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Before we get to today's report, two stories you may have missed:
🏪 Feed the Mass is bringing a grocery store back to Old Town. Here's what 1st & Nourish Market will look like.
🧾 Thousands of Oregonians just lost SNAP benefits, and Congress is debating more cuts. Here's who's affected and what comes next.
Now, onto this month's report.
For 13 months in a row, one store has had the cheapest basket in the Portland Price Tracker: WinCo. In September, that streak ended. The Hollywood Grocery Outlet’s 20-item basket came to $52.12, its lowest ever. WinCo came in at $52.33, a difference of 21 cents.
(New here? Each month, we track the lowest available price for the same 20 grocery staples at stores across the Portland area. September 2026 marked our 14th consecutive month of collecting this data. It's the best local snapshot of how grocery prices are actually moving.)
Don't switch stores over 21 cents. WinCo didn't get pricier — its basket was down 49 cents from August 2026. Grocery Outlet got cheaper, with a $3.96 12-pack of toilet paper, a $3.89 gallon of milk and the lowest egg price in the tracker at $1.29 a dozen. Grocery Outlet is a closeout grocer, and each store is run by an independent local operator, so prices and selection can vary greatly from month to month, and location to location. It's been the most volatile store in our budget group all year. WinCo is still the most consistent store we track.
Ground beef is up $1/lb. at Trader Joe’s over the past year, and the average lowest price for 1-lb. of 80/20 ground beef hit an all-time high in September. (Bryan M. Vance/Stumptown Savings)
Across the 19 stores tracked in both August and September, the average basket fell $1.15, or 1.2%, from $95.22 to $94.07. But the average lowest price for ground beef just hit the highest level we've ever recorded.
Where Do You Do Most Of Your Grocery Shopping These Days?
New This Month: Amazon Fresh
The tracker now covers 20 stores, with Amazon Fresh joining in September. Its first basket came to $62.64. That's the fifth-cheapest store we track, cheaper than Safeway, Costco, Trader Joe's, QFC and Albertsons. It also had the lowest whole milk price in the tracker, at $2.99 a gallon. Amazon Fresh was added after reader Jules R. suggested it. It has a reputation for being affordable, and is backed by Amazon’s massive purchasing power and warehouse footprint to keep costs low. We were surprised to see it come in behind Grocery Outlet, WinCo and Walmart, though.
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Where Your Store Ranks
The 5 cheapest baskets in September:
Grocery Outlet: $52.12
WinCo: $52.33
Walmart: $61.00
Fred Meyer: $61.40
Amazon Fresh: $62.64
The 5 most expensive:
Alberta Co-op: $171.20
People's Food Co-op: $162.29
Zupan's Markets: $149.11
Natural Grocers: $138.03
Barbur World Foods: $127.34
The other 10 stores, and how each one has moved since August 2025, are in the Portland Price Tracker database.
How Prices Moved By Group
Budget Champions — Costco, Grocery Outlet, Walmart and WinCo — fell 2.6%, from $60.52 to $58.93 on average. (Amazon Fresh, which joins this group, isn't included because it's new this month.) Walmart dropped $1.87, mostly because its 5-lb. bag of flour fell from $4.57 to $2.38. Costco barely moved (down 7 cents).
Conventional Contenders — Albertsons, Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway and Trader Joe's — rose 1.4%. Safeway (+$4.09,+6.2%) and Albertsons (+$3.75, +5.5%) moved together, as the two sister chains usually do. Both had the same three changes: ground beef went from $5.99 to $8.99 a pound, eggs from $0.99 to $2.99 a dozen, and toilet paper from $5.00 to $6.29. That's most likely sales ending, not a new pricing strategy. Fred Meyer and QFC both got slightly cheaper.
Premium Grocers — Chuck's Fresh Markets, Market of Choice, New Seasons, Roth's Fresh Markets, Whole Foods and Zupan's Markets — rose 1.3%. New Seasons hit its most expensive basket ever, $119.57. That's up 18% since we started tracking in August 2025 and up 21% since April. The biggest drivers: toilet paper (now $17.18 for a 12-pack, up from $7.49 in August 2025) and organic russet potatoes ($13.45 for 5 lbs.). Whole Foods rose $4.18, almost all from toilet paper, which jumped from $4.75 to $11.59.
Specialty & Co-ops — Alberta Co-op, Barbur World Foods, Natural Grocers and People's Food Co-op — fell 4.4%, the biggest group move this month. Sugar did most of the work. Natural Grocers' 4-lb. bag fell from $19.80 to $9.69, and People's fell from $21.16 to $12.98. Natural Grocers' basket dropped $16.93 (−10.9%) overall. People's basket dropped $12.53 (−7.2%), though its vegetable oil rose $4.20.
1 Year Later
Compared with last September, the average basket is about flat. Across the 17 stores with complete data in both months, it went from $86.66 to $86.81, up 0.2%. Nine stores got more expensive and eight got cheaper; the typical store rose 2.2%.
That's partly because September 2025 was an expensive month. Barbur World Foods' basket spiked to $158.15 that month (it's $127.34 now). Leave Barbur out, and the other 16 stores are up 2.5%. The biggest year-over-year climbers were Alberta Co-op (+18.9%), New Seasons (+18.4%) and Costco (+13.1%). Grocery Outlet (−12.0%, more than half of it from September's drop) and Natural Grocers (−10.1%) fell the most after Barbur.
