Those Cold Beverages Near The Grocery Store Checkout Might Be Tricking You Into Spending More

If you regularly go grocery shopping for yourself or your family, there's a good chance you've picked up one of the cold beverages in the coolers near the checkout right before paying for your stuff. They sit there so enticingly, and a cold drink is a great refresher after a long shopping trip. However, if you're trying to budget, you might want to forgo the cold Dasani or Dr Pepper next time since these drinks are often sold at a higher price than the same items from the beverage aisle. The reasoning for this decision seems to be that the store has to pay to power the coolers, so you're essentially charged extra for the electricity used to keep your drink cold. This would make sense, but given that the coolers house tons of different drinks at once and are made to be energy efficient, the cost of the extra energy is probably not equivalent to the extra price of the drink. 

You're more likely paying a convenience fee. It's easier to grab a cold drink from the cooler than to take a warm drink home and wait for it to cool in your own fridge, so you pay for that ease of access, the same way you sometimes pay extra for grocery store pickup. Of course, there's nothing wrong with paying a bit more to have a cold beverage on demand, but you should be aware of the fact that you're doing so, so you can weight it up. Some people would undoubtedly head to the beverage aisle to pick up a warm drink if they realized they were incurring an extra cost for ease of access.

If you don't want to pay extra at the register but like to treat yourself with a cold soda or tea at the end of a trek around the grocery store, consider stopping at a fast food chain on the way home. While it may technically be another stop, you can go through the drive-thru and don't even have to get out of your car. The cheapest fast-food drink option, at least in the Cincinnati area, is McDonald's, where you can get a large soft drink for $1.69. It's rare to find fast food drinks under $2 nowadays, so this is a great deal, especially given how good McDonald's Coke products are. If you prefer Pepsi, plenty of fast food restaurants serve it.

Alternatively, if you need to fuel up on your way either to or from the grocery store, gas stations can be a great place to pick up a cold fountain drink (and a big one at that). For example, at Thorntons, a gas station local to Kentucky, you can get a 32-ounce drink (the same as a McDonald's large) for just $0.89 if you join the chain's rewards program. While Thornton's isn't nationwide, lots of gas stations offer cheap sodas, especially to their loyalty members. If you plan ahead and get a drink before you go shopping or wait until you've left the store to grab gas and a drink, you can have a cold, refreshing beverage for much less.