bulk Barn, we immediately approached one of the staff, explained the purpose for our visit and asked if they might have a price list for all of their spices that we could take with us.
They did not have a price list, so we asked if we could use our camera in order to avoid having to write everything out by hand.
We were informed again that permission would be needed from the Bulk Barn head office in order to take photographs inside the store. (According to the Canadian Franchise Association, the Bulk Barn head office contact information is as follows: Bulk Barn Foods Limited, 55 Leek Crescent, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 3Y2, Canada. Phone: (905) 886-6756. Fax: (905) 886-3717. Web: www.bulkbarn.ca Email: elizabethdosramos@bulkbarn.ca Contact: Elizabeth DosRamos). We resorted to the pen and paper method and recorded all the needed information. Our information collecting at the Atlantic Superstore was without incident. All that remained now was to collate that information somehow.
Organizing the information we collected turned out to be fairly easy thanks to an aspect of the Bulk Barn pricing that we had not given much thought to before: Every product at the Bulk Barn is sold by weight and the price per 100 grams was marked on every spice bin.
This made the price comparison process a lot easier, since we were able to convert all of the pricing we found on products at Sobeys and the Atlantic Superstore to a cost per 100 grams basis to compare against the Bulk Barn. The use of a cost per weight system allowed us to show how different types of packaging affect product prices. A couple of hours of information collecting and one Microsoft Excel spreadsheet later, we had the results we were looking for.
The spices we have included in our report had to be common to at least two of the brands we investigated in order to be included in our list. We found a total of 66 different spices that fit this criteria. Before presenting the data we collected, here are some brand-specific anomalies that we found:
- The Clubhouse ground cinnamon 125g container costs $4.29 ($3.43/100g) while the Clubhouse ground cinnamon 32g tin costs $2.39 ($7.47/100g)!
- The Clubhouse 45g container of Italian Seasoning costs $4.29 ($9.53/100g) while the Clubhouse 123g container of Italiano Seasoning costs $3.79 ($3.08/100g).
- The Clubhouse Montreal Steak Spice 825g container costs $8.59 ($1.04/100g) while the Clubhouse Montreal Steak Spice 188g container costs $4.29 ($2.28/100g).
- The Clubhouse 39g tin of Black Pepper costs $3.00/100g more than the 115g and 113g containers.
- The 120g container of Sobeys “Our Compliments” bacon bits costs $0.46/100g more than the 490g container.
- The 110g container of Sobeys “Our Compliments” ground cinnamon costs $1.08/100g more than the 145g container.
- The best value Sobeys “Our Compliments” garlic powder is the 525g container at a cost of $1.52/100g.
- The Sobeys “Our Compliments” minced onion costs basically half of what the chopped onion costs.
- Sobeys “Our Compliments” onion powder is less expensive per 100g when buying the smaller container.
- The 14g bag of Sobeys “Our Compliments” parsley flakes costs nearly 3 times as much per 100g as the 65g container!
- If you HAVE to buy Sobeys “Our Compliments” black pepper, buy the 540g container, as it has the lowest cost per 100g. I would go to the Atlantic Superstore, where an identical size container of “No Name” black pepper costs $2.80 less than at Sobeys.
The following table shows the number of times each of the brands we investigated ended up having the lowest price and therefore the best value for each individual spice:
| Spice Brand | # of times with lowest price |
| Bulk Barn | 52 |
| Atlantic Superstore “No Name” | 9 |
| Sobeys “Our Compliments” | 2 |
| Clubhouse | 2 |
| Atlantic Superstore “Atlantic” | 0 |
| McCormick | 0 |
Here is a link to the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet we used to record the results of our spice price investigation and which we drew our conclusions from. When viewing the spreadsheet, pay particular attention to the price per one-hundred grams column on the right-hand side. You will notice that the Bulk Barn has the best price almost every time it is included in a spice category.
Ranking the spice brands we investigated in descending order based on cost per weight, we have McCormick spices with the highest cost (possibly due to the fact that they were only available in glass containers), followed in order by ClubHouse spices, Atlantic Superstore “Atlantic” spices, Sobeys “Our Compliments” spices, Atlantic Superstore “No Name” spices, and then Bulk Barn spices with the lowest cost per weight.
One interesting fact we discovered was that the McCormick company owns the ClubHouse brand of spices! It is interesting that the two most expensive brands of spices on the market are owned by the same company.
How can McCormick justify selling the same spices under different brand names for different prices? Why are ClubHouse brand spices a staple item in kitchens across Canada and the United States when they are so much more expensive than others?
It should be obvious to anyone reading this article that the clear winner of our investigation was the Bulk Barn. It was amazing to us during our arrangement of the data we collected just how much cheaper the Bulk Barn prices were on a cost per weight basis. We did expect them to have better value on a few items, but neither of us expected the kind of landslide victory they achieved.
The Bulk Barn only lost in two categories. Their garlic salt was priced at fifty-one cents per one-hundred grams whereas Sobeys “Our Compliments” garlic salt was priced at thirty-six cents per one hundred grams. The Bulk Barn montreal steak spice was priced at one dollar and twenty-six cents per one-hundred grams while Clubhouse montreal steak spice could be bought for one dollar and four cents per one-hundred grams.
There were eleven other categories where the Bulk Barn lost, but only because they were not included in the category. These category items included: basil leaves, chives, cinnamon sticks, roasted garlic, lemon pepper seasoning, chopped onions, oregano leaves, crushed red pepper, black peppercorns, rosemary leaves and sesame seeds. We are pretty sure you could find all of these items at the Bulk Barn and can with relative certainty say that their prices would be lower than any other you could find.
Given the tremendous difference in price from one brand to another and based on the results of our investigation, any time we have to make a choice between buying McCormick spices, ClubHouse spices, Atlantic Superstore “Atlantic” spices, Sobeys “Our Compliments” spices, Atlantic Superstore “No Name” spices or Bulk Barn spices, we will choose the Bulk Barn every time. We hope you find this information valuable and encourage you to do similar investigations on your own.
All the best,
Trevor
Technorati Tags: atlantic superstore, bulk barn, cheap spices, clubhouse spices, mccormick spices, sobeys, spices, herbs, food
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