Item by item, the year looks less flat. (A note on these item numbers: each month we record the lowest price available for each item at each store, then average those across stores. So when we say eggs averaged $2.96 in September, we mean the cheapest dozen at a typical store cost $2.96, not that every carton did.) At those same 17 stores, romaine is up 43% from last September, spaghetti was up 19%, apples were up 12%, and canned tuna was up 10%.
Eggs are down 33%, pasta sauce is down 16% and butter dropped 10%. Ground beef is up only 2.7% year over year, because it was already high last September. It's up 18.5% from August 2025.
What Rose, What Fell: September 2026
The average lowest price for ground beef hit a record high: $7.99 a pound, up 8.4% from August. That's the highest we've recorded, and it's up 18.5% since August 2025. Only romaine and spaghetti have risen more since we started tracking. Much of September's jump came from August's cheapest prices going away: in August, seven stores sold it for $5.99 a pound. When we checked prices in September, only Costco and Grocery Outlet had ground beef at that price on the day I tracked prices.
Spaghetti also hit a record high, at $2.36 for 1-lb., up 22% since we started tracking. Romaine rose 12%, to $3.11 a head. It's up 51% since August 2025, the biggest increase of any item we track.
Whole wheat bread also hit a record high, at $3.49 a loaf (+6.9%). On the cheaper side, butter fell 5.1% to $4.65 a pound and pasta sauce fell 8.3% to $3.19 a jar. That's butter's lowest since February and pasta sauce's lowest since November.
Sugar fell 15%, to $6.15, a month after tying its record high. Chicken breasts fell 9.4%, to $5.62 a pound. Russet potatoes fell 7.6%, to $4.90, off July's high. Eggs rose 6.4%, to $2.96 a dozen, bouncing off August's record low. They're still down 34% since we started tracking.
Lowest Prices Tracked In Portland, September 2026
🥚 Eggs (large, cage-free, dozen): $1.29 — Grocery Outlet
🍌 Bananas: $0.50/lb. — Walmart
🧅 Yellow onions: $0.64/lb. — Walmart or WinCo
🥗 Romaine lettuce: $1.98 — WinCo
🥔 Russet potatoes (5-lb. bag): $1.98 — WinCo
🍎 Apples: $1.28/lb. — WinCo
🍞 Whole wheat sandwich bread (20 oz.): $1.48 — WinCo
🐟 Canned tuna (5 oz.): $0.88 — WinCo
🧀 Cheddar cheese (8 oz.): $1.79 — WinCo
🍗 Chicken breasts: $1.98/lb. — WinCo
🍝 Spaghetti (16 oz.): $0.98 — WinCo
🍅 Pasta sauce (24 oz.): $1.78 — WinCo
🌾 All-purpose flour (5 lb.): $1.99 — Grocery Outlet
🧻 Toilet paper (12-pack): $3.96 — Grocery Outlet
🥛 Whole milk (1 gallon): $2.99 — Amazon Fresh
🐮 Ground beef (80/20): $5.99/lb. — Costco or Grocery Outlet
🧈 Salted butter (1 lb.): $2.37 — Costco (sold in a 4-pack)
🍬 Granulated sugar (4 lb.): $2.96 — Costco (sold in a 10-lb. bag)
☕ Ground coffee (12 oz.): $5.25 — Costco (sold in a 3-lb. size)
🫒 Vegetable oil (48 oz.): $3.50 — Costco (sold in a 2-pack of 3-qt. bottles)
The full price list for every store, plus 14 months of history, is in the Portland Price Tracker database’s Item Trends and Heatmap tabs.
Methodology
The Portland Price Tracker tracks a fixed basket of 20 commonly purchased grocery items at Portland-area grocery stores once a month. Prices are collected in person or from current weekly online listings (when the store guarantees it honors in-store pricing), and reflect the lowest available price during the tracking week. Prices for September 2026 were collected during the third week of September.
Month-over-month figures compare the 19 stores with data in both August and September. Amazon Fresh joins the tracker this month and is excluded from those comparisons. Bulk-only prices are converted to our standard sizes.
People's Food Co-op doesn't sell meat, so its plant-based substitutes are left out of the chicken and ground beef averages. Item averages are the average of each store's lowest price for that item, across the 19 stores tracked in both months.
Data analysis was assisted by Claude (Anthropic). All data collection, editing and reporting is done by Stumptown Savings.
The Bottom Line
September's average basket dipped, but the story was at the edges. WinCo's 13-month run as the cheapest store ended by 21 cents. New Seasons hit its priciest basket yet. Ground beef set a record high, along with spaghetti and bread, while butter and pasta sauce hit their lowest prices in months. If you shop the sales, butter is the cheapest it's been since February. If you can, buy ground beef at Costco or Grocery Outlet or pay close attention to the weekly deals guides to see when it’s on sale.
The Price Tracker Is Free Because Members Support It
This report took 400 price checks across 20 stores, and hours of combing through the date to write.
We check these prices by hand every month, and readers are the only reason we can keep doing it. If the tracker helps you decide where to shop, become a Savers Club member and help keep it free for everyone.
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See you at the market,
Bryan,
Stumptown Savings
