Aldi wins on price again but it depends what you buy

Shopping around for the cheapest groceries can be a time consuming process but lucky for you, CHOICE has done all the hard work. 

Unsurprisingly, Aldi came out on top once again for giving shoppers the most bang for their buck. 

The popular discount supermarket offered savings of nearly 59 per cent when compared with supermarket giants Woolies and Coles – as long as you’re prepared to kiss leading name brands good-bye of course. 

CHOICE sent undercover shoppers into 110 supermarkets across Australia: 32 Coles, 32 Woolworths, 26 Aldi and 20 IGA stores. 

Supermarkets were surveyed in clusters ensuring that each store had local competition and mystery shoppers were given the same list of 33 items to find the biggest bargains. 

The results showed that leading brand products cost on average $170.54 at Coles and $168.74 at Woolworths (excluding specials). 

A comparable basket of Aldi brand groceries cost just $102.50 (excluding specials); offering a savings of nearly 50 per cent. 

And even more savings were available if Aldi’s budget options were selected – as much as 59 per cent in fact. 

Both Coles and Woolworths are subject to intensive price monitoring meaning that prices at both are closely matched.

However, the study found that if you included savings from specials, Coles edged out Woolworths in savings by almost 2 per cent. 

It’s no shock that the most expensive place to shop is at independent retail chain IGA who charge 5 to 7 per cent more than duopoly Coles and Woolies for the same shopping list created by CHOICE.

But when specials were included, IGA was on par for price with the regular basket price (excluding specials) at the supermarket giants – evidence of IGA’s “price match” promise.

If you haven’t already figured it out, switching to supermarket brands over leading brands at Coles and Woolies can bring your bill down by a further 40 per cent. 

But Aldi is still the cheapest at $102.50 as the supermarket brand groceries cost around 10 per cent more than the discount supermarket: $112.89 at Woolworths and $113.10 at Coles (excluding specials). 

If you don’t have an Aldi in your neighbourhood, there are still ways to save even more at Coles and Woolies – switch to budget-tier supermarket brands like Smart Buy from Coles and Homebrand from Woolies. 

While the quality, look, and feel of the items may not be directly comparable to leading brands, the price overall is just 6 to 8 per cent more than Aldi. 

CHOICE substituted its leading brand shopping list for budget versions where they were available: $99.40 at Coles and $97.31 at Woolies (excluding specials) compared with $91.76 at Aldi. 

While more than 90 per cent of Aldi’s groceries sold are its own brand, the discount supermarket does stock some leading brand items, including seven of the items on the CHOICE leading brand basket: Cadbury chocolate, Streets Blue Ribbon ice cream, Arnott’s Tim Tams, Coca-Cola, Moccona coffee, Cobram Estate olive oil and Kleenex tissues. 

At Coles, those seven items would set you back $41.75, at Woolies, $42.83, but savings up to 23 per cent were found at Aldi as the same items cost just $33.15.

As Aldi continues to grow – it now has more than 400 stores and just over 13 per cent share in the grocery market, the supermarket giants still rake in nearly 70 per cent of the $90.3 billion grocery market share between them according to a 2017 analysis by Roy Morgan Research. 

Do you shop by price or by brand?