How to Calculate Unit Price

Unit price is the only reliable way to go about comparing prices between items at the grocery store. Many grocery stores these days have unit price posted along with the total price. However there are several reasons it’s important to be able to calculate the unit price on your own:

• posted unit price might be wrong (especially common on items where some packages contain more product than normal)
• comparable items are posted using different and incomparable units
• you want to factor in a coupon

For example, the other day at Costco, we were trying to compare the price of Yoplait yogurt to the price of the store brand yogurt. The Yoplait yogurt was posted with its unit price in ounces. The store brand was posted with its unit price in servings. We had to first calculate how many ounces were in the whole package of store brand yogurt (number of servings * ounces per serving) and then divide that by the cost to get the unit price.

You probably have a cell phone with a calculator function so as long as you can remember the following formulas (or type them in as a note somewhere on you’re phone) you’ll be ready to roll.

The main thing we need to keep in mind is to make sure we’re comparing like units. Ounces compared to ounces. Pounds compared to pounds. Servings compared to servings.

Here’s the basic formula:

• unit price = total price / units in the package

If you want to factor in a coupon you would modify the formula like so:

• unit price = (total price – coupon) / units in the package

If you need to convert the units of one item to compare to another, these are some conversions you may need to use:

• 16 ounces = 1 pound
• 1 ounce = 30 grams (actually 28.3495231 but rounding to 30 will work for quick calculations)
• 8 fluid ounces = 250 ml
• 2 cups = 1 pint
• 1 quart = 1 liter

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