Portland Grocery Prices: Coffee and Beef Are Up 15% in 9 Months — Here's What April 2026 Shows

April was a month of contradictions at Portland-area grocery stores. The same month that set a new record for the lowest Portland Price Tracker basket total we've ever tracked at any single store also saw the biggest single-store increase in months. Prices overall rose 1.9% from March — but that average masks a story playing out very differently depending on where you shop.

Let me start with something genuinely worth celebrating: WinCo Foods posted a total basket price of $48.89 in April — the lowest total we've recorded at any single store in nine months of tracking. Every other month, WinCo has held the bottom of our rankings; now it has its own record low.

But the tracker-wide average of $93.33 is actually up $1.72 from March. So how do both things coexist? Because April's movement was almost entirely a story of divergence, not a unified trend.

The Premium Grocers group — Chuck's Fresh Markets, Market of Choice, New Seasons, Roth's Fresh Markets, Whole Foods, Zupan's Markets, and Basics Market — actually dropped 2.1% on average. New Seasons contributed to that, falling $4.77 (4.6%) from March to reach $99.08, its lowest basket since tracking began. The drop was led by toilet paper falling $2.88 and spaghetti down $0.51, with most other items holding flat.

Meanwhile, the Budget Champions group — Costco, Grocery Outlet, Walmart, and WinCo — rose 7.3% on average. Almost all of that was Grocery Outlet, which jumped $11.73 (21%) due to a new toilet paper brand at nearly three times the previous price, ground beef up $1.99/lb., and a $2 jump on ground coffee. Grocery Outlet's business model makes it one of the most volatile stores in the tracker month to month; its basket has ranged from $55.48 in March to $67.21 in April. The deals when they're there are real, but you can't count on the same item being there next month.

The four items that rose most on average across all stores this month are worth reading as a group: ground coffee (+6.8%), canned tuna (+5.5%), apples (+5.9%), and butter (+4.5%).

Coffee and tuna are not seasonal items. Apples are just coming off storage season. These are supply-chain-sensitive commodities — and they're among the categories most exposed to tariff cost pass-through. Ground coffee has now risen 15% since we started tracking in August 2025. Ground beef is up 15.7% over that same period. These aren't spike-and-correct movements. They're slow climbs.

For comparison, eggs have actually fallen 22% since August 2025. The average cage-free dozen across Portland tracked stores was $4.54 last August. In April 2026, it was $3.54. You can still find them at $0.99 at Grocery Outlet regularly.

The full nine-month picture shows prices today are higher than where they started on most items — even as March and April brought some relief at the store-total level. We'll be watching coffee and beef closely in May.

One underused way to think about where to shop: stability. Some stores charge more, but charge the same amount every month. Others swing wildly.

Over nine months of tracking, the most consistent stores have been:

The most volatile:

New Seasons had its best month in the dataset ($99.08), posting a genuine April decline worth watching in May. If the trend continues, New Seasons could soon close in on striking distance of conventional contenders.

Roth's Fresh Markets rose $2.96 (+3.7%), driven almost entirely by two items: eggs, which jumped $4.50 (from $2.99 to $7.49), and coffee, which jumped $3 (from $8.99 to $11.99). Everything else at Roth's in April was flat or lower — including salted butter down $1.53 and spaghetti down $1.51. Two items drove nearly the entire change.

QFC rose $5.28 (+7.8%), its largest increase in months, with butter (+$1.30), apples (+$1), coffee (+$1), sugar (+$1), and toilet paper (+$1) all moving simultaneously. This pattern — multiple items moving in the same direction in the same month — is worth flagging. It's what we've seen before large corrections, but it's also consistent with cost pass-through.

Chuck's Fresh Markets had its best month ever ($77.56), its third consecutive month of improvement. It entered our tracker in September 2025 at $82.71; April's basket is down $5.15 from that starting point. For a very small chain, that's a notable run.

Grocery Outlet warrants a note: the toilet paper line item jumped from $3.99 to $13.98 — the largest single item swing at any store this month. Grocery Outlet carries opportunistic inventory, and the variety they had in stock in April was different from what was on shelves just the month before. This is just one example of how even though Grocery Outlet can have amazing prices on many items, the quality of their deals varies greatly.

For shoppers willing to shop around — or just curious where the floor is — here are the lowest tracked prices in the Portland metro area last month:

Every price point in this tracker — 4,300+ data points across nine months, 20-plus stores, and 20 items — lives in the Portland Price Tracker interactive database. You can filter by store, by item, compare any two months side by side, and see exactly where each item costs least right now. 

April was a mixed month. WinCo set an all-time record low. New Seasons had its best month ever. Chuck's Fresh Markets continued its quiet improvement streak. At the same time, Grocery Outlet swung $11.73 in a single month, QFC pushed higher across multiple items simultaneously, and coffee and beef are now both up more than 15% since last August.

The full nine-month trend is clear: prices are higher than where they started, the gap between cheapest and most expensive stores has grown, and the items most exposed to supply-chain pressure are the ones moving the most right now. If you haven't checked the interactive tracker in a while, this is a good month to do it.

The Portland Price Tracker tracks a fixed basket of 20 commonly purchased grocery items — including meat, dairy, produce, pantry staples, and household basics — at Portland-area grocery stores once per month. Prices are collected in person or via current weekly online sales (when the store guarantees it honors in-store pricing online) and reflect the lowest available price during that tracking week.

The month-over-month figures in this report compare stores with data available in both months. Data analysis was assisted by Claude (Anthropic), which was used to process and analyze the price dataset.

All data collection, editing, and reporting is done by me.

What's the last grocery price that genuinely surprised you — in a good or bad way? Let me know in the comments.