We took three real Walmart carts—Store Brand Grocery (22 items), Name Brand Grocery (22 items), and Snack Cart (16 items)—and compared the same SKUs from September 2022 to March 2026. No substitutions, no inflation adjustment: just same product, same size, then vs now. 2022 prices are from a Kaggle dataset; March 2026 prices are from Walmart.com. Here's what the numbers say.

The cart totals

  • Store Brand Grocery: $88.42 → $95.93 (+8.5%). Twelve items went up, nine went down, one stayed flat.
  • Name Brand Grocery: $95.01 → $101.46 (+6.8%). Thirteen up, eight down, one flat.
  • Snack Cart: $94.20 → $97.89 (+3.9%). Eight up, eight down—the only cart that's split straight down the middle.

So the "same" grocery run costs about 7–8.5% more than it did in late 2022; the snack cart is up ~4%. That's below the pace of general inflation over the period—and the mix of winners and losers is what's interesting.

What the dollar did in between

Inflation isn't just about prices going up—it's about the dollar buying less. Over the same period (September 2022 → March 2026), the purchasing power of the dollar fell. In today's terms, $1 in 2022 is worth about $1.11 in 2026: you need roughly 11% more dollars now to buy the same basket of goods and services that $1 bought then. So when we say the store-brand cart went up 8.5% and the name-brand cart 6.8%, both are below that erosion—in "real" (inflation-adjusted) terms, both grocery carts are cheaper than in 2022. The snack cart (+3.9%) is well below; in real terms you're spending less on that basket than you would have if it had only kept pace with general inflation. Put another way: items that went up less than ~11% have gotten cheaper in real terms; items that went up more (like coffee or juice) have gotten meaningfully more expensive even after you account for the weaker dollar.

What got a lot more expensive

Beverages and coffee lead the way. Folgers Classic Roast (9.6 oz) is up 47% ($4.92 → $7.24). Minute Maid orange juice (59 fl oz) is up 40.6% ($3.18 → $4.47). Coca-Cola 2-liter is up 39% ($2.14 → $2.97). Heinz ketchup (64 oz) is up 33% ($5.98 → $7.98). So: coffee, juice, soda, and ketchup have all moved meaningfully higher. If your cart is heavy on drinks and condiments, you felt it.

Snacks that jumped: Cheetos (8.5 oz) +49%, Reese's miniatures +45%, Hershey's Kisses +38%, M&M's +24%. Chocolate and some chips (e.g. Ruffles, Tostitos) are up; ground beef and chicken in the grocery carts are up 32% and 16% respectively. So protein and "treat" snacks both contributed to the rise.

What got cheaper

Eggs are the standout. Great Value Large White Eggs (12 count) went from $2.42 to $1.67 (-31%). That's the post–avian-flu recovery and supply rebound that's been showing up in CPI for a while. If you remember the egg shock of 2022–2023, this is the other side of it.

Milk in these carts (Maola whole milk, 1 gallon) is flat to slightly down ($5.52 → $5.44, -1.5%)—so no dairy shock in this basket.

Cooking fats are down in several cases. Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil (48 fl oz) is -39% ($7.34 → $4.47). Great Value butter (16 oz) is -13.6% ($3.98 → $3.44). Land O'Lakes butter is -9.5%. So some pantry and baking staples have actually gotten cheaper.

Snacks that dropped: Lay's Classic (8 oz) -19% ($3.68 → $2.97). Pringles Original -18%. Smartfood white cheddar -17%. Welch's fruit snacks -17.5%. Jack Link's beef jerky -17%. DiGiorno pepperoni pizza -13.7%. So a bunch of chips, popcorn, fruit snacks, jerky, and frozen pizza are down from late 2022—likely a mix of commodity costs, competition, and promo cycles.

Pantry: Barilla spaghetti is unchanged at $1.84. Campbell's chicken noodle soup is -1.6% ($1.26 → $1.24). Oscar Mayer turkey breast is -6.6%. So not everything in the cart went up.

Takeaways

  1. The same basket costs about 7–8.5% more for grocery, ~4% for the snack cart. That's over roughly 3.5 years (Sept 2022 → Mar 2026)—below the ~11% loss in the dollar's purchasing power, so in real terms these carts are cheaper than in 2022. Your personal experience still depends on what you buy.

  2. Store brand vs name brand: The store-brand grocery cart went up more in percentage terms (8.5% vs 6.8%). The name-brand cart had one huge drop (Crisco oil -39%) that pulled its average down; excluding that, name-brand would look closer to store-brand. So "store brand is always a win" isn't automatic; item-by-item still matters.

  3. Coffee, juice, and soda are heavy lifters. Folgers, OJ, and Coke are up 38–47%. If you buy those every week, they're a big part of why your receipt is higher. Milk in this basket is flat.

  4. Eggs and some fats are genuine bright spots. Eggs down ~31%, vegetable oil and butter down in the teens. That's real relief on staples that had spiked earlier.

  5. Snack cart is the most mixed. Half the items up, half down. Candy and some chips up; other chips, popcorn, jerky, and frozen pizza down. So "snacks" aren't one story—they're a split between chocolate/sweet (often up) and savory/portable (many down).

  6. Protein is still up. Ground beef and chicken in these carts are up double digits. So the "what's for dinner" core is still costing more, even as eggs and some packaged snacks have eased.

Bottom line: Same Walmart carts, same items, 3.5 years apart: grocery carts are up about 7–8.5%, snack cart ~4%—both below the dollar's loss of value, so in real terms you're spending less on these baskets than in 2022. Coffee, juice, and soda did a lot of the damage; eggs, milk, and some oils and butters held the line or got cheaper. Your own cart will look different depending on how much you lean into soda and coffee vs eggs, butter, and the chips that actually got cheaper. For more context on where food and CPI have landed, see our what's inflated and what's not pages and the inflation calculator.