Kassa investigates: this is now the most expensive supermarket (and you wouldn’t expect it)
Supermarket prices have been through the roof for months now. Every time we do our grocery shopping, we’re shocked when we check the receipt. ‘Inflation is hitting – everyone to Aldi and Lidl‘, we wrote before. But it now turns out that we’d better take back that statement. Research by Kassa (March 2023) shows that, at the moment, you pay the most for your groceries at Aldi.
Huh? Aldi?! Isn’t that the discounter you go to when you want to watch your spending? Well, apparently not.
The prices of your everyday groceries
Every year, Kassa checks the prices of products at 6 supermarkets. They call it the Kassa shopping basket. They examine the prices of 27 products at Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Aldi, Lidl, Plus and Dirk van den Broek. These are everyday products. Tea, for example, as well as apples and peanut butter. But also toilet paper and washing-up liquid. Things we all have in our pantry. With the research, they want to check which supermarket costs us the most and how much more we have to pay compared with the previous survey. In this case, that was in September 2022.
The rules of Kassa’s research
Kassa drew up a number of rules for the research. This allows them to remain as fair and objective as possible. For each product, for example, they choose the cheapest variant. So not a jar of branded peanut butter at supermarket A and a jar of own-brand peanut butter at supermarket B. They also leave price reductions through special offers out of consideration. At that moment, these are always cheaper than the regular price. Finally, they pay close attention to the contents of the products. Within a product category, the contents must be the same or as similar as possible. To keep things as fair as possible, Kassa converts the prices of the products to the price for the desired quantity.
The result
And yes, it turns out that groceries are most expensive at Aldi. Kassa paid € 66.46 for the products in its basket. No less than € 10 more than the cheapest supermarket, according to the test: Dirk van den Broek. There, Kassa paid just € 56.46. Lidl also turns out to be one of the cheaper options: € 61.21. Looking again at the top of the list of the most expensive supermarkets, we see Jumbo in second place (€ 65.36), Albert Heijn in third (€ 64.84) and Plus in fourth (€ 64.12). The supermarket with the biggest price increase is Jumbo. Groceries there have become no less than 16.99% more expensive compared with their prices in September 2022. Ouch.
Is Aldi always the most expensive?
Does this mean that you’re guaranteed to always spend more at Aldi than at Lidl, for example? No. Of course, this shopping basket isn’t exactly the same as what you take home from the supermarket every week. Moreover, special offers were not taken into account—products you will undoubtedly pick up. Still, it’s a striking result that we absolutely didn’t see coming. Curious about the supermarkets’ responses? Kassa collected them and published them on its website.
Also read:
- These 10 countries have been hit hardest by food inflation
- 14 times supermarket inflation takes painful forms
- Painful: cashierless Aldi turns out to be a customerless Aldi too
Source: BNNVARA
