We received a donation of 350$ of intern hours, and per request, we have an interesting discovery that may save you money regardless if you have a dog.
Unsure what dog food data was going to be available, we completed 1 store with full data. Upon seeing consistencies between brands, we narrowed our data set.
Our goal shifted to find best brands and best places to purchase. The decision was made to focus on quantity. Over 200 Items were collected from 4 stores.
To maximize usefulness, we will focus on Your Application, however, the data can be found here and through the article.
A greater takeaway is that, as Efficiency Is Everything collects more data, we are finding consistent store vs store winners. There are lessons to be learned here.
Walmart comes out on top again for prices. While you will need to look for quality, Walmart has the best prices. The great question will be getting the quality metrics You want at Walmart.
Our data suggests- No, Walmart does not have the best prices. We demonstrate this by using Categories and Protein Per Dollar.
If you want Corn, Walmart seems to be the best place to buy it.
Here are the Top Calorie Per Dollar Items.
Outside of Walmart Corn, we found the Online store Chewy was better than the competition.
This is important because it gives us a second data point showing the benefits of Online shopping.
As a note, In Baby Items Per Dollar, we found Amazon was just behind Walmart. Walmart Online was cheaper than Walmart(store).
Bad News- Mom and Pop stores can be expensive. They can cost 10x or more than online alternatives.
What role do these stores serve in a consumers life?
Is your goal feeding your dog cheap? Is your goal low cost cheap protein? Is your goal most pure protein? Our data lets you decide your qualities.
Buy at Chewy, don’t buy at Walmart. Always above 200g Protein Per Dollar.
Buy at Chewy or Costco, not Walmart. Unless you want heavy calories from corn aim for 200-400g Protein Per Dollar
Petco and chewy are side by side depending on your needs.
The data shows Chewy and Petco crush Walmart with leaner proteins.
Without going into the other meat categories here, it was discovered outside of cheap corn, Walmart was a loser for particular types of meat proteins.
While this data finds the outliers, its good to know the relative value. Getting 200-400g Protein Per Dollar is relatively a good deal.
While our data found the best values, if you are shopping on your own, make sure you are not overpaying. Failure is the difference of a scale of 10.
Costco vs Everybody
Whenever you can get something cheaper outside Costco’s exclusive membership, it makes me question this membership.
Costco did not beat Chewy.
Online wins.
The data attached is very raw. While we put effort into cleaning the data, some vitamin values are unrecoverable. However, I wanted to provide the data we did have, as it still shows interesting conclusions on nutrition in each package.
In the future, when repeated, this study will take lengths to ensure completeness. This is our first attempt at studying Dog Food.
Here is the raw data-
See more cost saving studies on Efficiency Is Everything, or find how we eat for 20$/week per person.