Grocery Store Markups.

 Usually when we teach mark-ups at school, we talk about mark-ups with fill in the blanks to complete table or its something we don't think about much but what if discussed mark-ups used in a grocery store to determine if that was the best place to buy an item.

Grocery stores are not the best place to buy non-grocery items such as light bulbs because these stores apply a 40 to 50 percent markup.  It is often cheaper to buy them at War-mart.

Then those meals the grocery store prepares like macaroni salad or meat loaf can have a 40 percent markup.  Deli products sold via the counter  such as sliced meats and cheeses also have a 50 percent markup.  In addition, most fresh butchered meats found in the store have a 60 percent mark-up.  These are not the frozen meats.

In addition, all those brand name boxes of presweetened cold cereal, the bright colored one the kids love have a 40 percent markup.  Over the counter name brands are often marked up 30 to 40 percent so generic brands are usually cheaper.

If you want to buy beauty supplies from a grocery store, they have a 50 percent markup while batteries have a 70 percent mark-up here.  If you decide to buy fresh produce out of season, grocery stores use a 75 percent mark-up.  The amazing thing is that most brand name spices have a mark-up of around 97 percent which means the store can purchase them for about half the cost.

Another item that has a 99 percent markup is that coffee you got from the coffee place just inside the door.  Coming in with a 100 percent markup are any baked good you buy that was made at the store.  Finally, is bottled water sold at a grocery store that comes with a 4000 percent markup.

Now what to do with all this information?  Let students go online to find the current prices of these items at the local grocery store or make it a homework assignment to go with parents and mark the prices down.   Once the students have prices for everything, they can figure out what the item cost the store based on the average mark-ups given.

From here students can take the two figure, wholesale and retail, students can create stacked bar graphs showing the two costs for each item so they can see how the wholesale and markup relate to each other.  At the end, have students write a paragraph to summarize everything.

This puts markup into perspective and uses things they often buy at the store.  Tomorrow, I'll share more markups for other types of items. I'll include the cost to make it and what it's sold for.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.