When Logan Ziegler goes to the Eagle Express Convenience Store, he rarely walks out with more than a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk.
“I don’t buy groceries here. I don’t have that much money,” said Ziegler, a senior chemistry major living in the campus apartments.
He is far from the only student living on campus who admitted to being deterred from shopping at the store on Mahrenholz Road, commonly referred to as the C-Store, by high prices.
“I would rather prefer to wait for a ride to go to Wal-Mart,” said journalism major Melissa Rojas Rico, an exchange student from Venezuela living in the residence halls.
In a comparison study by The Shield, it costs $18.16 more at the on-campus store to buy the same 12 items than at Wal-Mart and $15.34 more than at Schnucks.
General manager Chris Briggs of Sodexo, the organization in charge of stocking and staffing the store, attributed the price difference between the grocers and the convenience store to a difference in supplier.
Grocers purchase their products in bulk quantities from manufacturers, while the convenience store buys by the piece through a convenience store provider, Briggs said.
The provider serves as a middle-man and, in part, accounts for some of the price mark-up. The more people seeking a profit, the higher the prices for consumers, Briggs said.
“Items cost us more when we buy them (than Wal-Mart or Schnucks),” said Rebecca Robb, operations manager of Sodexo campus services.
The size of the convenience store also limits the amount of items that can be purchased in bulk.
“We don’t have the storage to compete with those bigger stores,” Robb said.
Although prices are not competitive with West Side grocers, they are generally lower than most convenience stores, said Kevin Thomas, the store manager.
Though the Shield study indicated a $7 savings by shopping at a Thorntons convenience store over the on-campus store, some items, like 20-ounce bottled soda, were generally cheaper at Eagle Express.
“If they (students) compare our prices to Wal-Mart, they’re not going to be happy,” Thomas said.
Though the cost of stocking the store has increased marginally due to the impact of high gas prices on vendors, convenience store prices have actually decreased from last year for between 75 and 80 percent of items, Thomas said.
Prices decreased between 8 and 10 percent from last year because Sodexo changed vendors, Briggs said.
The food services provider has also experimented with stocking off-brand products to increase cost effectiveness for students, though often these items just sat on the shelf.
Ultimately, store offerings, and, as a result, pricing are the result of student demand, Robb said.
Students currently pay between $0 and $3, sometimes in excess of $3, more for name-brand items at Eagle Express.
In the Shield study, a Red Baron frozen pepperoni pizza cost $7.69 at Eagle Express compared to $3.98 at Wal-Mart, a $3.71 difference. An 11.5-ounce box of Lucky Charms cereal cost $5.69 at Eagle Express compared to $2.58 at Wal-Mart, a $3.11 difference.
Items such as bread and milk were comparable in price across all stores.
The Sodexo staff hopes renovations to the convenience store this summer will help decrease prices for students.
The university plans to address problems with lack of storage by expanding south of Mahrenholz Road, nearly doubling the facility’s size, Thomas said.
More storage should increase the university’s ability to purchase cheaper bulk items.
“Hopefully, with the renovations this summer, we’ll have more room to store,” Robb said.