Participants in the Women, Infants and Children food program face notably higher prices at small grocery stores than at supermarkets, says a study by USDA and UC-Davis. Researchers looked at prices charged by retailers in California from 2009-12. A package of milk, eggs, cheese and peanut butter or beans was likely to cost $20.05 at a store with one or two registers while it would be $12.95 at a store with at least 10 check-out lanes.
“(P)otential savings from restricting WIC redemptions to larger stores are limited,” says USDA’s Amber Waves magazine, because stores with one or two registers accounted for 11 percent of WIC business. The big stores had 31 percent of the redemptions. WIC cost $6.4 billion in fiscal 2013.