The Cost of Groceries

Lately, we've been making a concerted effort to be more conscious about our grocery spending. I've been doing weekly menu planning, "saving with Jamie" and, more recently, we decided to make a real comparison on the prices of grocery items that we buy most often. We tend to split up our grocery shopping between Woolies, Aldi, and Costco, and before the comparison were really working on vague ideas about what might be better priced where. I wanted to prove it. So, we picked a few of our staple items to cost compare, and I thought I'd share my findings here, in case it is helpful to anyone else out there.

A couple of notes on the comparison:

• I recorded prices from Costco Auburn (Sydney), Woolworths Neutral Bay, and Aldi North Sydney. I tried to record regular prices, so this doesn't take any sales into account.
• The comparison is a little tricky since each place stocks different brands. In most cases, I chose the store brand or lowest priced brand and tried to make a note where it was different. As a shopper, you have to decide what that means to you. For instance, you may note the the price of laundry detergent at Aldi is vastly less expensive than the other two, however, for me it doesn't seem like such a deal when you know that it is "apple blossom" scented detergent. Not to my taste, thanks.
• As you would expect, almost all of the lots at Costco are very large, so you have to be able to store everything from there.
• There are some staples that I didn't record that certain stores carry that I can't buy elsewhere. For instance, Costco is the only place to stock my beloved Skippy peanut butter. We settled on oat milk as our preferred alternative to cow's milk for Hushpuppy, and Woolies is the only one of these three stores that carries it. 
• *Bananas: I didn't compare much in the way of seasonal fruit here because the prices are so variable. However, we go through bananas like we own stock in Chiquita, so I wanted at least a baseline. The prices listed for Woolies and Aldi were taken on the same day, so while they may not be the same today, you can at least get a place to start the comparison. On the day I went to Costco, they were out of bananas. I decided to leave them on the list because, frankly, that's one of the travails of Costco shopping. Sometimes they run out of things. 

The breakdown:

	Costco	Woolies	Aldi
Milk	1.90/litre (A2 milk)	1.00/litre	1.00/litre
Eggs (cage)	.22/egg (30 pack)	.31/egg (12 pack)	.25/egg (12 pack)
Flour	.74/kg	.79/kg	.75/kg
Sugar	.09/100g	.10/100g	.09/100g
Brown onions  (bag)	1.60/kg	1.00/kg	1.00/kg
Carrots (bag)	1.33/kg	1.68/kg	1.29/kg
Bananas*	??	2.49/kg	1.99/kg
Ginger	25.99/kg	26.97/kg	N/A
Blueberries- frozen	6.49/kg	8.00/kg	8.98/kg
Olive Oil	.62/100ml (Red Island)	.75/100ml (Red Island)	.45/100ml (Olive Tree)
Coconut Oil	1.51/100g	2.15/100g	N/A
Coffee	.98/100g (Kirkland ground)	2.36/100g (Woolworths  Select)	1.10/100g (Whole beans)
Almond Milk  (unsweetened)	2.47/litre	2.79/litre	2.29/litre
Honey	1.20/100g	1.07/100g	.80/100g
Sultana Bran	.79/100g (Kellogg’s)	.84/100g (Woolworth’s  Select)	.66/100g (Golden Valley)
Carman’s nut bars	2.00/100g	3.17/100g	N/A
Chicken breasts	10.99/kg	14.49/kg	9.99/kg
Laundry detergent  (liquid)	4.11/litre (Kirkland)	4.84/litre (Woolworth’s  Select)	.75/litre (Laundrite)
Toilet paper	.19/100 sheets (Kirkland)	.25/100 sheets (Woolworth’s  Select)	.20/100sheets (Confidence)
Nappies	.44/each (Kirkland size 6)	.22/each (Homebrand)	.21/each (Mamia)