I Compared Prices For 88 Dollarama Food Items: Here’s What’s Cheaper and More Expensive

Most of us love a good ol’ Dollarama haul. I know I do. There’s nothing like returning home with a bag full of all kinds of things for the same price as a couple of overpriced coffees. Like most people, I’ve wondered how Dollarama is able to sell the same grocery store items as other retailers for lower prices. After meticulously comparing the prices of 88 food items from Dollarama with those at Walmart, No Frills, and Food Basics, however, I realized that Dollarama's food is more often than not more expensive.

To find this out, I spent time in the food aisles of two downtown Toronto Dollarama stores, one at 226 Front St. E., and another at 10 Dundas St. E. While Dollarama offers pantry and lunchbox staples like fruit snacks, cereals, and bread, it doesn’t feature fruits, veggies, dairy, or frozen foods.

Initially, my goal was to find 100 of the same brand-name food and drink items sold at Dollarama The idea was to compare prices to find the cheapest retailer. 

Spoiler alert: I didn’t find 100 items. Well, I guess I could have, if I included every single variety of same-priced chocolate bars, every chip flavour, and every soda flavour. I mean, I would, but you get the point. I ended up finding 55 brand name items, like Oreo cookies and Honey Nut Cheerios and 33 staples like canned corn and white sugar, for a total of 88 items.

My price comparison methdology for the staples involved comparing Dollarama’s cheapest staple food items with the cheapest generic staple from the other retailers. This was typically the in-house, budget-friendly “no name” brand. 

I hit two No Frills locations (75 The Esplanade and 200 Front St. E), two Food Basics locations (238 Wellesley St. E and 1000 Gerrard St. E), and two Walmart stores (1000 Gerrard St. E and 900 Dufferin St.).

I learned the hard way that not all Walmart stores feature full grocery offerings, only the Walmart Supercentres. The hardest part was finding the exact same name brand product at all four retailers, when comparing specific brands. It’s not as easy as I’d thought. For example, you won’t find Wonder Bread, Glosette Raisins, or Jiffy Pop at Food Basics. The other three retailers, however, carry them.

The Price Tag Showdown

I documented the 88 food items in a spreadsheet that outlined the items' names, quantity, and prices per 100 grams or 100 millilitres (the price divided by quantity multiplied by 100), and which retailer featured the lowest price.

In total, 36 of the 88 products were cheaper at Dollarama. That’s just 40.91%! An additional three brand name items (Cheetos Puffs, Pepsi, and Silk Almond Milk) were the same price at Dollarama and No Frills, but even if I added those three to my percentage calculations, it only bring us to 44.32% of food items being cheaper at Dollarama than at discount grocery stores!

As a result, it is safe to say that a majority of the food items found at Dollarama can be found for cheaper elsewhere, if you don't mind buying in larger quantity.

I also wanted to rank the best and worst items to buy at Dollarama compared to other retailers (more on that later), so I calculated the average price per 100 grams or millilitres of each item at the three other retailers and compared it to the Dollarama price.

Dollarama’s Smaller Portions 

One of the keys to Dollarama’s seemingly cheaper offerings are smaller package sizes of name-brand food items than you’d find in a typical grocery store. In many cases, these differences may be so small that you have to actually look at the quantity size on the packaging to spot the difference. I did. Thanks to this little discreet factor, Dollarama is able to maintain a low per-item price point on certain items, even if the "cost per gram" or "cost per unit" might sometimes be higher than larger packages at other retailers.

In general, I found that name brand items like cereal, bags of chips, and condiments came in smaller portions at Dollarama compared to the other three retailers. For example, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios is 272 grams at Dollarama, compared to 430 grams at Walmart, 350 grams at No Frills, and 430 grams at Food Basics. Similarly, a jar of Kraft Cheese Whiz is 250 grams at Dollarama, but 450 grams at Walmart, Food Basics, and No Frills. 

