“Marketing Agency ES”, in cooperation with Pollsters.rf (a non-profit association of regional research companies), conducted the May wave of a project “Meatballs and Mashed Potatoes”. 40 regions from Ulan Ude to Kaliningrad and from Murmansk to Sevastopol participated in the research. Altogether there are 42 cities, including 16 cities with more than a million citizens.
“Meatballs and Mashed Potatoes” is a monitoring of retail prices for products that are included into every day daily ratio of an average Russian. The menu was developed by Good Food delivery service. They considered daily nutrient requirements.
Breakfast — porridge with milk and apple, bread with butter and cheese, coffee with milk, and a half of an orange.
Lunch — fresh vegetable salad, borsch, pork meatball with mashed potatoes, tea, bread.
Dinner — Olivier salad, chicken with pasta, tea, bread.
31 ingredients are necessary to prepare these dishes.
May 12, 2020 the monitoring was held in a number of popular shopping malls in 42 cities. In Saint-Petersburg we checked six federal distribution networks (Lenta, Ashan, Magnit, Dixy, Verny, 5ka). We chose products with the lowest retail price and in smallest packages. We also did not take into consideration special offers, discounts, and loyalty cards bonuses. Prices were compared to a local living wage.
The following are some of the findings that emerged from the study:
- the cheapest “Meatballs and Mashed Potatoes” are in Omsk — 252.02 RUB
- the most expensive daily ratio is in Irkutsk — 352.18 RUB
- daily ratio in Saint-Petersburg costs around 298.08 RUB which is 71.8% of the local living wage (414.97 RUB) and 13.9% of an average daily wage (2145.18 RUB)
- daily ratio in Moscow costs around 303.34 RUB.
To summarize we can say that daily ratio is cheaper in southern and central parts of the country, it is more expensive in northern part and Siberia.
We would like to say thank you to the ideological leader Fedor Mesenzev (“Media Plus”, Veliky Novgorod), to our colleagues from Pollsters.rf, and also to all the research agencies who helped to gather information for helping us to conduct this research.