This week’s Grocer 33 pricing survey returned the highest level of annual inflation we have yet seen – with prices up 13.3% on average.
There was also the sharpest monthly jump in prices – up 3.6% on September.
Of the products on our list, 30 had risen in price versus a year ago, with just three cheaper than last October. Dairy remains at the sharp end of food price inflation with the extra mature cheddar up 47% year on year and the Activia yoghurt up 41%.
The block butter was up 37% along with the Alpro oat drink and the Loyd Grossman sauce.
Of the fallers, the Chicago Town pizzas were down 11% while the Robinsons squash and Snack a Jacks were 8% and 5% cheaper respectively.
Asda offered the cheapest basket this week, even though its prices were up 16.8% year on year. At £61.39 it was £3.54 cheaper than Morrisons. Asda offered the lowest price for 11 products with seven exclusively cheapest, including the apples, houmous and tortillas.
Second-place Morrisons was cheapest for eight products and exclusively so for the white loaf and the pack of peppers.
In the past two outings Tesco would have been the cheapest retailer after factoring in its Clubcard Price initiative, but the deals had little impact this week. Clubcard members would have saved just 75p and thus closed the gap to Asda from £5.83 to £5.08.
Guest retailer Iceland had 16 deals across our shopping list but it still came in £5.85 more expensive than Asda at £67.24. Sainsbury’s, which had been cheapest for the past two weeks, was £6.55 more expensive than Asda and saw the most inflation with prices up 17.7%.
Waitrose was a lot pricier: its £74.89 total was £13.50 more expensive than Asda, though inflation was in check at 8.3%.
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