The April 17 Charleston Daily Mail included a feature about Jeri Adkins, senior vice president at the Charleston Area Alliance.



Woman keeps an eye on local prices


If you want to save money at the grocery store, Jeri Adkins has this recommendation: "Watch the sales circulars and stock up, especially on the items you use."

Adkins is the voice of experience. She collects Charleston area grocery prices as a regular part of her job.

If you want to keep tabs on consumer prices, national information is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's the federal agency that compiles the monthly Consumer Price Index. The bureau's index for March, released Wednesday, shows that prices have gone up 4 percent overall in the past year, with energy costs up 17 percent and food prices up 4.4 percent. The bureau also publishes indexes for regions.

But the federal government does not publish costs for specific communities. That's where Adkins and an army of price collectors from about 300 cities across the country step in. They collect data for the ACCRA Cost of Living Index, which is produced by the Council for Community and Economic Research. The council was created in 1961 to promote excellence in community and economic research. It has published the ACCRA Cost of Living Index continuously since 1968.

The Consumer Price Index and the ACCRA Cost of Living Index are different. The price index measures inflation, which is the change in prices over time. The cost of living index measures differences in prices among areas at a single point in time. It provides no information about how rapidly prices are changing within an area.

But Adkins knows higher or lower prices when she sees them. That's because she collects prices three times a year for the cost of living index. She does this work as part of her job as a senior vice president at the Charleston Area Alliance.

The cost-of-living index is especially useful for workers who are transferring from one city to another and want to know if the cost of living in the city they are moving to is higher or lower.
Adkins must abide by a lot of rules so the prices she gathers can be accurately compared to prices in other communities.

For example, she and all other price gatherers were most recently required to check prices on April 10 and April 11. Also, they were required to gather prices for 26 specific grocery items. And they gathered the same information at five locations whenever possible so the averages they reported were accurate.

Adkins always gathers prices at the Wal-Mart at Southridge Centre; at Foodland, either on Spring Street or in Kanawha City; and at three Kroger stores. The data she collected last week will be published in May.

Adkins shops in each store for some generic items. For example, she looks for the price of a half-gallon of the lowest-priced whole milk. But many items are specific.

"For dishwashing powder it has to be Cascade, 75 ounces, and it has to be the powder, not liquid," she said.

Overall, the grocery prices gathered last week hadn't changed much from January's prices, Adkins said. The average price for all 26 items surveyed was $62.96 last week, up from $61.53 in January - a 2.3 percent increase.

However, the price for a few specific items jumped. For example, that half-gallon of whole milk went from $2.12 in January to $2.29 last week - an 8 percent increase in just three months.

Adkins said that she's gotten to know the Krogers and Foodlands in the Charleston area pretty well over the years.

"It used to take me probably two hours to gather prices in one grocery store," she said. "That's partly because of the specifications for each item. But now it probably takes me 30 minutes per store because I know all of the items."

Even so, Adkins sometimes has to backtrack because she missed an item. "That's the most frustrating thing, especially as you near the end of the day and you're tired," she said. "It tends to be something in the frozen food aisle. You learn to take a jacket."

In addition to checking grocery prices, Adkins regularly checks clothing prices at department stores like Macy's, Elder-Beerman and Kohl's, and drug prices at Rite Aid and K-mart.
While Adkins is in the stores, two other Alliance employees check prices on products and services ranging from a dentist office visit ("ADA Procedure 01110; teeth cleaning for established adult patient, no exam") to gasoline ("1 gallon unleaded regular, including all taxes; cash price at self-service pump; use only national brands.")

Adkins noted that the average price of gasoline in Charleston went from $3.23 in January to $3.45 last week.

Adkins has been pricing items regularly for eight years. She said it has made her very aware of prices but added, "I actually think most people are. A large percentage of what people spend is on groceries as well as the other items we price. I was always a good shopper but, yes, I think I do tend to shop smarter now.

"I'm certainly watching for sale items and seasonal items," she said. "T-bone steak was on sale last week for $6.99 a pound as opposed to $8.99 a pound in January. That's a significant savings.
"At Kroger, I stock up on Diet Coke when they have four 12-packs for $10. That's so much better than buying one out of a machine for $1.50."

It takes Adkins and her associates a total of about 25 hours every three months to collect and report all of the information required. She used to have to write everything and figure the averages. Now she just enters the data online and the Council for Community and Economic Research checks for accuracy, computes averages and compiles the reports.

The ACCRA cost of living index information for Charleston and other cities is available from the Charleston Area Alliance by contacting Adkins at 340-4284, Extension 202.