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How to Tell a Real Grocery Sale from a Fake One
A yellow tag says 30% off. Off what? Every discount you see is measured against whatever the price was last, which says nothing about whether today’s number is good. Ninety days of history answers that in about four seconds, and it changes what ends up in the cart.
Savvi6 min read
What a price drop actually measures
Savvi scrapes each tracked store overnight, every day. When a product comes back cheaper than the last price recorded for it at that store, it lands on the price drops feed, and the percentage is computed from those two numbers. Previous recorded price against today’s price. That’s all it claims.
Which makes the percentage a measure of change, not of value. A jar that sat at $4.49 all summer, went to $6.99 in August and came back to $4.99 today shows as a 29% drop while sitting 11% above where it lived three months ago. The drop is real. The deal isn’t.
Sorted by discount, filterable by store and category, rebuilt after the latest scrape.
See today’s dropsReading the 90-day chart
Open any product Savvi tracks and its page carries up to 90 days of price history, with a point written only when the price changed. A staple that held steady for two months shows two points and a flat line, which is the honest picture rather than a missing one.
Four things to look for, in the order they matter:
| What you check | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| The floor | The lowest point in 90 days. Today’s price at or near it is the definition of a good time to buy. |
| The plateau | The level it sits at most of the time. That’s the regular price, whatever the tag says. |
| The rhythm | How often it dips. A cycle every three weeks means waiting costs you nothing. |
| The step | A plateau that moved up and stayed. That’s a real increase, and the old floor is gone. |
The step is the one people miss. When the plateau resets higher, the sale prices reset with it, and a discount that looks the same size is now landing on a worse number.
Three deals that aren’t
The multi-buy that costs more. Two for $5.00 beats $2.79 each and loses to $2.29 each. The shelf shows you the offer and leaves the division to you, which is exactly why it works. Check the per-unit price before you take two of anything.
The bigger pack with the worse unit price. Large formats carry a convenience premium often enough to be worth a glance. Cereal, detergent and snack multipacks are repeat offenders. Per 100 g settles it in two seconds.
The discount off an inflated price. The one the chart exists for. Compare today against the 90-day floor rather than against last week, and this one stops working on you.
When stocking up actually pays
Buying three of something at the floor is the highest-return move in grocery shopping, and it’s also how people end up with eleven cans of chickpeas. Three conditions, all of them:
- The price is at or near its 90-day floor. Near the plateau isn’t a stock-up, it’s just shopping.
- The item keeps. Dry goods, canned goods, frozen, cleaning supplies, coffee. Anything with a date inside a month, buy one.
- You’ll finish it before it turns. Six months of pasta is savings. Six months of yogurt is compost.
Meat is the case worth planning around. Bought at the bottom and frozen the same day, in portions you’ll actually cook, it’s the biggest single line most households can move. The wider set of habits covers where the rest of the money goes.
Let the drop find you
Checking prices daily is a hobby, and hobbies lapse. Alerts don’t. Put the ten items you rebuy on your watchlist and Savvi tells you when one falls. The notification queue only fires on a move of at least 5% and at least 50 cents, so small fluctuations stay off your phone and what reaches you is worth reading.
One more filter for the feed itself: check the store column before you get excited. A 40% drop at a store you never visit is a fact about that store. Which chains are worth your trip is a separate question, and worth answering once.
Pick the items you buy every month and get told when they drop, rather than checking.
Set an alertFrequently asked questions
What counts as a price drop on Savvi?
A product whose price this morning came in below the last price recorded for it at that store. The percentage is calculated against that previous recorded price, not against a monthly average or the manufacturer’s suggested price.
Does a bigger discount percentage mean a better price?
Not on its own. The percentage is measured against whatever the price was last, so an item marked up in August and cut in September shows a large drop while sitting above its summer level. The 90-day chart is what separates the two.
How far back does the price history go?
Ninety days. History rows expire automatically after that, so the chart is a rolling quarter rather than a permanent archive.
Why does a product show almost no history?
Because a point is only written when the price changes. A staple that held the same price for two months has two points and a flat line, which is information rather than a gap.
When is stocking up worth it?
When three things line up: the price is at or near its 90-day floor, the item keeps, and you will get through it before it turns. Two out of three and you have bought storage rather than savings.
Are multi-buy offers like 2 for $5 worth taking?
Only after you divide. Two for five dollars beats $2.79 each and loses to $2.29 each, and the shelf will happily show you the offer without the arithmetic. The per-unit figure is the check.
How do price alerts work?
Add a product to your watchlist and Savvi notifies you when the price falls. The notification queue only fires on moves of at least 5 percent and at least 50 cents, so a one-cent rounding change never wakes your phone.
Why did a deal I saw yesterday disappear?
The feed shows the drops from the latest scrape and is rebuilt from scratch each morning. An item that dropped yesterday and held today is no longer a new drop, though its lower price still shows on the product itself.
See what dropped today
Savvi rebuilds the price drop feed after every overnight scrape, sorted by discount and filterable by store and category.
See today’s price dropsFree to browse. See what Premium adds.
Elsewhere in Savvi
- Search every store at onceOne item, every tracked Vancouver store, unit prices included.
- Shopping listYour weekly items, priced before you leave the house.
- Price alertsGet told when something you buy drops, rather than checking.
Building something with this data? The same prices are available as an API covering 16 Canadian chains.
Keep reading
- How to Cut Your Grocery Bill Without Eating WorseSix habits, one 20-minute weekly routine. The first one alone changes what you put in the cart, and it takes no extra time at all.
- Which Vancouver Grocery Store Is Actually Cheapest?The honest answer is that it changes by aisle. Here’s the ten-minute test that settles it for the basket you actually buy.