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I'm trying to find an open index of food prices [like the food one might find at a grocery store], either bulk prices or prices that might be in the store. Any ideas?

EDIT: I'm looking to compare regional prices of food staples in order to compare cost of living. For example, if eggs are on average $1/dozen in IL and $0.90/dozen in IN, that will have a major effect on how much people need to spend when they go shopping.

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    An index supposes a comparison. What comparison would you want to make? On the evolution of food prices? between countries?
    – Vince
    Jun 3, 2013 at 11:14
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    It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. Please expand on your question with specific examples, how the data will be used, etc.
    – Kermit
    Jun 3, 2013 at 13:41
  • I think Woodbridge Associates carries that kind of data, you'd have to get in touch with them directly though.
    – user791
    Jun 10, 2013 at 6:48

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It sounds like you want Consumer Price Indices for Food and Beverage for various metropolitan areas. The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates just such indices: http://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/cu/cu.txt

Metropolitan Areas

area_code   area_name   
A101        New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA1  
A102        Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD
A103        Boston-Brockton-Nashua, MA-NH-ME-CT
A104        Pittsburgh, PA
A207        Chicago-Gary-Kenosha, IL-IN-WI
A208        Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, MI
A209        St. Louis, MO-IL    
A210        Cleveland-Akron, OH
A211        Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 
A212        Milwaukee-Racine, WI
A213        Cincinnati-Hamilton, OH-KY-IN   
A214        Kansas City, MO-KS      
A311        Washington-Baltimore, DC-MD-VA-WV       
A316        Dallas-Fort Worth, TX       
A318        Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX  
A319        Atlanta, GA     
A320        Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL   
A321        Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL     
A421        Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA 
A422        San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA  
A423        Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA    
A424        San Diego, CA   
A425        Portland-Salem, OR-WA   
A426        Honolulu, HI        
A427        Anchorage, AK       
A429        Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
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If you're looking for how prices vary over time, in the U.S., there's the Consumer Price Index, which includes various categories of food prices.

I've never dug into their raw data, so I don't know how much detail they make available (eg, comparisons by state or other region).

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During the best city contest last year the Economist published a Worldwide Cost of Living Index which include food prices for multiple cities across the globe. Data are available under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. Currently the Economist website is down, but I am sure you can find updated version on their website (I will try to update my answer).

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I've found a couple of sources of retail prices in open access:

But the World Bank covers only 8 developing countries. And PriceStats shares only US prices with a 10-day lag and then sends to buy the rest from statestreet.com.

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The BLS has detailed tables (though not down to individual commodities like eggs) for Regions, some individual States and some individual MSAs.

http://www.bls.gov/regions/cpi.asp

Here is a list of top pick items that are included in the calculation of the CPI (you will see that dozen eggs is included).

The item code for dozen eggs is: APU0000708111

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