I waited a long time for FreshDirect to serve my neighborhood.
When they finally did, I wanted to understand how much of a premium they carry.
Surprisingly, no one had done a good comparison.
This story in the New York Times certainly doesn't cut it. I mean, the dude lives on milk, frozen pizza, bananas and cans of tuna.
I did some shopping and compared back in 2013, then again during Covid, and again in 2026.
Download my nice spreadsheet here that you can tweak to see how your supermarket would compare to Freshdirect.
A Supposedly Cheap Thing I'll Never Do Again (1)
A Freshdirect Detailed Price Comparison
When Freshdirect opened their massive plant in Long Island City in 2002, I anxiously awaited service to my part of Queens. It would be city style services for slowly gentrifying Jackson Heights (2), an area that familiar to many for the only semi-trendy spot we have, the Jackson Diner (3). I signed up at FreshDirect with my zip code and address, to be emailed when FreshDirect would begin deliveries to our up and coming neighborhood.
Year in, year out, nothing. I'd go back to the web site and check periodically, forlornly sign up again, just in case. And then one day the blessed email arrived, we ordered, and received an on-time delivery from pleasant personnel, containing lovely quality goods, all securely wrapped in impregnable swaths of foams and plastics (they've gotten a lot better about not using extra packing material). But the bill was high, and I thought, OK, maybe not so much. Years go by.
I would order now and again in a pinch, and deal with the prices. Then COVID hit, and Freshdirect were one of the few outfits that I could get supplies from, a lifesaver! I tailed off thereafter, but still use them for special occasions, for ingredients not available locally (yuppy food like endives), or lately because their Kevlar (TM) indestructible bags are the worlds most useful thing for moving progeny from one dorm or apartment to another.
I thought I could shed some light for other shoppers, by detailing a typical basket of goods at FreshDirect vs. my local supermarket. Typical, that is to say, for people like me. Or maybe just me. Maybe you're vegan, maybe you're doing Atkins, or on an alfalfa rotation. I can only do so much. I’ve assembled a mix of produce, dairy, meats, and grocery that might be a few weeks consumption. Download the excel sheet, and you'll find a good-sized selection of items edited down from my actual orders (4).
Using my local supermarket, Mi Tierra (now C-Town) on Northern Blvd, I found the same or comparable items and noted their prices. I've used receipts over the last six months. So you can take my conclusions as-is, re-weight the different categories to your tastes, or make your own basket from scratch and see how FreshDirect prices fit your lifestyle.
Googling around, it’s surprising to me that no one had done this type of comparison before. What commentary is out there is tendentious and repetitive, backed up with zero data (5). The bulk of the chat out there compares FreshDirect to Fairway (high-end) and Trader Joe’s (not full-range), not so helpful for me. So this is my public service to you, the people who use the local supermarket. Because an educated consumer is Freshdirect’s best customer (6).
The FreshDirect basket is $77 more at $416, about 22.8%. A fair but high price for all that convenience. When I started this comparison in 2014 and updated it in 2024, Freshdirect was more like 15% more. $77 every couple of weeks is another $2000 a year. There's no longer a pattern - it used to be Freshdirect was more competitive on grocery items vs. produce. Meat is still unambiguously more at Freshdirect.
There are some things I value about the hands-on part of shopping, which includes changing my mind based on what looks good, and being able to measure quantities more accurately. My butcher has far better quality than either FreshDirect or the supermarket. In a pinch for time, though, I won’t feel as if I’ve been raked over the coals. Close enough to shop when I'm lazy or need delivery every now and again, too much to make it my primary outlet.
Footnotes
1
With apologies to David Foster Wallace
2
The gentrification of Jackson Heights is really slow, if not in tectonic plate shift terms, really not soon enough for me, who moved in for the large affordable pre-wars, but then decried the lack of city amenities. The arrival of the first (and still only) Starbucks was a sign of arrival, not blight. I eagerly consumed the Times 'If You're Thinking of Living In' mentions (1996 and 2005) and New York Magazine’s attitude-laden versions (look at their change in tone from then [subbasements for illegal immigrants] to now [Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York]).
