Grocery shopping at Trader Joe's can save you heaps. We did the math to find out exactly how much. Trader Joe's has built a small empire on daffy branding and cheap groceries that rival the quality of those at much more expensive supermarkets.

TJ's loyalists -- you either are one or know one -- rave about the chain's specific items, many of which can be found only at Trader Joe's, but the store's low prices are what really keep the fervent fanbase coming back. So is Trader Joe's really that much cheaper than a typical grocery store?

I did the math anyway to find out. The savings were honestly even bigger than I anticipated. Here's the full breakdown and how much you might save shopping at the beloved discount grocer. For more price comparisons, check out how much you can save by shopping at Costco , if it's cheaper to buy meal kits than groceries , if shopping for groceries online is less expensive than in the store , and how much you can save with streaming services vs.

First things first. In understanding the potential cost savings of shopping only at Trader Joe's, it's important to know where TJ's products come from, whether we're speaking of flour and butter or Unexpected Cheddar and Butter Chicken.

Having previously brought you an analysis of store brand versus name brand products and finding massive potential savings in the grocery receipts, is it simply a matter of Trader Joe's only selling store brand items? That is: Trader Joe's more or less only sells products under its own brand name, with few exceptions.

Trader Joe's is definitely cheaper than the average grocery store, but you might have to wait in a longer checkout line to take advantage of them. Trader Joe's isn't actually a manufacturer unto itself, and unlike some store brands, which are just name brands in disguise, Trader Joe's relationship with its vendors is a unique point in understanding its pricing structure.

Turns out there's actually merit to the "trader" element of Trader Joe's, which, according to its website , deals directly with manufacturers and growers, and cuts out the brokers and distributors, contributing to its lower-seeming prices. Which exact vendors make those Trader Joe's items with cult-like followings is a closely guarded secret.

It also has an organic store brand line called Nature's Promise. Both the SB and Nature's Promise brands offer a wide variety of products in every department.

Using grocery shopping templates available online, I generated a list of 48 basic grocery items representing a wide range of price points from nearly all food and drink departments in October I tried to find equivalencies in terms of the sizes of each product but noted where one store or the other was offering a larger size.

I didn't scale the prices accordingly, however, since I wanted the end totals to reflect the actual prices you'd find on your grocery receipts.

Trader Joe's beloved pepita salsa is just one example of a store brand item that's gained fandom and loyalty all its own.

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