Does Fred Meyer Have Variable Pricing? Six Portland Stores Matched on 25 of 25 Items, and No Price Moved in an Hour

Not by store, in our check. On the evening of November 12, 2026 (Pacific time), six Portland-area Fred Meyers, including the Johnson Creek store, showed the same regular price, the same sale price and the same sale end date on all 25 items we priced. We checked every store again 63 to 70 minutes later and none of the 200 store-and-item prices had moved; only stock counts had. What does vary is whether an item is on sale, when that sale ends, whether the deal needs a digital coupon, and the price at a QFC. To check it yourself, Scavio's Kroger API takes a Fred Meyer or QFC store id and up to 25 UPCs in one POST /api/v1/kroger/prices call and returns each item's regular price, sale price, sale end time, stock and aisle at that store, for 3 credits.

The question comes from r/askportland, where a shopper at the Johnson Creek Fred Meyer, the store the post calls the corporate flagship, bought an item tagged at $1.99 on sale that rang up at $2.99, noticed the new digital shelf tags and asked "Did they switch to variable pricing?" The thread drew 142 upvotes and 124 comments, most of them about the tags. Kroger, which owns Fred Meyer, is rolling out electronic shelf labels; a Kroger spokesman told WOSU in June 2026 that Kroger "can change the prices automatically" with them, that it doesn't use "personalized pricing", and that the labels cannot identify individual shoppers.

We cannot see a register or a shelf tag. What we can see is the price Fred Meyer's own site shows for a store you choose, which is the price its pickup and delivery orders use. So we asked the narrower question the data can answer: does the same item cost a different amount at different Portland Fred Meyers, and how far is the sale price from the regular one?

What the snapshot shows

We priced 25 everyday items, milk, eggs, Tillamook cheese and butter, coffee and bread, at the Johnson Creek, Hawthorne, Glisan, Hollywood West, Stadium and Burlingame Fred Meyers between 02:14 and 02:18 UTC on November 13 (6:14 to 6:18 pm on November 12 in Portland), then at QFC Ballard in Seattle for comparison.

• Same price at all six stores, to the cent, on all 25 items, regular and sale, with identical sale end dates. Johnson Creek was not priced differently from the other five.
• Stock was not the same. 14 of the 25 items differed in stock level or available quantity between the six stores. Pete & Gerry's organic eggs were in stock at Johnson Creek and Stadium and temporarily out of stock at the other four.
• 10 of the 25 were on sale, and the gap between the regular and sale price ran from 20 cents (Simple Truth organic 2% milk, $4.19 to $3.99) to $3.00 (Death Wish coffee, $13.99 to $10.99). Four of the 10 sales were exactly $1.00 off, the size of the gap in the Reddit post.
• Nothing moved in an hour. A second check of all eight stores, 63 to 70 minutes after the first, returned the same regular price, sale price and sale end date for all 200 store-and-item pairs. Stock level or quantity changed on 36 of them.
• Seattle is a different price list. Fred Meyer Ballard matched Portland on 22 of the 25 and was higher on 3. QFC Ballard priced 22 of the items and its regular price was higher than Portland's Fred Meyer on 16 of them: Tillamook sea salted butter was $6.49 at QFC against $5.49, and $5.99 on sale against $4.99.

Why a $1.99 tag can ring up $2.99

The data shows three ordinary ways a sale price and a register can disagree, none of which needs per-store or per-shopper pricing. We cannot tell which, if any, happened in the Reddit post.

1. The sale ended. Every sale carries an end time. Three of the 10 sales at Johnson Creek, including the Pete & Gerry's eggs and the Death Wish coffee, ended at 2026-11-18T04:59:59.999Z, which is 8:59 pm Pacific on Tuesday, November 17. Other sales ran into December or February.
2. The deal is a digital coupon. Fred Meyer's weekly digital deals mix store sales with coupons you download. Kroger sharp cheddar shreds came back at $2.00 at Johnson Creek, and the week's Weekly Digital Deals coupon prices Kroger bars, shreds or slices at $1.29: "Download and redeem the coupon from November 11-November 17 only." Johnson Creek listed 331 coupons that evening.
3. The deal needs a quantity. Some coupons apply only to several items, such as "Save $1.00 on 4" Progresso.

What two checks cannot show

Two checks about an hour apart on a Thursday evening show that nothing moved in that hour. They do not show that prices never move during the day: a change overnight, or when this week's sales end on November 17, would not appear here. These are online prices for a chosen store, not shelf tags or receipts, and 25 items are a sample, not the whole store. To answer "does the price change during the day", the same stores and UPCs have to be checked again and again.

How to watch it yourself

1. Find the stores. POST /api/v1/kroger/stores with {"zip": "97206", "banner": "fred_meyer"} returned Johnson Creek (70100153) and six other Fred Meyer stores within 5 miles, plus three fuel centers. 1 credit.
2. Price your list. POST /api/v1/kroger/prices with a store_id and up to 25 UPCs returns price and promo_price in cents, promo_ends_at, stock_level, quantity and aisle. 3 credits.
3. Repeat on a schedule and keep each run with its time. A change shows up as a new price, promo_price or promo_ends_at for the same UPC and store.

import requests

r = requests.post(
    "https://api.scavio.dev/api/v1/kroger/prices",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_SCAVIO_API_KEY"},
    json={"store_id": "70100153", "banner": "fred_meyer",
          "upcs": ["0081565200214", "0081006334306", "0007283090612"]},
    timeout=150,
)
for it in r.json()["data"]["items"]:
    print(it["upc"], it["price"], it["promo_price"], it["promo_ends_at"], it["stock_level"])

Three Portland stores checked twice a day is 6 calls, 18 credits a day. A prices call can take up to a minute; retry on a 502, which is not charged. How to get Fred Meyer prices by store covers every endpoint, including weekly digital deals and coupons.

Try the Kroger API free, 50 credits, no card, enough to price 25 items at 16 stores, or run a prices call in the playground.

Reference: Kroger API overview · prices docs · stores docs · coupons docs · the best Fred Meyer store price APIs · how to get Fred Meyer prices by store · does Canadian Tire have different prices by store? · Whole Foods in-store vs online prices