In partnership with
Before we get to today's report, three stories you may have missed:
🛒 DoorDash is buying Instacart for $17 billion. Here's what it could mean for your grocery bill.
🏛️ Portland wants to ban surveillance pricing before it reaches your grocery store. Here's what the proposal would do.
🥯 WinCo's fresh bagels are coming back after shoppers pushed back. Here's what changed.
Now, onto this month's report.
First, the big news: WinCo is the cheapest grocery store in the Portland Price Tracker again.
Last month, the Hollywood Grocery Outlet beat WinCo by 21 cents and ended its 13-month streak. I told you not to switch stores over 21 cents. Here's why: In October, Grocery Outlet's 20-item basket jumped $19.65, from $52.12 to $71.77, and it fell to No. 10. WinCo's basket came to $52.34, a penny more than in September.
(New here? Each month, I track the lowest available price for the same 20 grocery staples at stores across the Portland area. October 2026 marked my 15th consecutive month of collecting this data. It's the best local snapshot of how grocery prices are actually moving.)
Grocery Outlet didn't raise prices across the board. Two items did most of the damage. The $3.96 12-pack of toilet paper I found in September was gone, and the cheapest option was a 6-pack for $6.99, or $13.98 for 12 rolls. There was no plain vegetable oil, so I recorded the cheapest substitute: an olive-canola blend at $6.99 a liter, or $9.92 for 48 oz. Those two items account for $16.15 of the jump. Without them, its basket would have been $55.62.
It's Grocery Outlet's most expensive basket in 15 months of tracking, and it's mostly about what was on the shelf the day I shopped. Grocery Outlet is a closeout grocer, so the deals come and go. WinCo has had the cheapest basket in 14 of the 15 months I've tracked.
Across the 20 stores I tracked in both September and October, the average basket rose 98 cents, or 1.1%, from $92.54 to $93.52.
Privacy-first email. Built for real protection.
Proton Mail offers what others won’t:
End-to-end encryption by default
Zero access to your data
Open-source and independently audited
Based in Switzerland with strong privacy laws
Free to start, no ads
We don’t scan your emails. We don’t sell your data. And we don’t make you dig through settings to find basic security. Proton is built for people who want control, not compromise.
Simple, secure, and free.
New This Month: US Foods Chef'store
The tracker now covers 21 stores. US Foods Chef'store, at 8250 SE Stark St., debuted at No. 4 with a $58.80 basket. That's $6.46 more than WinCo, but cheaper *than Fred Meyer and every other conventional grocery store I track.
Chef'store is a restaurant-supply store that's open to the public, with no membership required. It had the lowest price in the tracker on seven items: chicken breasts ($1.56 a pound), 80/20 ground beef ($3.90 a pound), cheddar ($1.37 for 8 oz.), butter ($2.49 a pound), russet potatoes ($1.55 for 5 lbs.), yellow onions ($0.59 a pound) and spaghetti ($0.90 a pound).
*The catch is size. That chicken comes in a 40-lb. case, which is $62.40 at the register. The ground beef comes in 10-lb. packs, the cheddar in a 5-lb. loaf and the eggs by the 15-dozen case. If you have a big household, a deep freezer or a neighbor to split with, it's worth a look. Chef'store joins the Budget Champions group, and it'll count toward the averages starting next month.
Would You Shop at a Restaurant-Supply Store Like Chef'store?
Where Your Store Ranks
The 5 cheapest baskets in October:
WinCo: $52.34
Amazon Fresh with Prime (delivery only): $57.48
Walmart: $58.68
US Foods Chef'store: $58.80
Fred Meyer: $62.77
The 5 most expensive:
People's Food Co-op: $175.58
Alberta Co-op: $172.69
Natural Grocers: $150.68
Zupan's Markets: $143.43
Barbur World Foods: $125.73
Amazon Fresh came in second, at $57.48 with Prime pricing. That's down $6.01 from $63.49 in September, mostly on coffee ($7.99 to $4.98), toilet paper ($8.47 to $5.68) and potatoes ($3.74 to $1.98). It also had the cheapest coffee and whole milk in the tracker ($4.98 for a 12-oz. bag and $3.46 a gallon). Without Prime, Amazon adds a $10.95 delivery fee, which pushes that basket to $68.43, enough to drop it to No. 7.
