Asda had the cheapest basket this week but price cuts at Tesco made its victory uncomfortably close, with a margin of less than 1%.
Asda’s £66.72 basket cost 1.6% less than last week thanks to promotions on KP peanuts and fresh rhubarb. These were two of its seven exclusively cheapest items. The remaining five got there with straightforward lower base prices.
Asda ran eight multibuys and four price promotions this week. That means bulk buyers would be even better off at Asda, as pro-rating those deals increases its lead over Tesco from 45p to £1.48.
Tesco (£67.17) did the most to lower prices. Its basket was the only one this week to show year-on-year deflation (2.3%), while the same items cost an inflation-defying 6.6% less than a month ago. Tesco was cheapest on 16 items and exclusively so for nine of those, including Huggies and Linda McCartney’s sausages. This is all Clubcard-dependent though. Without loyalty promos, its total would be up by 3.7% in a year.
Asda’s lead over the rest of the pack was unambiguous. Sainsbury’s (£70.72) was 6% dearer than Asda while the same items at Morrisons (£71.41) cost 7% more. Morrisons matched seven cheapest items but failed to deliver a single exclusively cheapest SKU this week, and its annual inflation was the highest at 4.2%.
Waitrose (£86.96) was 30.3% more expensive than Asda and it price-matched just one item this week, the Hovis Seed Sensations loaf.
With all eyes on inflation, our basket cost 1.7% more than last year including loyalty promos. One of the highest rises was Princes corned beef, up by 15.2% in a year. Most retailers have not yet passed on the 5% cost price rise imposed by Princes from 1 April, but a can at Waitrose rose from £4.10 to £4.25 on that date.
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