What 11 common last-minute July 4 items cost at five Bellingham grocery stores

Barbecues might not be quite as synonymous with the Fourth of July as fireworks, but they’re up there with the most popular ways to celebrate Independence Day.

If you’re hosting a barbecue, you probably remembered to buy burgers. But as July 4 approaches, you might need to make a last-minute run to the grocery store whether it’s for an item you forgot or extra beer. We put together a list of ten easy-to-forget items for a summer barbecue that you might need to get on a last-minute grocery run, from relish to tin foil, non-alcoholic drinks and vegan options.

The Herald went to five Bellingham grocery stores to compare the prices of each of these items. Here’s what we found.

Bellingham grocery stores we visited

We tried to visit as many of the major grocery stores in Bellingham as we could, although we skipped stores that have a high concentration of organic or store-brand items, like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, to streamline the price comparison.

Here are the five stores we visited:

• Haggen, 210 36th St.

• Fred Meyer, 800 Lakeway Drive

• Safeway, 1275 E. Sunset Drive

• WinCo Foods, 300 E. Bellis Fair Parkway

• Target, 30 Bellis Fair Parkway

Grocery price comparison methodology

While we tried to only use items we could find at every store, there were still a few differences between what each store offered.

At Target and Safeway, we could only find meat-free Impossible burgers in a six-pack, as opposed to most places which offered them in a two-pack, which is why the price is so much higher (we were able to find a two-pack of the similar Beyond burgers at WinCo).

If we couldn’t find an item from the brand we were looking for, we took down the price of the closest and cheapest substitute we could find, and marked it with a single asterisk (*). Additionally, we tried to pick a standard size of each item, but if a store only had that item available in a different size, it’s marked with two asterisks (**).

Some items were on sale or had a separate price listed for rewards program members. For the sake of consistency, we used the original price for each item.

Last-minute Fourth of July grocery run prices

Here’s a table with the price of each item on our list at all five stores.

We also added up the total at each store. In cases where a store only carried an item in a larger size, we left the cost as is (we figured that on a last-minute grocery run people would probably opt to buy the item they need regardless of size). But it’s worth noting that this puts Safeway and Target at a disadvantage in this comparison since we could only find Impossible burgers, one of the more expensive items on the list, in a six-pack at each of those stores.

Note: This is not a scientific study, but it is a real reflection of items’ prices at grocery stores in Bellingham during the first week of July 2025.