Correction: Last month I reported Amazon Fresh's first basket as $62.64. The correct total was $63.49. It was still the fifth-cheapest store in September.
The other 11 stores are in the Portland Price Tracker database. New this month: Hover over any store's bar to see how much its basket changed since September.
Now, when you hover over a store’s listing in the Store Rankings tab on the database, you can explore how its total basket price shifted month-over-month.
How Prices Moved By Group
Budget Champions — Amazon Fresh, Costco, Grocery Outlet, Walmart and WinCo — rose 3.3%, from $59.84 to $61.79 on average. That's almost all Grocery Outlet. (Chef'store isn't included because it's new this month.) Walmart fell $2.32 (−3.8%), mostly because its chicken breasts dropped from $4.62 to $2.57 a pound. Costco fell $1.58 (−2.2%), as its organic flour got cheaper ($9.29 to $4.65 for 5 lbs.), though its butter rose from $2.37 to $5 a pound.
Conventional Contenders — Albertsons, Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway and Trader Joe's — fell 1.7%, from $69.21 to $68.06. Last month, Albertsons and Safeway jumped together on ground beef and eggs. This month, both reversed. Albertsons' ground beef went from $8.99 back to $5.99 a pound and its eggs from $2.99 to $1.29 a dozen, cutting its basket $5.95 (−8.3%). Safeway's beef dropped to $6.99 and its eggs to $2.49, for a $3.04 drop (−4.3%). Trader Joe's went the other way, up $4.10 (+5.7%), mostly because its coffee rose from $6.99 to $9.99.
Premium Grocers — Chuck's Fresh Markets, Market of Choice, New Seasons, Roth's Fresh Markets, Whole Foods and Zupan's Markets — fell 1.7%, from $101.10 to $99.41. New Seasons gave back part of September's record, down $9.41 (−7.9%) to $110.16, as russet potatoes fell from $13.45 to $7.95 and toilet paper from $17.18 to $13.69. Chuck's fell $6.88 (−8.0%), with romaine down from $3.49 to $1.55. Roth's rose $5.90 (+7.5%) to $84.26, its most expensive basket since I started tracking it, on toilet paper, coffee and potatoes. Market of Choice rose $5.72 (+6.7%), led by coffee (+$3) and chicken (+$2).
Specialty & Co-ops — Alberta Co-op, Barbur World Foods, Natural Grocers and People's Food Co-op — rose 4.3%, from $149.72 to $156.17. One item did it: sugar. People's doesn't sell packaged cane sugar, and this month the cheapest packaged sugar was organic coconut sugar at $6.99 a pound, so its 4-lb. price went from $12.98 to $27.96. That pushed People's to its most expensive basket yet, $175.58. Without the sugar, its basket would have fallen. At Natural Grocers, the cheapest sugar was organic, in 1-lb. bags at $4.95, so its 4-lb. price went from $9.69 to $19.80. Its basket rose $12.65 (+9.2%).
1 Year Later
Across the 18 stores with complete data in both October 2025 and October 2026, the average basket rose 4.0%, from $89.16 to $92.75. Thirteen stores got more expensive and five got cheaper.
The biggest climbers were Alberta Co-op (+14.4%), Albertsons (+10.8%) and Costco (+9.6%). Whole Foods (−8.7%), Chuck's Fresh Markets (−7.2%) and QFC (−4.2%) fell the most. Amazon Fresh, US Foods Chef'store and Zupan's Markets weren't tracked yet a year ago, so they aren't part of this comparison.
