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A grocery flyer is a persuasion document that happens to contain prices. After processing tens of thousands of flyer listings, we've catalogued the recurring tricks — here are the seven worth knowing, and the two numbers that beat all of them.
The seven tricks
1. The multi-product "OR" line. "Fish sticks (700 g), salmon fillets (400 g) OR frozen entrées — $9.99." One price, three products, three different sizes. The price belongs to none of them specifically, and the best product in the list is rarely the one the price was set for. Treat any "OR" line as three separate decisions.
2. "Up to 50% off." The operative words are up to. One token item hits the headline number; the rest of the shelf hovers at 10–15%.
3. The count-vs-weight switch. This week the chicken is "$13.85 for 3"; next week it's "$10.67 per pack" of a different weight. Rotating the unit of sale resets your memory of what it cost.
4. Points instead of price cuts. "Get 4,000 points!" reads like money, but it only converts if you redeem, only at that chain, and it inflates the perceived discount on per-weight items where the math barely works.
5. The "sale" at the everyday price. The most common trick of all: a product that costs nearly the same every single week, wearing a red border this week. Our scoring data shows the majority of advertised specials are within pennies of their usual price.
6. Multi-buy framing. "2 for $7" where one is $3.50 anyway — the framing exists to double your quantity, not your savings. (Sometimes the single-unit price is worse; the shelf tag knows, the flyer won't say.)
7. The shrinking pack. Same brand, same price as you remember, quietly 50 g lighter. The flyer image will not draw your attention to the gram count.
The two numbers that defeat everything
Every trick above collapses against the same two questions:
- What is the per-unit price? Dollars per 100 g, per litre, per egg. Tricks 1, 3, 6 and 7 all die here.
- How does it compare to this product's own history? Not the "was" price — the actual prices it sold at over recent months. Tricks 2, 4 and 5 die here.
Both numbers take effort to compute at scale, which is the entire reason flyers get away with this. It's also, not coincidentally, exactly what FlyerHawk computes for every listing, every week — so the flyer can keep its tricks, and you can keep the two numbers.
