€10 difference: this olive oil is bizarrely much more expensive at Albert Heijn
So yesterday I was happily scrolling through Facebook when I came across something bizarre. In the Facebook group ‘Amsterdam Durft Te Vragen,’ which I’m a member of, someone asked why a particular olive oil is much more expensive at Albert Heijn than at another supermarket. What’s going on?
The Extra Virgin olive oil on the shelves at Dirk van de Broek costs €5.49. The same olive oil costs €8.75 per half litre at Albert Heijn and €15.49 per full litre. What is this bizarre difference?!
The price of olive oil is on the rise
It probably won’t be news to you that a bottle of olive oil has become considerably more expensive: over the past two years, the price has risen by no less than 50 per cent. But that increase isn’t reflected at Albert Heijn (or perhaps it isn’t at Dirk van de Broek), because you now pay €15.49 for a litre of extra virgin olive oil there. Exactly the same olive oil that is ten euros (!) cheaper at Dirk — it’s just described as ‘fruity’ on the website.
That fruitiness is supposedly due to the low acidity, although Carbonell’s regular extra virgin olive oil would have that too. So this enormous price difference can’t be attributed to that, because the ‘fruity’ quality isn’t mentioned on the bottle itself either (it simply says ‘extra virgin’). But what about the other supermarkets?
Jumbo is the middle ground
This specific olive oil is no longer available at Jumbo, but — when it was still part of the range — it cost €13.67 per litre. So it was cheaper than at Albert Heijn, but certainly also quite a bit more expensive than at Dirk. It could therefore well be that Dirk will change the price soon, because it almost seems like a mistake. The traditional olive oil costs €7.99 at Dirk, making it once again considerably more expensive than the extra virgin variety.
Although you’re also better off going to Dirk for the traditional bottle, because this same bottle costs more than ten euros at Albert Heijn too: €12.19 for one litre. That still makes quite a difference per litre, so it should be clear by now: go to Dirk if you don’t want to be ripped off when it comes to olive oil. It’s expensive enough already, even at Dirk.
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Image: St. Luke
