How do Stop & Shop's prices compare with local competitors'? We decided to investigate.

WARWICK – When Stop & Shop announced last month that it would be closing an unspecified number of underperforming stores across the Northeast, a company executive laid some of the blame on the supermarket chain not having competitive prices.

"The value proposition and pricing at Stop & Shop are simply not strong enough," said JJ Fleeman, chief executive of the United States of Ahold Delhaize, the Dutch company that owns Stop & Shop. Speaking at a May 23 webcast for investors, Fleeman promised the company would be "intensifying our price investment."

All that talk about Stop & Shop's prices got us wondering: How does the chain compare with local competitors? We decided to investigate.

In a completely unscientific survey, we checked five supermarkets in the Warwick area and shopped for five basic items.

What stores did we visit?

Besides the Stop & Shop at 300 Quaker Lane, we checked Aldi, next door at 444 Quaker Lane; Market Basket, up Route 2 at 25 Pace Blvd.; and Trader Joe's, at 1000 Bald Hill Road. We also wanted to check prices at Walmart, but the two Walmarts in Warwick don't have full grocery operations, so we shopped at the Walmart Supercenter, 1776 Plainfield Pike, Cranston.

What were we looking to buy?

Here's what was on our shopping list:

• Milk
• Eggs
• Watermelon
• Ground beef (This is what tripped us up in the grocery aisles of the Warwick Walmarts, which didn't sell fresh ground beef, only frozen patties.

Here are all the details on our shopping list

For milk, we shopped for a gallon of whole milk.

For bread, we shopped a standard-size loaf of sliced white bread, store brand.

For eggs, we shopped a dozen brown eggs, although Aldi had only white eggs.

For ground beef, we shopped for a package of about one pound and used the price per pound. We shopped for 85% lean but used the price for 90% lean at Stop & Shop, which didn't have 85%. For comparison, 80% lean at Stop & Shop was $4.29.

For watermelon, we shopped for whole, full-size watermelons.

What were the results?

In terms of the total price for our list, Stop & Shop was far and away the highest, denting our wallet for a total of $23.25. That was more than $4 above the five-store average of $19.07 and a full $1 above the second-most-expensive, Trader Joe's. The cheapest was Aldi, at $15.58.

Stop & Shop also had the highest price for three of the items: milk, eggs and watermelon. It was higher than the average on the other two items, though only by 6¢ for ground beef.

StoreMilkBreadEggsGround beefWatermelonTotal

Stop & Shop3.991.793.995.497.99$23.25

Trader Joe's3.792.493.496.495.99$22.25

Walmart3.171.422.246.414.67$17.91

Market Basket2.590.992.003.796.99$16.36

Aldi3.051.351.544.994.65$15.58

Average3.321.612.655.436.06$19.07

How did a non-super Walmart compare?

We had to go to the Cranston Walmart Supercenter to shop for the full list, including ground beef (the Cranston prices are reflected in the table). But we did note the prices of the other items at the non-super Walmart at 650 Bald Hill Rd., Warwick, the former Rhode Island Mall. Here are the prices there: milk $3.17, bread $1.42, eggs $2.38 and watermelon $4.68.