Sacramento Grocery Prices: What Moved in March 2026
Every week, we collect prices from 24 grocery stores across Sacramento. March 2026 was a quiet month: comparing the same products from the start of the month to the end, nearly every department finished within a percentage point of where it began.
Overall price trends
March barely moved. Comparing the same products across the month, snacks fell the furthest at 1.1%, and no department moved more than that in either direction. Bakery, beverages, meat, pantry and produce each slipped under a point; frozen and alcohol edged up 0.4%. The average sale discount held at 18.3%. If you shopped the same list at the start and end of March, it cost about the same.
Category Price Index: Week-over-Week (first week = 100)
Category breakdown
A flat month reads as a short bar chart. Every category sits between −1.1% and +0.4%. 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 (Mar 1 – 7 – Mar 22 – 31)
| Category | Typical price Mar 1 – 7 | Typical price Mar 22 – 31 | Change (matched) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frozen | $6.24 | $6.53 | +0.4% |
| Alcohol | $24.65 | $18.08 | +0.4% |
| Household | $9.22 | $8.83 | +0.3% |
| Health & Beauty | $7.74 | $7.66 | -0.1% |
| Dairy & Eggs | $6.28 | $6.30 | -0.5% |
| Produce | $7.12 | $5.93 | -0.6% |
| Pantry | $9.24 | $7.41 | -0.6% |
| Meat & Seafood | $8.74 | $8.85 | -0.7% |
| Beverages | $6.93 | $7.00 | -0.7% |
| Bakery | $7.57 | $7.35 | -0.8% |
| Snacks | $8.24 | $7.15 | -1.1% |
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 slipped 0.6% across March — unusually calm for the department that normally swings most.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Meat & Seafood spotlight
Meat eased 0.7%, with the month's sale calendar doing most of the work.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Dairy & Eggs spotlight
Dairy and eggs fell 0.5%, one of the steadier shelves in a steady month.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Pantry spotlight
Pantry drifted down 0.6% across roughly 13,000 matched products — about as flat as a department this size gets.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Frozen spotlight
Frozen was one of only three categories to finish higher, up 0.4%.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Snacks spotlight
Snacks fell 1.1%, the largest move in the store this month and still barely a point.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Bakery spotlight
Bakery slipped 0.8%, tracking the rest of the center store.
Products with the biggest price swings across multiple stores. Items available at fewer than 3 stores are excluded.
Beverages spotlight
Beverages eased 0.7% ahead of the spring demand that lifted them later in the year.
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 18.3% off regular price. Here's how sale volume shifted week to week.
| Store | Products | % on Sale | Avg Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raley's / Bel Air / Nob Hill | 1,166 | 79.3% | $9.77 |
| Safeway | 13,420 | 50.8% | $7.77 |
| Sprouts | 6,789 | 36.3% | $7.82 |
| FoodMaxx | 13,405 | 25.4% | $6.79 |
| Smart & Final | 8,749 | 19.3% | $7.48 |
| Whole Foods | 3,504 | 15.6% | $9.56 |
| Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op | 9,283 | 13.5% | $8.52 |
| Target | 13,235 | 9.8% | $11.74 |
| Rancho San Miguel | 8,415 | 0.7% | $5.20 |
| Trader Joe's | 2,909 | 0.0% | $5.07 |
| 99 Ranch Market | 2,286 | 0.0% | $5.94 |
| Foods Co. | 16,443 | 0.0% | $6.46 |
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: 2026-03-01 – 2026-03-31 (March 2026)
- Stores tracked: 24 Sacramento-area grocery stores
- Data points: 582,821 price records across 143,377 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 143K+ products, some data errors slip through despite our filtering.
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