I have none of the derision directed at chains catering to the mid-market; in Jackson Heights we have no coffee made by artfully tattooed baristas on $10,000 Clovers. We have 99 cents stores, money wiring/laundering outlets, and Colombian chicken places. We are deprived of the boutique baby clothing stores, the endless parade of bistros, artisanal anything. All of which, I might add, have made it to increasingly marginal neighborhoods in Brooklyn (Bed Stuy, really?). Plebian Queens, so stolid, so Archie Bunker, and sooo profoundly unhip, (so much so that in the media it is a reference point for life's nadir - Ben Stiller, in Night at the Museum 2, I think, was in such dire straits that he had to choke out to his son that he had been forced to move to Queens). So. Jackson Heights.
My wife and I bought an apartment in 1994, when we might have known - at a minimum known of - every young couple in similar socio-economic circles - not in my building, but in the whole neighborhood. Now we can regularly spot the extra-large wheels of the premier baby carriages, and yet....still no Queens Lager, no poetry slams, no warehouse conversions to lofts and no locally sourced, humanely treated, free range, fair trade, line caught, organically grown, environmentally sustainable products of any description. Yes, there is a farmer's market, and it is a wondrous thing, but in these depths of winter my enthusiasm for turnips and rutabagas is as fervent as ever, which is to say nonexistent.
That's where Fresh Direct steps in, to fill the gaping maw left by the absence of overpriced goods that the yuppified heart desires. The heart wants what it wants, as another New Yorker said in arguably less defensible circumstances (*).
3
The Little India strip, on 74th street just off the elevated number 7 train on Roosevelt Avenue, was, 40 years ago, still mixed in with non-Indian-clientele-oriented businesses, including a solid bakery and a diner, the Jackson Diner. At some point during this neighborhood transition the Jackson Diner capitalized on the changes going on around them, leaving half the menu the same bland Americana it always was, and inserting an all-Indian menu on the other half.
This worked for my parents. They enjoyed trying still-quasi-exotic fare. This also worked for my uncle, a frequent dinner companion, whose tastes ran to plain food. So our orders at the Jackson diner ran towards Rogan Josh plus open faced turkey sandwiches (Is the turkey breast fresh? Was it carved here?). The memorable part of this experience was the waitress, carried over from the prior administration. Vaguely Teutonic, at least in my memory, she efficiently carried out her duties, while taking time to correct your pronunciation ... of the Indian dishes ("that's chole poori, sir")
5
The only story I saw with itemizations was in the Times back in 2006. I have to question Dave Leonhardt’s supermarket buy - bananas, canned tuna, seltzer, cashews, and sparkling cider?
4
For practical reasons I've normalized certain things to allow comparisons with the supermarket. I’ve eliminated sale prices, and since prices drift over the year I've been keeping receipts, I've used the highest price found. Most of my changes don't substantively affect the price comparison, like adjusting a box of Apple Jacks of 11 ounces at FreshDirect with a 12.2 ounce one at the supermarket (why do they make two so close in size?). Some substitutions make for a better apples-to-apple comparison, like including commonly found Bertolli olive oil for the better but cheaper Spanish brands I actually buy (Iberia). But Freshdirect doesn’t carry these brands. I've tried to make things comparable by using the cheapest Freshdirect brand when there are multiple options.
The inherent upsell driven by the absence of less pricy brands, organic-only items, or only small sizes leads to an inflated Freshdirect bill that my comparison data doesn't fully compensate for, but the impact to your wallet is real nonetheless. In other words, this comparison, is generous to Freshdirect, so no one can accuse me of having some animus. Except Freshdirect, who reached out to me some years back after I linked this comparison to their Wikipedia page.
If you really want to delve into the details, the price in the spreadsheet includes formulas that show you the price per pound when buying a unit, e.g. yellow peppers at $3.99 a pound but the unit price ended up being $2.63.
I’ve swapped a few items in order to appear a bit less bourgeois (Swanson Natural Goodness chicken stock substituting for the one I actually buy, Swanson Certified Organic chicken stock, both of which are no doubt identical to, uh, Swanson Chicken Stock). But I left in a few for your entertainment. Ancient Harvest Quinoa Rotelle, anyone? This product is the worst sort of yupster-fleecing flimflammery, and yet I buy it. Look at the ingredients. It’s mostly corn! You’d be hard pressed to see that on the box. Quinoa! Grain of the ancients! Did ancient Bolivians have a long life expectancy? I think not. Besides, what’s wrong with corn? We call it Maize (*). Corn is also from ancient, wholesome, earth-nature-in-harmony peoples. But it’s no Quinoa.
6
Quoting Sy Sims, discount haberdasher extraordinaire (*)
