Sacramento Grocery Prices: What Moved in April 2026
Every week, we collect prices from 18 grocery stores across Sacramento. April 2026 leaned the other way from March: comparing the same products through the month, almost every department finished a little higher than it started.
Overall price trends
April drifted up, gently and almost everywhere. On matched products, household led at 1.6%, with pantry and bakery both at 1.3% and meat at 1.1%. Produce, beverages and alcohol each added under a point. Frozen was the lone category to finish exactly where it started. Nothing here is dramatic — the whole store moved inside a two-point band — but the direction was consistent in a way March's was not.
Category Price Index: Week-over-Week (first week = 100)
Category breakdown
Ten of eleven departments finished higher, none by more than 1.6%. These figures compare only products we priced in both the first and last week of the month, so a change in which items we collected cannot show up here as a price change — which is why they are far smaller than a raw average of each department would suggest.
Price Change by Category (Apr 1 – 7 – Apr 22 – 30)
| Category | Typical price Apr 1 – 7 | Typical price Apr 22 – 30 | Change (matched) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Household | $8.21 | $8.78 | +1.6% |
| Pantry | $7.40 | $7.56 | +1.3% |
| Bakery | $7.29 | $7.28 | +1.3% |
| Meat & Seafood | $8.47 | $9.31 | +1.1% |
| Produce | $5.87 | $6.02 | +1.0% |
| Beverages | $6.63 | $7.01 | +0.9% |
| Alcohol | $18.19 | $18.26 | +0.8% |
| Health & Beauty | $7.52 | $7.49 | +0.6% |
| Dairy & Eggs | $6.10 | $6.44 | +0.5% |
| Snacks | $7.01 | $7.44 | +0.5% |
| Frozen | $6.31 | $6.94 | 0.0% |
The two price columns are plain averages of everything we recorded in those weeks — useful for a sense of scale, but the mix of items behind them shifts, so they will not divide out to the change column. The change is measured only on products we priced in both weeks.
Produce spotlight
Produce added 1.0% through April as winter stock gave way to spring arrivals.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Meat & Seafood spotlight
Meat rose 1.1%, an early hint of the grilling-season demand that built through summer.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Dairy & Eggs spotlight
Dairy and eggs added 0.5%, near the bottom of the month's range.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Pantry spotlight
Pantry rose 1.3% across roughly 14,700 matched products — the broadest single move in the store.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Frozen spotlight
Frozen was April's flat spot, finishing the month exactly where it began.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Snacks spotlight
Snacks added 0.5%, one of the smaller increases in a month of small increases.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Bakery spotlight
Bakery rose 1.3%, tied with pantry for the largest food-category move.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Beverages spotlight
Beverages added 0.9% as the weather turned.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Biggest movers
These products saw the biggest real price changes across multiple stores, after filtering out one-off promotions and data quirks.
Produce
Meat & Seafood
Dairy & Eggs
Pantry
Frozen
Bakery
Sale trends
Weekly sales are a big part of the grocery price picture. The average sale discount was 18.2% off regular price. Here's how sale volume shifted week to week.
| Store | Products | % on Sale | Avg Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raley's / Bel Air / Nob Hill | 353 | 53.4% | $9.83 |
| Safeway | 11,408 | 46.7% | $8.09 |
| Sprouts | 6,915 | 36.0% | $7.92 |
| Foods Co. | 2,460 | 25.5% | $3.53 |
| FoodMaxx | 12,871 | 24.7% | $6.83 |
| Food 4 Less | 2,874 | 24.5% | $3.74 |
| Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op | 9,398 | 14.4% | $8.50 |
| Whole Foods | 3,665 | 14.2% | $9.71 |
| Smart & Final | 8,483 | 10.6% | $7.60 |
| Target | 13,010 | 6.5% | $12.24 |
| Rancho San Miguel | 8,487 | 1.6% | $5.19 |
| Trader Joe's | 2,942 | 0.0% | $5.04 |
| 99 Ranch Market | 2,261 | 0.0% | $5.98 |
How we collected this data
SacGroceries tracks prices through a combination of automated collection from store websites and community contributions. Prices are collected weekly for most stores, with some high-volume stores updated more frequently.
- Period covered: 2026-04-01 – 2026-04-30 (April 2026)
- Stores tracked: 18 Sacramento-area grocery stores
- Data points: 349,380 price records across 96,571 products
- Filtering: Prices below $0.10 or above $100 are excluded as likely data errors. Items must appear at 2+ stores for cross-store comparisons. Price swings over 500% between weeks are excluded. Stores where we only collect sale flyer data (over 80% of prices are sale prices) are excluded from the sale trends table since their data would be misleading.
- Averages: All averages use the effective price (sale price when available, regular price otherwise).
These numbers are a snapshot. Actual prices vary by location and date. With 97K+ products, some data errors slip through despite our filtering.
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