Maryland’s Giant and Safeway Shoppers May Be Paying 10% More
A price check of stores around Washington, D.C. compared the same list of grocery items at several chains.
Marylanders near the city may discover their usual store isn’t the cheapest option, even when they thought it was.
Here’s how Giant and Safeway shoppers could be paying about 10% more.
Giant and Safeway Side by Side
Washington Consumers’ Checkbook (Checkbook for short) priced the same 150 items at each store it compared.
Giant and Safeway charged similar prices.
Giant, Harris Teeter and Safeway priced above average. They were within one or two percent of one another.
Say you switch from Giant to Safeway to save. Your total moves a point or two at most.
On a $100 cart, that’s a dollar or two.
That’s a lateral move.
It’s also why the 10% gap to Wegmans reads about the same whichever one you shop.
We think it’s worth a second look at your receipt, even though no store gets everything right.
How Checkbook Did Its Check
Checkbook’s 10% figure comes from D.C.-area stores. It speaks to the suburbs of Washington.
It doesn’t necessarily speak to every store across the state.
Giant, Safeway and many other stores are on that same list.
Checkbook calls itself nonprofit and independent and says it takes no ads or referral fees.
It paired the prices with a customer survey on quality.
The last update was November 2025.
Prices move, so the shelf tags in your store today may not match what was recorded.
Where Wegmans Lands
Wegmans prices ran about 10% lower than the average at Giant, Harris Teeter and Safeway, Checkbook found.
If your cart looks like that list, a $100 trip at a store priced at that average would cost about $90 at Wegmans.
Wegmans opened its first D.C.-area store in 2004. Customers have rated its quality high year after year.
Wegmans isn’t everywhere, though.
Check whether a store sits on your usual route before you plan a switch.
What the Gap Could Cost You
If you spend $300 a week at Giant or Safeway, a 10% gap is about $30 a week.
Add up your last four grocery receipts and take 10% off the total to see what the gap could mean for you.
Checkbook’s own savings example uses a family that spends $300 a week. At a 15% price difference, that family saves $2,340 a year.
At a 9% difference, it saves $1,404.
What 10% Means for Your Cart
Wegmans came in about 10% cheaper than the average at Giant, Harris Teeter and Safeway.
Over 52 weeks, $30 a week comes to $1,560 a year. That’s our arithmetic, not a figure from Checkbook.
At $450 a week, a 10% gap reaches $2,340 a year, the same total as the 15% example on $300.
The 10% is an average across the whole list. Don’t expect 10% off every item or every receipt.
It also compares Wegmans with the average at those three stores, not with Giant or Safeway alone.
Wegmans Online Costs More
Wegmans says its online prices run about 15% above its in-store prices, That includes the cost of shopping your order.
On a $100 in-store cart, that’s about $115 online. The markup is bigger than the 10% gap.
So if you shop Giant or Safeway in the store, ordering from Wegmans online could give the savings back.
Compare the pickup total at checkout before you decide a switch saves you anything.
The ALDI and Lidl Gap
Checkbook put ALDI’s prices 36% lower than the all-store average, and Lidl’s 21% lower.
Picture a $100 trip at that average. It would cost about $64 at ALDI and $79 at Lidl.
Those are gaps against the average, not head-to-head comparisons with Giant or Safeway prices.
Part of that comes from smaller stores. They have much lower overhead costs than regular supermarkets.
ALDI says its fall price cuts run from Sept. 23 through Nov. 3 at its stores nationwide.
They include Kirkwood chicken breast family packs at $1.99 a pound.
You can use that chicken price as a quick test of what you pay for the same cut at your usual store.
The Rest of the Field
Beyond Giant and Safeway, Checkbook’s list runs from deep discounters to Whole Foods, which it calls an expensive choice.
Amazon Fresh was about 15% below the all-store average.
Food Lion was 9% below.
Both are as of the November 2025 update.
Amazon announced in January 2026 that it would close all of its Amazon Fresh stores.
So that gap may no longer point to a store you can visit.
Price and quality were measured separately. You can weigh each when you pick a store.
Psst! How much do you know about the stores behind your grocery cart? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Grocery Store IQ
Answer these questions on grocery chains and Maryland shopping rules. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Since January 1, 2026, how much does a Montgomery County store have to charge for each carryout bag?
Wegmans Store Locations
Checkbook priced the D.C. area, and its page doesn't say which Wegmans stores it visited.
Wegmans' store list shows nine Maryland stores: Rockville, Germantown, Woodmore, Columbia, Crofton, Frederick, Bel Air, Hunt Valley and Owings Mills.
If you live far from D.C., treat the 10% as a rough guide.
The November 2025 update said Wegmans had more than a dozen stores across the D.C. area. It called the chain's expansion slow but steady.
In the latest survey, 87% of Wegmans customers rated it better overall.
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