Publix’s Hometown Paper Priced It in the ’90s. Floridians Won’t Expect This

Some Floridians will tell you Publix has always cost more than other grocery stores.

In 1993 and 1994, a Lakeland newspaper kept its own price charts on Polk County stores, and the results don’t always match that reputation.

Here’s what those old charts showed.

The Polk Marketbasket

The Ledger is a Lakeland newspaper. Publix has its headquarters in Lakeland, too.

The Ledger’s Polk Marketbasket was a grocery price chart. It put Publix beside its Polk County rivals.

The chart’s header says The Ledger visited five Polk County supermarkets every other week.

It checked the prices on 20 items.

The top 10 items would be the same each time.

The bottom 10 would rotate on an eight-week schedule.

The October 21, 1993, chart printed totals from the previous chart in parentheses, with a note that those prices were checked August 19.

That let you see which way each store had moved since the August 19 check.

The chart listed five chains in October 1993 and four on March 24, 1994.

Everything below comes from decades-old newspaper pages.

Don’t read it as a guide to what you’d pay at a Publix today.

Publix’s Highest Totals

On October 21, 1993, The Ledger’s 20 items would have cost you $3.88 more at Publix than at Albertson’s.

Publix’s total was $32.60, the highest of the five chains. Albertson’s was the lowest, at $28.72.

That’s about 13.5% more at Publix.

Put another way, what cost $100 at Albertson’s would cost about $113.50 at Publix.

Food Lion was at $31.21 and Winn-Dixie at $30.90.

The parentheses showed Publix at $32.55 when checked August 19.

Kash n’ Karry went from $33.99 to $28.82 between those same two checks.

Publix barely moved.

Publix had the highest total again in the March 24, 1994, chart, at $34.15.

Food Lion had the lowest, at $32.40.

Food Lion’s total was 41 cents below second-place Kash n’ Karry and $1.75 below Publix, the priciest of the four.

Publix’s Lowest Totals

Publix had the lowest total in The Ledger’s July 1, 1993, chart, at $29.94.

Eight weeks earlier, Winn-Dixie had the lowest total at $33.02.

Publix had the highest, at $34.69.

All five chains fell.

Publix’s total dropped $4.75, ahead of Kash n’ Karry’s $3.44.

Publix had been high on produce, and much of its drop came from cheaper vegetables.

Lettuce was down 62 cents, to $1.29 a head.

If you’d bought the paper’s 20 items at Publix that week, your total would’ve been lower than at any of the four other chains.

The paper’s headline on December 29, 1994, read “Publix drops its Marketbasket.”

At $32.62, Publix was 64 cents lower than on the November 3 chart, eight weeks earlier.

Publix’s total on November 3 had been $33.26, the highest of the four chains.

So in eight weeks, Publix went from priciest to cheapest.

Winn-Dixie was second at $32.73, Food Lion third at $32.96 and Kash n’ Karry highest at $34.06.

All three had risen since November 3.

Eggs went up 16 cents at Publix, to 85 cents, in that same December column.

The Eight-Chart Tally

The four columns above, plus the earlier totals printed inside them, cover eight of the charts in the survey.

Publix had the highest total in five of them.

Publix was lowest in two of them and second-highest in one.

The highs were in spring 1993, at $34.69, and on October 21, 1993, at $32.60.

The other three were the prices checked January 20, 1994, at $34.95, March 24 at $34.15 and November 3 at $33.26.

On both January 20 and November 3, Publix's total sat above all three rivals' totals.

Four of the eight charts show up only as parentheses on the later pages.

The July 1 and October 21 pages carried the spring 1993 and August 19, 1993, totals.

The March 24 and December 29 pages carried the January 20, 1994, and November 3 totals.

The second-highest spot came in the prices checked August 19, 1993.

Publix's $32.55 sat below Kash n' Karry's $33.99 and above the other three chains.

Five different chains held the lowest spot across those charts: Winn-Dixie, Publix, Albertson's, Kash n' Karry and Food Lion.

Each column compared its prices with a chart from about two months earlier.

So Publix's move from $32.55 to $32.60 took about two months, not two weeks.

Publix's spot depended on the chart.

Eight charts are only a sample, so you can't tell how Publix ranked on the others.

The Other Chains

Publix had four rivals on the October 1993 chart and three on the March 1994 chart.

The paper's March 24, 1994, story says The Ledger dropped Albertson's from the survey.

Albertson's had only one store in Polk County.

Albertson's had the lowest total in the prices checked August 19 and in the October 21, 1993, chart.

If you wanted to see Publix beside Albertson's, that comparison ended when the chart dropped it.

Its only Polk County store was in Winter Haven.

Food Lion and Kash n' Karry were both in the December 29, 1994, column.

If you looked at the March and November 1994 charts, Food Lion had the lowest total.

Kash n' Karry had it in January.