In our series, Supermarket Swap, we challenge a family to change where and how they do their weekly grocery shop. Can they save money by trading old habits for new – and will they decide to switch to another supermarket as a result? If you want to take part, email money@inews.co.uk.
This week, our Supermarket Swap columnist, MaryLou Costa, 42, from Essex, takes to the aisles herself to investigate whether the branded items she and her family love are a bargain or a rip-off in their beloved Tesco, compared with other stores. Will their findings force them to rethink their loyalty?
Ever since ultra-processed foods (UPF) came to dominate news headlines, my husband and I have been torn between price over purity.
We previously bought mainly supermarket own-brand items in a bid to keep costs down while satisfying the tummies and taste buds of our two little boys. With a mortgage, two kids, and yearly trips to Australia to visit my parents to factor in, every little helps, as they say.
But when UPFs became the food equivalent of smoking, we started to take stock of what we were buying, and consequently putting into our bodies. We started examining the ingredients of our store cupboard staples and quickly realised that what we were saving in price, we were paying for by being ultra-processed.
So we started making swaps. For example, we dropped own brand wraps for Crosta and Mollica’s premium version, in turn cutting out ingredients like emulsifiers, preservatives and stabilisers, for a product containing only wheat, water, extra virgin olive oil and salt. Already we were up on price and down on volume – £1.40 for eight Tesco own-brand wraps versus £2 for six of Crosta and Mollica’s.
We’ve repeated the process across items like yoghurt, bread, ketchup, baked beans, chocolate, soy sauce, noodles, and even wine, swapping more processed own-brand items for higher-quality branded items – watching our bill rise as we went along. While we haven’t done any formal analysis on whether we are healthier as a result, we haven’t regretted the swaps, as all four of us feel healthy and happy, and are rarely ill.
We estimate we now spend around £20 a week more, thanks to our little lifestyle change and we try to rationalise that against the other areas of our life where we live in a fairly lean way.
We cancelled our Netflix account over a year ago as we were spending more time choosing a show to watch than actually watching one. We work from home, saving money on commuting, food, and even clothes and makeup. I buy most of my clothes from Vinted, selling my old ones there too. We sold most of our baby items on Facebook Marketplace, giving our old cot, high chair, baby car seat and baby carrier new lives with new families.
We also do most of our grocery shopping online with Tesco, feeling the benefits of the now ubiquitous Clubcard discounts that often reach double digits. But are the savings real compared with the cost of branded items in other supermarkets that we may be blind to, thanks to our loyalty? Could we be getting a better deal elsewhere?
Consumer comparison site Which? has been on the case, analysing the prices of 241 popular branded items with household names like Heinz and Nescafé. They found prices varied hugely across Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, Asda and Waitrose. They didn’t include Aldi and Lidl as they don’t stock enough branded items.
The biggest discrepancy they found at the time of their analysis in March was a £1.25 price difference between a four-pack of Tilda boil-in-the-bag basmati rice at Tesco and Waitrose – or 115 per cent.
They also found 500ml Filippo Berio classic olive oil came in at a £3.51 difference between Asda and Waitrose – £4.98 versus £8.51, or 71 per cent. Yet Twinings Every Day tea bags were cheapest in Waitrose – £3.21 compared to £5.61 in Morrisons, or 75 per cent. As for our beloved Tesco, Which? found that Asda was cheapest overall for branded items – even with a Clubcard discount.
So are we being had? Well, Filippo Berio’s boss told the media last month that UK supermarkets were “taking the mickey” when it came to olive oil pricing. Which? retail editor Reena Sewraz also concluded that the current market is “a bit of a lottery” and that you could easily end up paying double for the same branded product depending on where you shop.
Curious to know if our loyalty is misplaced, I hit the shops local to me in Essex – Waitrose, Lidl, Morrisons, and Tesco – to see which brands were a bargain and which were a rip-off.
Our list to compare covered our favourite items – Tilda rice, Lurpak butter, Filippo Berio olive oil, Kellogg’s corn flakes, John West tuna, Nescafé coffee, Jason’s sourdough bread, Heinz beans, Heinz soup, Skyr yoghurt and premium pasta (I am part Italian – buying Italian brands of pasta is non-negotiable).
I’d love to say that Tesco didn’t disappoint, but I’d be lying. It came up trumps with Cathedral City Mature Cheese – 28 per cent cheaper than the most expensive, Waitrose and with Kellogg’s corn flakes – also 28 per cent cheaper than Lidl, surprisingly. But it had the highest prices for olive oil, butter, and tuna – things we go through very quickly in our house. At £45.14 for the whole basket, it also came out the most expensive of all the supermarkets visited.
At £41.04, Lidl came out the cheapest, but as Which? rightly observed, its inconsistency in branded items makes it difficult to compare. There was little difference between Morrisons and Waitrose: £42.08 versus £42.80.
Morrisons emerged victorious on most of our items, with Waitrose edging ahead on the Azera coffee, yoghurt, beans, olive oil (contrary to Which?’s analysis) and butter. While bargains are to be had on Lidl’s own-brand items – and who can resist the middle Lidl aisle – I wouldn’t say the same about brands.
So is our Tesco tenure going to be tested? We’ve been doing a weekly online delivery with them for over two years now. We’ve never done so with Morrisons, so we may well be tempted. We do like to pop to Waitrose occasionally for “nice bits”, and these surprise deals may entice us further.
But it does make you wonder – how can the same product cost the same in different stores? What magical algorithm decides? Shopping used to be straightforward – why can’t stores make it simple again?