Grocery Hunt: Happy (Chinese) New Year!


    Welcome to year two of the 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 us at andy@manchesterinklink.com and we will include it!

    Each time a store has the lowest price on staple items requested by/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 for the reader-requested items is Chinese New Year, which will take place this year on Feb. 1 All prices were checked on Jan. 5 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 Requests

    Soy sauce (cost per oz.)

    Walmart –  $0.09

    Market Basket – $0.15

    Hannaford –  $0.18

    Water chestnuts (canned)

    Hannaford – $0.99 (8 oz.)

    Market Basket n/a

    Walmart n/a

    Fish sauce (cost per liter)

    Market Basket – $7.12

    Hannaford- $13.51

    Walmart – $14.47

    Shiitake mushrooms (cost per lb.)

    Market Basket – $5.29

    Hannaford – $12.77

    Walmart – n/a

    Chinese sausage (cost per lb.)

    Hannaford – $4.69

    Market Basket – n/a

    Walmart – n/a

    Staple items

    Bread (20 oz.)

    Walmart – $0.88

    Market Basket – $1.19

    Hannaford – $1.59

    Eggs (dozen)

    Market Basket – $1.79

    Hannaford – $1.79

    Walmart – $2.41

    Milk (gallon)

    Hannaford – $2.59

    Market Basket – $2.59

    Walmart – $2.76

    2022 Grocery Hunt Scores after Week 1

    Hannaford – 3

    Market Basket – 3

    Walmart – 2

    ⇒ For 2021’s Grocery Hunts, click here.