Americans spent 11.2% of their total income on groceries in 2023, and food prices are projected to climb another 2.9% this year. That’s the average. If you happen to shop at certain chains, you’re spending way more than that — sometimes double or triple what you’d pay at Walmart or Aldi. Some of these stores are household names. Others are regional favorites that fly under the radar while quietly emptying your wallet. Here are the eight most expensive grocery chains in the country, ranked from pricey to absolutely absurd.
8. Publix
Publix is the grocery chain that Southerners swear by. It’s employee-owned, based in Florida, and operates over 1,400 locations across eight states including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas. People love it. They love the chicken tender subs, the clean stores, the friendly staff. What they don’t love — or maybe just don’t notice — is the price tag.
In 2022, Florida shoppers noticed egg prices at Publix were more than double what Target was charging. Milk prices ran about 50% higher than at competitors. Publix doesn’t really try to compete on price. It competes on experience and loyalty, which is a polite way of saying they know their customers will keep coming back regardless. If you’re buying your full weekly haul there, you’re paying a premium for the privilege of shopping somewhere pleasant. And honestly, there are worse reasons to overspend. But you are overspending.
7. ACME Markets
If you don’t live on the East Coast, you might not even know ACME is a real grocery store and not just where Wile E. Coyote orders his dynamite. ACME has been around since 1891 — originally founded by Samuel Robinson and Robert Crawford in Philadelphia. The name didn’t actually come along until 1937. Today, ACME operates 159 locations across six states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
According to pricing surveys, ACME is one of the highest-priced chains in the Delaware Valley area. That alone wouldn’t be a scandal if the quality matched the cost, but customers routinely say it doesn’t. ACME is one of those chains where you walk out thinking “Why did I just spend $180?” and you can’t really point to anything special in the bag. It’s owned by the same parent company as Albertsons and Safeway, which also tend to run prices above average across the board.
6. Harris Teeter
Harris Teeter has been around since 1939 and operates over 250 stores across the southeastern United States. It’s known for high-quality meat and seafood, a solid bakery, and a shopping experience that feels a cut above your average Kroger (even though Kroger actually owns it). The stores are clean, the staff is helpful, and the product selection leans premium across the board — bakery, dairy, deli, frozen, produce, and floral.
Adam Wood, co-founder of Revenue Geeks, has called Harris Teeter the second most costly grocery store in the country. Pricing data from Consumers’ Checkbook backs that up — in the Washington D.C. area, Harris Teeter runs about 25% more expensive than Walmart and 27% more than Amazon Fresh. That’s right in line with Giant and Safeway, but Harris Teeter has this reputation for being “nice,” so people accept the markup without question. It’s the grocery store equivalent of paying more for the same car because it’s parked in a nicer dealership.
5. Gelson’s Markets
Gelson’s is a Southern California chain that most of the country has never heard of, but if you live in the LA area, you know it well. It’s one of those stores that positions itself somewhere between a regular supermarket and a specialty market — not as wild as Erewhon, but noticeably more expensive than your average Ralphs or Vons.
Organic bananas at Gelson’s cost $1.09 per pound, which doesn’t sound crazy until you compare it to what you’d pay at Trader Joe’s. A 20-ounce loaf of bread runs $6 to $7, and a half-gallon of Organic Valley Whole Milk costs $6.99 — a dollar more than Whole Foods charges for the exact same product. Gelson’s hangs its hat on locally sourced, freshly purchased produce, and the quality is genuinely good. But you’re paying a serious premium for it, and unless you’re extremely particular about where your tomatoes came from, you can find comparable stuff elsewhere for less.
4. The Fresh Market
The Fresh Market started in Greensboro, North Carolina, back in 1982 and has since grown to 166 locations across 22 states. USA Today readers voted it one of the best grocery store chains in the country, and the shopping experience does feel different from your standard supermarket — more curated, more atmospheric, more “we grind our honey-roasted peanut butter in-store” energy.
