Grocery Hunt: Just add water edition, part one

Sign Up For Our FREE Daily eNews!

GROCERY HUNT


Welcome to Week Four of the 2022 Grocery Hunt, Manchester Ink Link’s guide to Manchester-area grocery store prices.

Like last year, we’re tracking the prices and availability of grocery items requested by our readers week by week at Manchester’s three supermarkets. This week, we are also checking the prices for staple items and will provide trends for those items throughout the year. We also welcome contributions from our readers – see a good price or a unique item in the Manchester area? E-mail it to andy@manchesterinklink.com and we will include it!

Each time a store has the lowest price on staple items, items requested by readers, or items found by readers, it will get one point. The store with the most points will be our 2022 Grocery Hunt Champion.

This week’s theme involves items that work by adding water to them, plus our regular staple items, with a second week of requested items coming next week. This week, water will be replacing ground beef as one of the staple items, for obvious reasons.

All prices were checked on Feb. 3 from 12 to 2 p.m., Prices and item availability may change without notice.

Items may have been available during the aforementioned time but could not be found. Within this column, all efforts available to an ordinary grocery shopper were made to find the item. If you see an error here, please let us know at andy@manchesterinklink.com

Unless asked for a specifically-sized item by a reader, situations in which stores have different sizes of the exact same item will be compared by weight or volume. If stores have multiple variations of an item with differing prices, the lowest price will be used.

Reader Requested Items

PXL 20220203 184937103

Dunkin’ Donuts ground coffee (12 oz.)

Market Basket – $6.99

Hannaford – $7.69

Walmart – $7.72

PXL 20220203 180630880
Note: This is the item at Walmart, there was a technical problem with the photo from Market Basket this week.

Land o’ Lakes Cocoa packets (Box of 8 1.3 oz. packets)

Market Basket – $1.69

Walmart – $1.92

Hannaford – $2.49

PXL 20220203 180605961

Lipton iced tea mix (cost per oz.)

Walmart – $0.66

Hannaford – $0.67

Market Basket – $1.09

PXL 20220203 175922049

Tang (20 oz.)

Walmart – $2.82

Hannaford – $2.99

Market Basket – $2.99

Staple Items

PXL 20220203 174947359

Milk (cost per gallon)

Hannaford – $2.59

Market Basket – $2.59

Walmart – $2.76

PXL 20220203 174915444

Eggs (cost per dozen)

Hannaford – $1.96

Market Basket – $2.29

Walmart  – $2.48

PXL 20220203 185945513

Bread (20 oz.)

Market Basket – $0.99

Walmart – $1.38

Hannaford – $2.29

PXL 20220203 185833085

Water (one gallon)

Market Basket – $0.75

Hannaford – $0.99

Walmart – $1.00

Reader Submitted Items

There were no reader submitted items this week. If you’d like to submit an item from any Manchester-area grocery store, whatever it is, e-mail it to andy@manchesterinklink.com. If it’s the lowest price on that item that week, we’ll add it to the 2022 Grocery Hunt Total Score below, with the store with the highest score at the end of the year winning the 2022 Grocery Hunt Title!

2022 Grocery Hunt Scores after Week 4

Market Basket – 11.5

Walmart – 11

Hannaford – 10.5

⇒ For 2022’s previous Grocery Hunts, look below. For 2021’s Grocery Hunts, click here.

About this Author

Andrew Sylvia

Assistant EditorManchester Ink Link

Born and raised in the Granite State, Andrew Sylvia has written approximately 10,000 pieces over his career for outlets across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. On top of that, he's a licensed notary and licensed to sell property, casualty and life insurance, he's been a USSF trained youth soccer and futsal referee for the past six years and he can name over 60 national flags in under 60 seconds according to that flag game app he has on his phone, which makes sense because he also has a bachelor's degree in geography (like Michael Jordan). He can also type over 100 words a minute on a good day.