7 Reasons New Hampshirites Drive Past Two Stores to Reach Market Basket
A Patch reporter once ran the same grocery list through a Shaw’s and a Market Basket on the same day, item by item, then added up both receipts.
One store’s total came in lower.
They were small numbers on paper, but they add up fast once you shop that way every week.
These are the reasons New Hampshirites drive past other grocery stores to reach a Market Basket.
1. Shelf-Tag Deals, No App Required
Market Basket puts its best price right on the shelf tag, no download required.
Hannaford and Shaw’s don’t work that way anymore.
Both chains now save many of their better prices for shoppers who open the store’s app and clip a digital coupon before checkout.
One Maine investigation into the same app-only pricing found shoppers paying double for the same chicken breast, a $3.68 gap on one item alone.
Both chains run the identical app system in New Hampshire too.
That adds up fast for anyone without a smartphone, a data plan, or the patience to hunt through an app before every trip.
Many older shoppers land in that group.
No app means no discount.
Consumer advocates have started calling app-only pricing a form of digital discrimination, since it punishes shoppers who don’t stay online.
Market Basket never asks for a phone number, an email, or a card at the register.
The price on the shelf is the price you pay.
2. No Self-Checkout Lanes
Market Basket has never installed a self-checkout lane, anywhere, and it isn’t an accident.
Arthur T. Demoulas said as Market Basket’s CEO in 2024 that personalized service was a core company philosophy, not a slogan.
Hannaford has added self-checkout lanes of its own in recent years.
A typical Market Basket store keeps around 30 registers staffed by actual people, ringing and bagging every order.
Nobody hands a shopper a scanner and asks them to do the store’s job for free.
Just a cashier.
That’s worth a longer drive for shoppers who’d rather talk to a cashier than argue with a machine about a coupon.
3. The 2013 Side-by-Side Grocery Run
A Patch reporter put Market Basket’s reputation to the test in 2013, running the same 26-item list through a Shaw’s in Merrimack and a Market Basket in Nashua on the same day.
Market Basket’s total came to $80.27.
Shaw’s rang up at $84.61.
Market Basket won on price on 15 of the 26 items, tied on six, and lost only five, including a sale on chicken breast.
$4.34 isn’t a fortune.
Multiply it by every week of grocery shopping, and the gap stops looking small.
The Math Behind One Market Basket Trip
That 2013 price check found Market Basket $4.34 cheaper than Shaw’s on one 26-item list.
Run that same gap every week for a year, and it adds up to roughly $225, before counting a single BOGO or weekly special Market Basket runs on top of it.
4. A No. 2 National Ranking
Market Basket earned the No. 2 spot nationally in dunnhumby’s ninth annual grocery ranking, released in January 2026, for a second year running.
The ranking scored retailers on which retailers save shoppers money.
Nothing else counted.
dunnhumby’s own president pointed to saving customers money as the biggest driver of long-term loyalty, and the report named Market Basket’s staffed checkout lines as part of what sets it apart.
New Hampshire shoppers who’ve felt that gap in their own carts now have a national number to back it up.
Psst! How much do you know about grocery store history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Grocery Store History IQ
Answer these questions on grocery store history, from carts to barcodes. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
The modern shopping cart was rolled out for the first time in 1937 in which city?
5. The 2014 Walkout's Loyalty
Market Basket's board fired CEO Arthur T. Demoulas in June 2014, and customers didn't wait around to see how it would end.
Shoppers boycotted the chain's own stores on purpose, buying groceries at rival chains and taping the receipts to Market Basket's windows as proof.
Employees walked out alongside them.
Shelves went bare for weeks.
Arthur T. reached a deal to buy back the company for $1.6 billion on August 27, 2014, and the boycott ended within days.
The sale closed that December.
Many of the same shoppers who once refused to walk through Market Basket's doors now drive past other stores to walk through them again.
6. The Same Employees Behind the Register
Market Basket has run a profit-sharing plan for its employees since 1963.
During the 2014 dispute, reporting found experienced cashiers earning over $40,000 a year, well above the industry average at the time, with roughly 15% of pay going into that profit-sharing fund.
That combination keeps many employees around for years.
Not months.
Regular shoppers notice name tags marking a decade or two of service instead of a fresh hire every few weeks.
Familiar faces behind the register are hard to find at a store that cycles through part-time staff every semester.
7. New Hampshire, Not Idaho or Zaandam
Market Basket remains family-owned, run by the same Demoulas family that has controlled it for generations.
Hannaford's parent company, Ahold Delhaize, is based in the Netherlands.
Shaw's parent company, Albertsons, is based in Idaho.
Walmart answers to shareholders spread across the globe.
Market Basket doesn't.
Market Basket's board tied that family ownership directly to its pricing promise in April 2026, pledging to keep offering the lowest prices and best value for customers.
A private, regional company staying put on price is a different bet than a public company balancing a global supply chain.
Walmart's Ranking Story
Market Basket's No. 2 finish in that same dunnhumby ranking looks even sharper next to where the biggest name in retail landed.
Walmart, the store many people assume wins on price, landed all the way down at No. 11.
Eleventh place.
H-E-B, a Texas chain, took the top spot overall.
Walmart also leans hard on self-checkout nationwide, pushing shoppers to scan and bag their own groceries at a rate Market Basket has refused to match at any of its stores.
The Company's Public Shake-Up
Market Basket's board placed Arthur T. Demoulas on leave again in 2025, this time over concerns he was planning another work stoppage.
A Delaware judge upheld his firing in April 2026, describing him as imperious while acknowledging he'd run the business profitably for nearly two decades.
Demoulas said in June 2026 that he wouldn't appeal.
No boycott followed this time.
The board named longtime employee Chuck Casassa, who started as a 14-year-old bagger in 1976, as its new president.
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