ALDI completely disagrees with Kassa’s 2023 Shopping Basket

Every year, Kassa checks the prices of products from 6 supermarkets. They call it the Kassa Shopping Basket. And what did the latest study reveal? That shopping at ALDI is the most expensive. ALDI absolutely disagrees: ‘Only the price is taken into account, not the quality of the products,’ according to the supermarket chain.

Kassa’s Shopping Basket

With the Kassa Shopping Basket, the program examines the prices of 27 everyday products from Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Aldi, Lidl, Plus and Dirk van den Broek. The study aims to check which supermarket leaves us paying the most, and how much more we have to spend compared with the previous study. On average, the prices in Kassa’s shopping basket rose by 13.21% compared with last year. The fact that ALDI turned out to be the most expensive supermarket in this year’s study came as a surprise to everyone, including ALDI itself.

ALDI: price is decisive

‘We cannot agree with the way Kassa conducts the test, because only the price is taken into account, not the quality of the products. For example, our Heerlijck Banket stroopwafels, which are made with butter, are compared with a budget version made with margarine. That alone makes a difference of around one euro,’ says the supermarket chain. ‘We always aim for the best price-quality ratio across our entire range, which is many times larger than the 27 products in the Kassa Shopping Basket.’

Increase only when there is no alternative

In a statement, ALDI says it only raises prices when there is truly no alternative: ‘It is unfair to make suppliers pay for increases in, among other things, energy, transport and packaging costs alone. This is also economically unfeasible. In addition, we are dealing with shortages in various product groups.’

The question Kassa raises is whether these costs have been passed on fairly. A valid question now that we are increasingly dealing with ‘greedflation‘. Kassa also wondered whether certain parties had profited disproportionately from the higher prices. The biggest earner? According to Kassa, that is the government. It has unknowingly earned billions through additional revenue from VAT (on goods and services) and gas. Food is subject to 9% VAT, while products such as alcohol are subject to 21%. With every price increase, these VAT revenues rise—and in 2022, they rose considerably. Total VAT revenues in 2022 amounted to 72.7 billion. That was 5.2 billion more than budgeted. Cha-ching!

Also read:

• Painful: checkout-free Aldi turns out to be largely customer-free too
• These ALDI products have been crowned Best Product of the Year
• 10x our favorite cheap snacks from Aldi

Source: ALDI, Kassa