February 26, 2026
The article by Mario Cortez and Annie Vainshtein titled "This S.F. grocery store is consistently the cheapest — by an even greater margin than before" compares prices for a bundle of food items across several San Francisco grocery store chains and compares those prices to the same bundle in 2025.
ARE Professor Sofia Villas-Boas commented on how food retailers pass savings or costs onto consumers and mused about why Trader Joe's might have lower prices on some items despite rising inflation. ARE Professor Jeff Perfloff noted that about 80% of food imports from two major exporters to the United States — Mexico and Canada — are tariff-free, suggesting that tariffs could have a muted impact on food prices as a result.