Grocery prices can be difficult to compare because package sizes, store brands and temporary promotions can make one retailer appear cheaper than another.

For this Salina311 comparison, the question is simpler:

What does a basic basket of everyday groceries cost without factoring in sales or promotions?

Salina311 compared 10 mainstream grocery staples across Aldi, Walmart and Dillons, using comparable store-brand or basic products whenever possible. The comparison does not include sale prices, digital coupons, loyalty discounts or other promotions.

The basket includes milk, eggs, bread, bananas, ground beef, chicken breast, flour, sugar, peanut butter and rice — products that provide a broad look at dairy, meat, produce and pantry pricing.

The 10-item comparison

Because some retailers sell the same products in different package sizes, prices were converted to a common quantity when necessary. That allows the comparison to focus on the cost of the food rather than package size.

*Price converted from a different package size for an equal comparison.

The basket produces a spread of just over $3 between the lowest and highest totals.

Aldi's normalized basket comes to $23.70.

Walmart comes to $25.17, or $1.47 more.

Dillons comes to $26.73, or $3.03 more than Aldi and $1.56 more than Walmart.

Meat creates the biggest difference

Some grocery prices are nearly identical across all three stores.

Eggs are a good example. Aldi is at $1.66 per dozen, Walmart at $1.67 and Dillons at $1.79.

Bread is even closer once the package sizes are standardized: $1.45 at Aldi, $1.48 at Walmart and approximately $1.49 at Dillons.

Bananas vary by only six cents per pound from the lowest to highest price.

The larger separation appears in the meat case.

One pound of 80/20 ground beef is:

Aldi — $6.19Walmart — $6.93Dillons — $7.29

That is a $1.10 difference per pound between Aldi and Dillons.

Chicken breast creates another gap.

At $1.99 per pound, Aldi is 58 cents below Walmart's $2.57 and 60 cents below Dillons' $2.59.

Buying five pounds of chicken at those prices would produce a $3 difference between the lowest and highest stores from that item alone.

For households buying several pounds of meat each week, those differences can affect the grocery bill substantially more than a few cents on bread or produce.

Milk also shows a sizable spread

Milk is another product where the difference becomes meaningful.

A gallon of whole milk in the comparison ranges from $2.42 at Aldi to $3.19 at Dillons, with Walmart between them at $2.72.

That's a 77-cent spread.

For a household buying two gallons each week, a difference of that size would equal roughly $80 over a year if the prices remained unchanged.

That calculation isn't a prediction — grocery prices routinely move — but it demonstrates why relatively small differences on frequently purchased products can add up over time.

Walmart becomes more competitive in the pantry

The pattern changes as the basket moves into shelf-stable foods.

Walmart has the lowest normalized price on three of the pantry products in this comparison:

Sugar: $2.97

Peanut butter: $2.18

Rice: $1.77

Dillons is only two cents higher on both sugar and rice.

Aldi's peanut butter is also essentially tied with Walmart, separated by one cent.

Flour is the pantry item showing a larger difference. A five-pound bag is $2.15 at Aldi, $2.38 at Walmart and $2.59 at Dillons.

The pantry numbers demonstrate why the lowest-priced store overall isn't necessarily the lowest-priced store on every individual product.

Aldi leads seven of the 10 categories

Within this specific basket, Aldi has the lowest normalized price on seven items:

milk, eggs, bread, bananas, ground beef, chicken breast and flour.

Walmart has the lowest price on sugar, peanut butter and rice.

Dillons does not have the lowest price in this particular group of 10 products, although several pantry items are extremely close. Dillons is two cents above Walmart on both sugar and rice, for example.

That doesn't mean the same relationship would hold across an entire grocery store.

A basket containing cheese, cereal, canned vegetables, coffee, frozen foods, toiletries or national-brand products could produce a different result.

This comparison measures these 10 specific everyday products, not every product sold by each retailer.

What a $3 basket difference means

A $3.03 difference on one small grocery basket may not seem significant by itself.

The effect becomes larger when the quantities increase.

The comparison includes only one pound of beef, one pound of chicken, one gallon of milk and one dozen eggs. A household purchasing multiple pounds or multiple packages could widen — or narrow — the difference depending on what it buys.

That is why percentages can provide another way of looking at the totals.

The Walmart basket is approximately 6.2% more than Aldi's in this comparison.

The Dillons basket is approximately 12.8% more than Aldi's.

Dillons is approximately 6.2% above Walmart.

Those percentages apply only to this basket and should not be interpreted as saying one retailer's entire grocery inventory costs that percentage more than another's.

The bigger lesson: what's in your cart matters

There isn't a single grocery item driving the entire comparison.

Instead, the basket shows two different patterns.

For basic proteins and several frequently purchased staples, Aldi holds the lower prices in this group.

For some shelf-stable pantry products, Walmart is highly competitive and occasionally slightly lower.

Dillons is particularly close to Walmart on several pantry staples, despite finishing higher on the complete basket.

The difference also shows why comparing one item doesn't necessarily tell shoppers which store will produce the lowest total.

Someone buying primarily rice, sugar and peanut butter could see little difference among the stores.

Someone buying several pounds of beef and chicken could see a much larger one.

A snapshot, not a permanent ranking

Grocery prices change.

For that reason, this comparison should be viewed as a snapshot of a specific basket rather than a permanent ranking of Salina grocery stores.

The methodology matters as much as the result: use the same products, normalize different package sizes and leave promotional pricing out of the equation.

Using that approach, this 10-item basket comes to $23.70 at Aldi, $25.17 at Walmart and $26.73 at Dillons.

For Salina households trying to understand where their grocery money goes, the biggest differences in this basket aren't found in pennies on bread or bananas.

They're in the products families tend to buy by the pound — particularly meat — and in staples such as milk that make their way into the cart week after week.