Consumers shopping in smaller convenience supermarkets like Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local could be paying considerably more for their goods than if they went to the larger stores, a study has found.
Shoppers at Tesco Express could be paying around 10 per cent more, while Sainsbury’s Local patrons are forking out just over eight per cent extra. But supermarkets insist that the higher prices at the smaller stores, particularly the ones in high-demand areas, are due to increased running costs, reports the Mirror.
Experts at ESA Retail have revealed their findings after monitoring 1,900 Tesco items and 2,100 at Sainsbury’s. Tesco had the highest price gap at 10.4 per cent, while Sainsbury’s was 8.4 per cent.
A Tesco spokesperson said: “With household budgets under increasing pressure, we’re more committed than ever to giving our customers great value at Tesco, whether they shop with us online, in a large store, or in an Express store. Our Express stores offer a range of extremely competitive own brand products and we have rolled out Clubcard Prices to all our Express stores.
“This helps millions of customers spend less through their Tesco Clubcard. Clubcard prices give up to 50 per cent off a wide range of products and helping customers collect points for money off their shopping.”
Tesco opened its first Tesco Metro store in 1992. Morrisons, which also has smaller Morrisons Daily convenience stores, was not part of the study, nor was Asda, which has Asda Express mini-stores.
Meanwhile, Tesco has been named the third-cheapest supermarket by consumer champions at Which?. They compared the prices of a shop consisting of 48 popular groceries at eight of the UK’s biggest supermarkets.
The cheapest supermarket was Aldi, where the basket of goods was £77.21 on average. The same shop at Waitrose was £104.11 on average, making it £26.90 more expensive.
Lidl was the second-cheapest, where a basket of goods was £78.57. In third place was Tesco, at £87.60, then Asda at £87.66 and Sainsbury’s with £89.85.
Morrisons came in at £93.49 and Ocado £96.09. Waitrose was bottom of the pack at £104.11.
Which? also compared the cost of a larger trolley of 149 items – the original 48, plus 101 more. This shop included a larger number of branded items, such as Andrex toilet paper and Cathedral City cheese, and did not include discounter supermarkets Aldi and Lidl, which do not always stock some of these products.
Asda cost the least for this larger trolley of groceries, continuing its winning streak, which started in January 2020, as the cheapest traditional supermarket. It cost £355.34.
This beat the next cheapest, Sainsbury’s (£366.83), by £11.49. In third place for a trolley of goods was Tesco, at £375.90, then Morrisons (£377.83), Ocado (£380.44) and Waitrose (£393.37).
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