How I rated Trader Joe's and Stop & Shop for staples I created a list of nearly fifty basic grocery items from nearly every department of the store at a wide range of prices using

online grocery shopping templates:dairy, bakery, produce, pantry, deli/meat, and frozen sections.Since I was primarily interested in this from the perspective of the cost of food, I really only left out cleaning and bathing supplies.)I compared the Stop & Shop price, which came from Instacart, to the Trader Joe's price for each item, which came from a visit to the store in Queens, New York.Instacart provides an estimated price per item for items sold by weight at Stop & Shop.)
I tried to find sizes that were comparable to each other, but I also noted which stores offered larger sizes.However, because I wanted the final sums to reflect the actual prices on your grocery receipts, I did not scale the prices accordingly.Since all of Trader Joe's products are store-brand, I used products from Nature's Promise or Stop & Shop SB whenever possible to ensure that the competition was as fair as possible.