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Portlanders who shop at only one grocery store might be paying a “convenience tax” and not know it.
That’s because savings abound for those willing to shop around, or so says Bryan Vance, the man behind Stumptown Savings, a year-old media outlet that tracks the price of 20 items at 20 Portland-area grocery stores so you don’t have to.
Inspired by an article in Nieman Lab, “We Need a Wirecutter for Groceries,” Vance founded the media outlet in April, just hours after getting laid off from City Cast, a national podcast and newsletter network. He knew the layoff would mean lots of time to kill, and Vance says he’s not one to sit still. He also knew his household would need to cut back and find ways to save.
Today, Vance manages the Stumptown Savings website and publishes a newsletter and social media content on several platforms. In addition to the price tracker, Vance performs taste tests, profiles local farmers, reports corporate acquisition news, and maintains an impressive list of birthday deals around the city. A regular feature, “Rose City Receipts,” gives local families a platform to discuss food budgeting, recipes and cost-saving strategies.
An Ohio native who moved to Oregon to work as a digital producer at Oregon Public Broadcasting, Vance says it was while working as a journalist with a side gig driving for Lyft that he first started recording food prices on a spreadsheet.
According to Vance, Stumptown Savings has won loyal readers if not journalism awards, proving to him there’s a real need for independent, hyperlocal news outlets that help people shop smarter. Though the site charges for subscriptions, he intends to keep the price tracker feature available free of charge.
“This isn’t necessarily what I set out to do with my journalism career. I know this isn’t fancy. This isn’t the same as investigating corruption at City Hall,” says Vance, 35. “But this impacts everyone. We all have to eat.”
The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
WW: So are grocery prices increasing in Portland?
Bryan Vance: Yes, but not as much as it might seem. And the big thing to think about is where grocery prices seem to have actually increased the most, which is on proteins and packaged goods. So when you go into a grocery store, a bag of Doritos is now a lot more expensive than it was a few years ago, before the pandemic. But most of the stuff isn’t actually that much more expensive. It’s like a few percentage points higher, but that’s actually not a lot. You know, 3% on something that’s like $3 isn’t actually that much money in the end. And there’s always going to be inflation. That’s just the nature of the economy.
So it sort of depends, and it depends where you shop. One of the things I do every month is, I track the prices of the same 20 items at 20 stores across Portland. And it’s been really interesting to see how, some months, a certain store’s prices will go up. And then the next month, they’ll basically wipe out all those increases.
When you say “proteins,” you mean…
Meat, basically. Beef, chicken, fish, that kind of stuff.
There’s been a lot in the discourse about egg prices.
Egg prices are fascinating. I started tracking them last year in April, and I did it through the end of the year. I logged over 4,600 individual egg prices across the city, to see how they vary from store to store, but also week to week, month to month.
And it was interesting to see how the prices really did come down. They were at like an all-time high in February 2025. And by November, they were significantly lower. I was seeing eggs for as low as 99 cents a dozen at one point. That wasn’t the case when I started Stumptown Savings; they were dramatically higher.
So what store has the best deals? Is there even an answer to that question?
A lot of people will tell you Grocery Outlet is the cheapest store in town. That’s not actually true. There are certain things that are just more expensive there.
WinCo is the cheapest store in town, week in, week out. It’s the cheapest store for 99% of the stuff you can buy there. They have the cheapest price, but every now and then, Grocery Outlet will have really deep discounts on specific things. They recently did a 25% off wine sale, and you know, they’re getting good wine. Is it the same quality as, like, Zupans? Probably not. Is it the same quality as what you can get at Fred Meyer or maybe even New Seasons? I’d argue it’s fairly similar. And Grocery Outlet knocks 25% off the price for two days to get you in the door.
But the stores with the best deals tend to be the ones that have gamified the model. So if you want the best everyday prices, go to WinCo because they don’t do any of that stuff. They’re able to just keep their prices low. They don’t advertise; that saves them money. They don’t accept credit cards; that saves them 3% right off the top. The stores like Fred Meyer and Albertsons and Safeway, they have these really sophisticated apps that allow you to earn extra rewards points on specific items each week. It sort of turns shopping into a game to see how much you can rack up in savings.
But if you’re looking for the best random deals, the place where you’re going to see the highest markdowns is probably Grocery Outlet.
The downside with Grocery Outlet is, of course, you never really know what they’ll have in stock.
Exactly, because every store is different. And that’s the other thing: The sales aren’t the same in every store. There are certain sales that are nationwide, and there are certain sales that might be regional. But each store is independently owned, and they work out their own deals with local producers.
It’s also why you can get some really cool things at Grocery Outlet. The Hollywood one partners with this bakery out of Kalama, Wash., and offers their sourdough pizza dough. You can’t really find it elsewhere, at least in Portland. But you couldn’t necessarily go to the Grocery Outlet in Beaverton and expect to find that same product.
The other thing that we haven’t mentioned is quality.
Yeah, that matters to a lot of people. So one of the things I do with my Portland price tracker project is group the stores so that I’m not comparing WinCo to Alberta Co-Op because that’s not fair. They’re completely different stores. They’re targeting different people.
For stores that offer a nice balance of quality and price, Market of Choice is actually really good because—it’s right in the name—the idea is that they offer you a choice. You can buy a store brand or you can buy from someone who’s 20 miles from the store. They tend to have a nice mix of quality and price.
How do wholesalers like Costco fit in?
Costco is interesting. If you can afford to buy things in bulk, you can definitely save some money. It is not actually the cheapest store in town, when you do the math, like per ounce. WinCo still beats it and Walmart still beats it and, most months, Grocery Outlet still beats it.
Costco is great if you care about organic meat. You can buy it in bulk at a decent price. It’s great if you really want to get a good deal on something like free-range organic eggs.
The produce can be hit or miss, and you definitely see this all over the internet with people complaining about a bag of avocados they bought that went moldy before they could use them up. But that’s because they’re buying so many, and if they don’t have a plan to use them, they’re going to waste a lot.
So if you have a big family—if you have three kids in the house and you know they all eat two bananas a day—absolutely, get bananas at Costco. Otherwise, you’re probably going to waste more than it’s worth.
I’m hearing it might be a good idea to try to break out of our grocery bubbles. Is that correct?
Yes. I know it’s really convenient for people to shop at one store consistently, but you’re paying for that. There’s a convenience tax; you’re missing out on better deals elsewhere.
It’s like with anything. If you just bought your car from the same lot for all your life, you’re probably going to wind up paying more at some point because of incentives or someone else carries a different model or whatever.
And it’s the same with groceries. It doesn’t mean you have to go to multiple stores every week. But a lot of stuff we buy is shelf stable for months. So go to Costco or WinCo once a month. Shop the bulk bins at WinCo. Load up on grains and that kind of stuff. That’s not stuff you have to buy every week. And then for produce and meat, like, pick one or two stores that you visit regularly throughout the weeks. But yeah, going to one store for everything—you’re going to pay a huge premium for that.
