Doing your grocery shopping cheaply? Head to Belgium
Do you feel like you spend a fortune every time you do your grocery shopping? Get in the car and pay Belgium a visit. You could easily spend quite a bit less there for a full grocery bag. Omroep Brabant investigated a Belgian Jumbo and discovered why we seem to save money when we do our grocery shopping in Belgium.
For the investigation, Omroep Brabant went to the Jumbo in Pelt, just below the border. A grocery bag full of Jumbo private-label products cost €20.70 there. For a bag containing branded products, the investigator paid €36.19. The exact same two grocery bags were also bought at a Jumbo in Budel, the Netherlands. And what did they find? There, the investigator paid €28.59 for the private-label products and €41.46 for the branded products. Significant differences, then.
Special offers
How can the difference be so large? In principle, they are all the same products, made in the same factory and even coming from the same distribution centre, right? Omroep Brabant spoke to retail expert Paul Moers. According to him, prices abroad are often lower to begin with. Dutch supermarkets focus heavily on special offers: the Dutch fall for them hook, line and sinker. Belgian supermarkets use standard prices much more often. If you include the supermarkets’ special offers, you will see that the prices do not differ all that much on average. But you only notice that when you look at the total amount you spend on groceries over an entire year. A single trip to the Belgian supermarket can already make quite a difference.
A highly competitive market
Another reason for the price difference: the extremely competitive market in Belgium. Jumbo is a relatively new supermarket chain in Belgium and therefore still has to compete fiercely with other chains. To attract customers, Jumbo probably chooses to offer attractive prices. That way, it can – hopefully – earn its place in the Belgian supermarket landscape.
Attractive private-label products and volumes
Moers tells Omroep Brabant that it is not unusual for supermarkets to make their private-label products as attractive as possible. Those are their ‘flagship products’: the products they are proud of. The price differences for branded products are probably related to national differences in volume. The number of inhabitants in a country may play a role in this. If a country has more inhabitants, a manufacturer may decide to set a more attractive price for certain products. Simply because supermarkets buy them in larger quantities. That is also why German supermarkets, for example, are often cheaper than Dutch ones.
Head to Belgium?
So is it really worth doing your grocery shopping in Belgium? According to Paul Moers, it is. Especially if you also cross the border for tobacco, petrol and alcohol: excise duties are lower there, so you pay less. A look at the comments on the social media post accompanying this article also provides a different perspective. They suggest that it really depends on which groceries you put in your basket. Some products are more expensive here, while others are cheaper. One Belgian reader, for example, points out that fruit, vegetables and dairy products generally cost more in Belgium than they do here. Plus, you have to feel like making the trip down under every time. But at least you can fill up cheaply for the journey home.
Read also:
- 10 of the strangest Jumbo products (who comes up with this stuff?!)
- Save on groceries: wonderfully easy with these 5 apps
- Do you also have to pay a plastic surcharge in supermarkets?
Source: Omroep Brabant
