DARREN BONAPARTE | guest writer

Student study shows that Stater Bros. is leading the pack in price.

I have a problem. I hate spending money. So to me, spending gas money to drive to the store is a little unacceptable.

I religiously shop at two stores Whole Foods and Stater Bros. Whole Foods is expensive, high quality organic food. Stater Bros. is within walking distance and has a selection wide enough for my tastes.

It even has Organic Milk. Come on, it’s a great selection. But does the price make it worthwhile?

If we excluded the cost of gas, I doubt I’d venture to Stater’s. I’m jumping on the organic bandwagon, so it’s hard to be an unbiased spectator in the grocery store price match game when it comes to regular stores.

According to research by Craig Downs, done last October through a class with global studies professor Patricia Mangan, prices at Stater Bros. are $80-100 more expensive per Azusa resident than the cheapest store alternative, Gigante.

This information doesn’t include the average college student, because rarely do they buy food to support a family.

Co-working with senior sociology major Chris Odell, Downs went out to stores to gather the information about the general items.

For example, Downs discusses avocadoes and their prices in his paper. The price difference is staggering.

“At Stater Bros., avocados were $1.89 and continued to be a dollar less or more at the stores that followed,” he stated in his research paper.

That being said, Downs balanced the issue by stating that many reasons could potentially explain it. I, however, am much less inclined to be fair.

“It was really interesting. My assumption was that Stater Bros. was more expensive because it was right next to [APU]” Downs said.

At Price Rite, I found a young high school student browsing through the snack food section.

“Sometimes it’s not worth it,” Brandon Galleana, 16, said. “I just want chips. I don’t want to walk too many miles to get [chips]. If it’s close, I’ll go there. If it costs too much, I won’t buy them.”

Now, the problem of gas. My car gets 10 miles to the gallon. It’s not great, I know. And in order to get to the nearest Gigante, I need to drive 3 miles. If I were walking, it would take a little less than half an hour if I was speed-walking.

That’s a dollar in gas. If I did decide to venture to Gigante, I would save 50 cents on a given brand of avocadoes.

But wait. That’s one way. Two dollars in gas to get there and back to my residence. It costs more for me to drive to the store and buy cheaper avocadoes then it would to walk to Stater Bros. and buy them there.

Surprisingly enough, Gigante had the most expensive milk.

So I propose an easy way to figure out when to go where. Count the miles it is to said store. Multiply the miles by two and you have the distance. If you save an average of 10 cents or more, your savings counteract your gas bill.

I don’t drive often, so walking to Stater Bros. is exercise and easy to fit into my schedule. Walking to west campus to get my car (since I can’t park in the Shire Annex anymore) would take me longer than it would to walk to Stare Bros. and buy the milk or avocadoes I need to get.

I consider myself blessed, because although I spend more money shopping at the store a few hundred yards from my residence, I make it up by not spending any gas money at all driving to the store. And I can even get a cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Just don’t get me started on the price of coffee.