When you're out and about shopping and see an item on sale it should be the best price... right? Not necessarily. We need to especially be aware of end cap items. Those are the items the store is pushing. Why? To make more money. I was shopping today and was pricing the off-brand of Ibuprofen/Motrin. I saw one package with two boxes of 100 pills for 3.95 and 40% off the second box. I then saw on an end cap the same item but only one box for $3.49 with the second box at 40% off. They were both 200 mg.

Here's what it looks like broken down.

End Cap Item

100 @ 3.45 = $0.0345 per pill
200 @ 5.52 = $.0276 per pill

 OR... Non End Cap Item

200 for $3.95 = $.01975 per pill
400 for 6.32 = $.0158 per pill

I was shocked at the price difference. For just 1 item (2 box package vs 1 box package) it was only $0.50 more. That's less than 15% more money for 2 times the product. Just by looking at the main aisle instead of the end-cap, the price I paid was substantially cheaper. They make certain items easily accessible to sell more. I believe that is what they were doing here.

So, when it was all said and done I bought 400 pills at 1.58 cents per pill vs. the guy who picks up one box and pays 3.45 cents per pill. That's a nice savings. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the prices but I didn't think of that till I left.

With the recent inflation, it is becoming more important to keep an eye on prices. So as the title of this article says... Beware of end cap items. You may be paying more than necessary.