Identical shopping baskets reveal significant price gaps hiding in plain sight across chains
I Compared Five London Supermarkets For the Same Shopping List and the Results Genuinely Shocked Me
My weekly shop had crept up to a genuinely uncomfortable amount without me really noticing, the way these things sneakily do, so I decided to actually test whether loyalty to my usual supermarket was costing me money. Same shopping list, five different chains, one increasingly tired Saturday of trekking around London.
The List I Used For Fair Comparison
I kept things deliberately basic, milk, bread, eggs, chicken, pasta, tinned tomatoes, and a handful of other genuine weekly staples rather than anything remotely fancy, wanting a proper apples-to-apples comparison across the board.
Shop One: My Usual Comfortable Default
Started at my regular spot out of habit, and honestly the total came in roughly where I expected, comfortable but unremarkable, exactly the kind of shop you stop questioning after enough years of autopilot loyalty.
Shop Two: The Budget Chain Surprise
This is where things got interesting. Nearly identical basket came in noticeably cheaper, and the quality genuinely didn’t feel like any kind of compromise, which made me slightly annoyed at myself for not checking sooner.
Shop Three: The Premium Trap
Popped into a slightly posher chain mostly out of curiosity, and unsurprisingly the total was considerably higher, though I’ll admit the fresh produce section was genuinely lovely to browse even if my wallet disagreed with lingering too long.
Shop Four: The Discount Wildcard
Tried a discount chain I’d always walked past without properly considering, and the savings here were genuinely the most dramatic of the whole day, though the limited brand selection meant a few substitutions were necessary.
Shop Five: The Final Comparison Point
Rounded out the day at one more mid-range option, landing somewhere between my usual spot and the budget discovery, confirming that price genuinely does vary more than I’d lazily assumed across comparable London supermarkets.
What This Whole Exercise Actually Taught Me
The price difference between cheapest and most expensive basket came to a genuinely significant amount, which multiplied across a full year of weekly shops represents real money I’d been quietly leaving on the table through pure habit rather than any actual loyalty logic.
Full itemised breakdown of every single price, plus my honest thoughts on quality differences, is up now on bigsmokebrokecom if you fancy questioning your own supermarket loyalty. I’ve also started keeping a rough mental note of which specific products vary most between chains versus which stay roughly consistent everywhere, since that distinction matters considerably when deciding whether splitting your shop across multiple stores is actually worth the extra hassle. None of this required any special spreadsheet skills either, just a genuine willingness to keep receipts and actually compare them properly afterwards rather than simply trusting vague impressions.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
