Defense Commissary Agency - Commissaries Today

Commissaries Today

Exterior and interior views of the commissary at Naval Station Norfolk

Commissaries still sell products at cost today as they have since 1825. Today’s customers also pay a surcharge on their purchases, which was mandated by Congress in 1952 to make commissaries more self-sustaining. The surcharge, which has been set at 5 percent since April 1983, provides modern shopping facilities for service members at a reduced cost to taxpayers. Unlike a tax, surcharge funds go right back into the commissary to work for commissary customers, paying for the cost of building new stores, renovating and repairing existing ones and purchasing equipment and store-level information technology systems such as cash registers.

Commissary patrons worldwide save an average of more than 30 percent on their grocery bills. In 2010, DeCA announced that the average family of four saves more than $4,400 per year by shopping regularly at a commissary, based on Consumer Expenditure Survey and U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics for household consumption of retail grocery store products. Customers can use manufacturer's coupons to save even more on their commissary purchases. Annual sales now exceed $5 billion.

Surveys consistently rate the commissaries as one of the military’s top nonpay benefits. Many young service families, particularly those stationed in high cost-of-living urban areas, simply could not make ends meet without the price savings provided by the commissaries. DeCA has delivered more than $2 in savings to customers for every taxpayer dollar used to support the commissary system. In other words, preserving this level of compensation in direct dollar payments to military personnel would cost the government more than twice the current fund appropriation.

The commissary system has disagreed the post exchange system over who should sell what. Merging the two might save $9 billion over ten years.