But that experience costs money. A half gallon of Organic Valley Whole Milk is $6.49 at The Fresh Market versus $5.99 at Whole Foods. A 20-ounce loaf of Nature’s Own Whole Wheat Bread costs $4.89 compared to $4.29 at Whole Foods. When you’re consistently more expensive than the chain nicknamed “Whole Paycheck,” that’s saying something. CEO Larry Appel has been upfront about it, saying the company isn’t trying to be a natural grocery store — it’s trying to be a specialty store. The target customer is the high-income shopper who doesn’t flinch at $20 cheese or a $50 roast. If that’s you, great. If not, maybe keep walking.
3. Whole Foods Market
The original expensive grocery store. Whole Foods was founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, and now has 532 stores in 44 states. It’s the chain that made organic mainstream and got roasted for it with the “Whole Paycheck” nickname that has followed it for decades. Prices are roughly 10% to 20% higher than competitors depending on location, and a major study by Consumer Reports and the Strategic Resource Group found Whole Foods prices average 39.7% higher than Walmart’s nationally. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a fundamentally different financial reality.
When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, everyone expected prices to drop. They did, a little, but seven years later the chain is still one of the most expensive places to buy groceries in America. A bag of Mandarin oranges costs $3 more than the same bag at Trader Joe’s. In the D.C. area, Whole Foods runs about 14% above average and 34% higher than Amazon Fresh — its own corporate sibling. Even weirder, customer satisfaction has actually dropped since the Amazon acquisition. The “overall quality” score from Consumers’ Checkbook surveys fell from over 90% to 65%. So you’re paying more and enjoying it less. Classic.
2. Eataly
Eataly is less of a grocery store and more of an Italian food theme park that happens to sell groceries. Founded in 2007 by Oscar Farinetti — a big proponent of the slow food movement — the first location opened in Turin, Italy. There are now 10 stores in North America, and each one feels like stepping into a high-end food hall. They make fresh pasta in-house, the meat and seafood counters look like something out of a Michelin-starred kitchen, and a lot of products are imported directly from Italy.
That sounds lovely until you look at the prices. Atlantic salmon runs over $25 per pound. This is the kind of place where you’ll find a $156 pot of caviar sitting next to a $48 candle. It’s not where you go for lunchbox snacks and paper towels. Eataly is for a very specific kind of shopping trip — the kind where you want imported wines, artisanal cheeses, and authentic Italian ingredients and you’re willing to pay dearly for them. Most people don’t do their weekly shopping here, but enough people do to keep 10 locations humming.
1. Erewhon
Nothing else comes close. Erewhon is in a category of its own — part grocery store, part social club, part venture capital firm for wellness brands. Named after Samuel Butler’s utopian novel (“Erewhon” is roughly “nowhere” spelled backward), it started as a tiny natural foods shop in Boston in 1966 before migrating to Los Angeles, where it became the unofficial grocery store of celebrities, influencers, and anyone who thinks paying $22.50 for a rotisserie chicken is reasonable. The same chicken costs $11.99 at Whole Foods.
The numbers are staggering across the board. A jar of NutMutt Organic Pistachio Butter sells for $24.99 on the brand’s own website but $45.99 at Erewhon — nearly double. Smoothies start at $19 and go up from there, including a $22 tie-dyed rainbow Cactus Plant Flea Market smoothie. The hot bar is priced per item: organic jasmine rice is $11 per pound (the cheapest thing there), buffalo cauliflower is $20, and Korean short ribs hit $40 per pound. A standard plate of food from the hot bar runs close to $40. For comparison, Whole Foods charges a flat $11.99 per pound at their hot bar in downtown LA.
The wildest part? Nobody at Erewhon seems embarrassed by any of this. They sell a 16-ounce bottle of Neptune Blue Sea Moss Gel for $44 and a denim tote bag for $135. During the pandemic, Erewhon became a place to be seen when everything else was closed, and that social currency has only grown since. With just nine locations and a nationwide shipping option via UPS, Erewhon has turned absurd pricing into a brand identity. Unlike Whole Foods, where the “expensive” label is a source of mild shame, Erewhon wears it like a badge of honor. And their customers keep lining up.
