Our Cash Saver & Piggly Wiggly Cost-Plus stores operate as a “cost-plus” format. This information is intended to help those who may not yet be familiar with this grocery store format.

WHAT IS A COST PLUS FOOD OUTLET?

A cost plus food outlet is a new way to save on groceries and more. Where supermarkets advertise a handful of loss leader items (products sold at or below cost) every week to bring you in their stores - and overprice everything else - our cost-plus stores sell all items at cost then add a flat 10% surcharge to cover our operation costs and allow us a nominal profit. While you may see a few items lower at the other stores, we will save you money on thousands of items every day on which they try to gouge you.
 

IS THE PRICE ON THE SHELF ACTUALLY ‘COST’?

Everything in our cost-plus store is marked at a price that is our best effort to arrive at the actual cost of the item including all costs associated with getting it from the source to the shelf. Our costs vary from item to item so we use averages by department and group.
 

WHY DO I PAY A SURCHARGE ON MY PRODUCTS?

A 10% surcharge is applied to the total value of your purchase because that is the amount we charge to cover our store operation expenses (including but not limited to payroll, benefits, supplies, rent, general utilities, insurance, depreciation and amortization, losses due to theft, shrink and spoilage, bad checks and bank charges) and make a nominal profit of 1-2%. Conventional supermarkets have markups ranging from 25-50% or more on their products so the 10% surcharge is much less.
 

I USED A LOT OF COUPONS TO REDUCE MY BILL AND THINK THAT I PAID TOO MUCH SURCHARGE.

The 10% surcharge is applied to the total value of your order BEFORE sales tax are added and coupon values are deducted.