Sacramento Grocery Prices: What Moved in August 2026

Overall price trends

August had two movers and nine bystanders. Health & beauty rose 2.2% — the largest single-department move of the summer — and frozen fell 1.4%, extending its slide. Everything else finished within half a point of where it started: produce, meat, dairy, snacks, alcohol and household all effectively flat. The number worth acting on is sale depth: at 19.1% off regular price, August had the deepest average discount of any month this year. Shelf prices held still while the markdowns got better.

Category Price Index: Week-over-Week (first week = 100)

Category breakdown

Two departments moved and the rest did not. 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 (Aug 1 – 7 – Aug 22 – 31)

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 0.3% as late-season melon gave way to autumn arrivals.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Meat & Seafood spotlight

Meat rose 0.1% through the Labor Day ad cycles — flat, in practice.

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 0.1%, unchanged for a second straight month.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Pantry spotlight

Pantry slipped 0.3% across roughly 12,000 matched products.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Frozen spotlight

Frozen fell 1.4%, the largest decline in the store and its third down month in four.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Snacks spotlight

Snacks finished exactly flat.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Bakery spotlight

Bakery added 0.5%, the largest food-category increase in a month without many.

Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.

Beverages spotlight

Beverages eased 0.4% as the summer demand peak passed.

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.

Sale trends

Weekly sales are a big part of the grocery price picture. The average sale discount was 19.1% off regular price. Here's how sale volume shifted week to week.

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: 2026-08-01 – 2026-08-31 (August 2026)
• Stores tracked: 19 Sacramento-area grocery stores
• Data points: 380,475 price records across 89,353 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 89K+ products, some data errors slip through despite our filtering.