Item by item, at those same 18 stores, romaine is up 45% from a year ago ($2.25 to $3.26). Spaghetti is up 24%, canned tuna 22% and russet potatoes 14%. Eggs are down 27% ($3.88 to $2.82), and cheddar is down 8%.
(A note on item numbers: Each month I record the lowest price available for each item at each store, then average those across stores. So when I say eggs averaged $2.83, I mean the cheapest dozen at a typical store cost $2.83, not that every carton did.)
What Rose, What Fell: October 2026
Cheddar hit its lowest average since I started tracking: $3.45 for 8 oz., down 6.8% from September and 23% below August 2025. Not one store raised its cheddar price, and seven cut it. Chuck's went from $4.99 to $2.99, and Fred Meyer and QFC from $2.00 to $1.49.
Apples fell 11.5% to $1.61 a pound, tying their lowest average. That's new-crop season: 10 stores cut apple prices and only one raised them. Eggs fell 3.7% to $2.83 a dozen, just above August's record low of $2.78. They're down 37% since August 2025. Ground beef fell 3.2% to $7.68 a pound, a month after its record high.
On the other side, pasta sauce rose 11.2% to $3.48 a jar, with 10 stores raising prices. Romaine rose 6.2% to $3.26 a head. It's up 58% since August 2025, still the biggest increase of any item I track. Sugar's average jumped 19.4% to $7.15, but 14 of the 20 stores didn't change their price. That's the two co-ops above.
Whole wheat bread also hit a record high in the tracker, at $3.46 a loaf, a penny above July's $3.45.
New: The Bulk Bin Check
Starting this month, I also check bulk bins at the six stores that have them. Bulk prices don't count toward the basket totals, because not every store has a bulk section. But I convert them to the same size as the packaged item, so you can see whether the bin actually saves you money.
It usually does. Bulk beat the packaged price in 11 of the 16 comparisons. At People's Food Co-op, organic vegetable oil cost $12.84 for 48 oz. from the bulk bin, $13.55 less than bottled. At Alberta Co-op, organic sugar from the bin cost $7.96 for 4 lbs., $16 less than four 1-lb. bags. But at WinCo, bulk flour cost $0.93 more than the cheapest bag, and bulk coffee cost $1.25 more than the cheapest can.
Methodology
The Portland Price Tracker tracks a fixed basket of 20 commonly purchased grocery items at Portland-area grocery stores one day per month. I collect prices myself, in person or through current online listings, and record the lowest available price. Prices for October 2026 were collected on Friday, Oct. 23, 2026.
Month-over-month figures compare the 20 stores tracked in both months. That now includes Amazon Fresh, so September's average is $92.54 here, not the $94.07 I reported last month for 19 stores. US Foods Chef'store joins those comparisons next month. Year-over-year figures compare the 18 stores with a complete 20-item basket in both October 2025 and October 2026. Item averages leave out Chef'store this month and People's Food Co-op's vegan stand-ins for ground beef and chicken. Amazon Fresh prices are Prime member prices; without Prime, a cart of these items came with a $10.95 delivery fee. Bulk-bin prices are tracked separately and aren't counted in basket totals.
Data analysis was assisted by Claude (Anthropic). All data collection, editing and reporting is done by me.
The Bottom Line
October is a good reminder of why I track the same store every month. One good week made Grocery Outlet the cheapest store in the tracker last month, and one bad week made it No. 10. WinCo barely moved, again. And if you've got freezer space, a restaurant-supply store just beat every conventional grocer I track.
Have you shopped at Chef'store? Tell me what you bought in the comments.
Every Price Is Tracked By Hand, Store-By-Store
No store pays to be included in the Portland Price Tracker, and none gets a say in what I report. That independence only works because readers fund it. If this tracker has saved you money or helped you better understand how prices are shifting, join the Savers Club today to keep it going.
$8/month or $80/year (two months free) · Cancel anytime
See you at the market,
Bryan,
Stumptown Savings