Not everything at Dollarama is smaller, though. Name brand products like Betty Crocker cake mix, Quaker instant oatmeal, Chips Ahoy Original cookies, Ritz crackers, Pop Tarts, and Campbell’s soup are the same size at Dollarama as they are at other retailers. 

Limited Assortment And Fewer Decisions

I quickly realized that Dollarama doesn’t exactly excel when it comes to product variety, a good thing for those who struggle with decision-making. Instead, they keep it simple, with just a few choices. Case-in-point: cereal. While larger grocery outlets have grocery aisles filled with seemingly countless cereal varieties, Dollarama isn’t about offering every brand or every variation of a product. 

This limited assortment strategy allows Dollarama to streamline their inventory to focus on the high-volume (longtime fan favourites), low-cost items that are general enough to appeal to a broad consumer base. This means things like Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruit Loops, and the always “Grrreat” Frosted Flakes. Those with a sweet tooth take note: the one grocery item Dollarama does have many varieties of is candy. 

Dollarama’s general focus on non-parishable items also reduces overhead costs associated with refrigeration. This also contributes to lower in-store prices. 

The Deals… And Lack Thereof

Dollarama doesn’t have sales in the traditional way, the way a typical grocery retailer would. Their business model is built around offering products at consistently low price points, so they focus on volume and a fixed-price strategy (always low prices) rather than fluctuating sales. With that said, my calculations were based on listed prices for individual items, including sale prices. 

If you’re shopping for a large family, Walmart was currently offering a ton of deals when you purchase items in threes. For example, Fruit Loops, Honey Nut Cheerios, Gold Fish, Fruit Roll-Ups, Pop Tarts, Rice Krispy Squares, Wheat Thins, and Ritz Original crackers are all notably cheaper by the threes at Walmart. 

In some cases, sale prices at other retailers are lower than Dollarama prices. For example, a 145-gram package of Bits and Bites is typically cheapest at Dollarama ($2.75), but Food Basics happened to have it on sale for $1.98 (down from $2.99) during my visits. Also at No Frills, Fruit Loops were on sale for $3.99 (520 grams), making them cheaper per 100 grams than Dollarama, which are $3.00 for 230 grams.

In addition to sales, the grocery stores offer private label, budget-friendly in-house brands that may be cheaper than the brand name items found at Dollarama, where there are fewer options to choose from. 

While Dollarama does have its own in-house brand, D Gourmet, the selection is minimal, so often, a brand name purchase is unavoidable. In these cases, it’s often cheaper to purchase the private label budget brands from other retailers. For example, the price of mayonnaise at Dollarama was $1.18 per 100 millilitres (the only option available was Hellmann’s), while the price of Great Value brand mayonnaise was $0.57 per 100 millilitres at Walmart; No Name brand mayonnaise was $.054 per millilitre at No Frills; and Selection brand mayonnaise was $0.54 per millilitre at Food Basics. 

10 Best Food Items to Buy at Dollarama

To determine the top food items to buy at Dollarama, we compared the price per 100 grams (and per 100 mililiters) at Dollarama to the average price at the discount grocery stores where we sampled prices. This gave us the average savings for each item. We then selected the 10 items that offered the highest average savings and were also the cheapest at Dollarama.

10 Worst Food Items to Buy at Dollarama

Using the same method, we selected the items where Dollarama’s price was the highest compared to the average price at the discount grocery stores we sampled. The “Dollarama’s Markup” percentage shows how much more expensive Dollarama is relative to that average.

So, while Dollarama is generally easy on the bank account (and more conveniently located than Walmart, to be honest), it’s clearly not always the cheapest option. Often, it makes financial sense for the frugal set to buy other things at other retailers, especially if you’re also in the market (no pun intended) for fruits and veggies, dairy, or frozen items.

You may as well kill two birds with one stone, as they say. As for me, the one thing for certain is that I’ll never look at the pantry isles of the grocery store the same again.