Which Store Beat Walmart on Price Near Charlotte? A Bank of America Study Has the Answer

A store with “dollar” in its name sounds like the cheapest place to fill your cart.

A Bank of America price study put that to the test around Charlotte, North Carolina.

Here’s which stores beat Walmart on price near Charlotte, according to a Bank of America study, and what it means for your weekly cart.

Who Priced the Basket

The Family Dollar numbers come from a Bank of America price study. It covered stores in the Charlotte area.

WSOC-TV, the Charlotte television station, shared the results in a report published Nov. 1, 2024.

These are 2024 prices.

The study priced a shared basket of 58 food items plus one household item at each store.

The prices came off store shelves. So savings from loyalty cards weren’t counted.

It used Walmart as the baseline. Every other store got a percentage above or below Walmart’s price.

We’ll with Family Dollar, then go from the highest premium over Walmart down.

The Dollar Store Gap

Family Dollar ran 15% above Walmart on the shared basket.

So a $100 Walmart cart would have come to about $115 at Family Dollar, on the study’s math.

The catch?

A 59-item basket can’t capture every price in the store. And no store gets every price right.

Stores Priced Above Family Dollar

Four grocery chains cost even more than Family Dollar.

Sprouts topped the study at 37% above Walmart. Whole Foods came in at 26% above, and Publix at 25%.

Harris Teeter ran 17% above Walmart, just two points from Family Dollar’s 15%.

So a cart that costs $100 at Walmart would have run about $117 to $137 at these four.

Stores Close to Walmart

Dollar General, the study’s other dollar store, ran 4% above Walmart. That’s roughly a quarter of Family Dollar’s gap.

Target landed closer still, at 2% above Walmart.

On a $100 Walmart cart, that works out to about $104 at Dollar General and $102 at Target.

Stores Priced Below Walmart

Family Dollar sat above Walmart.

But two stores in the study sat below it.

Aldi priced 12% lower and Lidl 3% lower.

The same $100 Walmart cart would have come to about $88 at Aldi and $97 at Lidl.

Weekly Cart Math

Over months of shopping, that 15% adds up.

Take a $100 Walmart cart bought once a week. That costs $400 over four weeks at Walmart.

The same four carts would come to about $460 at Family Dollar, which is $60 more.

Publix would run about $500 for the month, and Aldi about $352.

Over 52 weeks, the Family Dollar premium would reach about $780. Aldi would run about $624 under Walmart.

Those are example carts, not a shopper’s receipt. Use them as a yardstick for your cart.

A Year of Price Hikes

The study also tracked how fast Charlotte prices rose. But the report gave no year-over-year figure for Family Dollar.

Grocery prices rose 3% on average across Charlotte. Produce was up 4% and dairy up 7%.

Aldi and Lidl prices rose 4% to 6% over the past year, more than at the other grocers in the study.

Even so, both still priced below Walmart.

Target, at 0%, and Harris Teeter, at 2%, had the smallest increases.

The year-over-year comparison used the same stores at the same time of year.

Since the Study

The chain was sold after the study. Dollar Tree completed the sale on July 7, 2025.

Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management bought it for a base price of about $1 billion in cash.