As shoppers face a continuous battle against rising bills, more and more are opting for supermarket budget ranges. One that's been in the headlines more than most is Asda's Just Essentials.
Effectively it's just a rebrand of the former Smart Price, but the controversy over its bright yellow packaging at a time when families have been trying to cut their spending, thrust it into the spotlight at just the right moment - for the retailer as much as anyone else.
It's been so popular in fact that Asda has been forced to put a temporary limit on how many products shoppers can buy, restricting them to no more than three of each item.
Read more: Mum shares Asda pizza fakeaway and is slated for feeding her child 'rubbish'
But how good is the range? And how does it compare to Asda's Extra Special? We decided it would be good to find out.
I set out to do a typical family shop, not a big shop, just some of the regular products most people buy each week - like bread, meat, potatoes and the like. And I was obviously limited to what is available in each range.
Extra Special isn't really something I've ever looked at before. Like Tesco's Finest, the very name of it suggests it will be 'Extra expensive'.
All in the line of duty though, so I tried not to have too many palpitations as I reached up to the highest shelves - it's all part of their shopping psychology isn't it, those winning at life riding high, leaving the poorer folk kneeling down for their budget beans.
For once I wasn't buying beans, budget or otherwise. They don't even have a tin of beans in the Extra Special range, which gives an idea of the intended audience here.
They do have a rather wide selection of products though and I was surprised - shocked even - at how much some of them cost.
Perhaps it's because I have been focusing on the cheaper end of supermarkets and the cost of products at budget supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl, but I was pretty gobsmacked by some of them.
A whole Extra Special chicken was £10.37 for example, more than double the cost of the £4.55 one from Just Essentials. And there wasn't much difference in size, the Essentials one 1.6kg and the Special one 1.8kg.
Of course it's not your average chicken. Not when you read the packet anyway. This is a free range corn fed chicken, no less.
Could we tell the difference in taste? Not really. Covered in gravy they could have been the same bird. Same goes for the potatoes and there was a big price difference there too. A 2.5kg Just Essentials pack costing £1.09, compared with the more expensive £2 pack weighing 2kg.
Talking of gravy, I'd say it's products like that - the teabags another example - where the difference in quality becomes more apparent, the Essentials one more watery and not as flavoursome as the more expensive version. But when there's a price difference of £1.33, it's not small change is it and it's obvious why, in the current climate, more customers are choosing to give the cheaper products a go.
It's not simply the ingredients themselves that push prices up either is it. The cost of how something is farmed or bred has to be taken into account. But the reality for many families is that they can't afford to take that into account.
When you can get a pack of 15 eggs for £1.50 from the Just Essentials range, yet a six-pack of Extra Special free range eggs sets you back £2, for many people it's a no brainer. Same goes for cheese, where a giant 825g block of mature cheddar costs £3.65 from Essentials, but you'll pay £3.25 for a 300g block of Extra Special.
Undoubtedly some of the Special products taste better. The sausages and burgers for instance were far superior. But then you are talking about 90% pork with the Special sausages, compared with 51% with the Essentials. And with the burgers, you're getting a pack of 10 Just Essentials for £1.60, but just four Special ones for £3.20.
The Essentials ones look a lot better once cooked - the sausages in particular were like slimy oblongs when I first took them out of the packet - and my children still ate them without complaint.
With some of the products they were simply too different to be able to compare. The 99p cheese and tomato pizza for instance is never going to match up to the Extra Special Mozzarella and Tomato Sourdough Pizza, but at £4.75 you'd rightly expect a higher standard.
Likewise with products like the egg custards - a richer flavour and tastier all-butter pastry with the Extra Special ones, but they cost £2.10 for two, compared with a four-pack from Essentials for 75p. They all got eaten nonetheless.
And sometimes, especially where children are concerned, it is the cheaper - often plainer - products they actually prefer.
In fact we all liked the Essentials white chocolate over the Extra Special Blonde chocolate and it costs just 33p compared with £2 a bar of the expensive stuff.
And we weren't particularly impressed by the Extra Special lemon cheesecakes, which had a powdery-like base and seemed more of a mousse.
If there's one thing this Essentials v Extra experiment has taught me, it's that the little people in my house can tell little difference between many of these products. To them a scone is a scone, jam is jam.
There's clearly a market for both and figures from market researcher Kantar just this week show that sales of Extra Special products are up by 14% year-on-year, reporting that the 'Just Essentials range continues to help (Asda) drive growth with nearly two thirds of its 15.2 million shoppers picking up at least one item from the line'.
If money was no object then yes, I'd probably be splashing out on some Extra Special products more often, but when the full shop of Just Essentials cost £32.45, compared with £69.72, that's a 115% price jump I simply can't afford. And when most of it is twice the price, but, in my opinion, not necessarily twice as good, you'd be a fool not to look at the cheaper options.
I won't be buying everything from the budget range - like many people I'll probably get much of my shopping from the middle ground - but I won't be looking on enviously at the shopping trolleys packed with Extra Specials either. Unless there are some of those egg custards tucked in there of course.
A spokesperson for Asda said: “We offer a wide selection of products to suit all budgets and the difference in the price of these ranges reflects the overall quality, size, and the sourcing of the ingredients which go into making them.
"Both Just Essentials and Extra Special are proving very popular with customers and are outperforming comparable ranges in the market.”
Full shopping list and prices - Just Essentials / Extra Special
- Mince 500g - £1.99 / £4.60
- Whole chicken - £4.55 / £10.37
- Burgers - £1.60 / £3.20
- Chicken kiev - £1.99 / £4.60
- Gammon - £4.89 / £5
- Sausages - £1.20 / £2.95
- Pizza - 99p (300g) / £4.75 (523g)
- Cooked chicken - £1.80 (240g) / £2.85 (120g)
- Apples - 65p / £2
- Peppers £1.20 (3 large) / £1.35 (200g baby)
- Potatoes - £1.09 / £2
- Wholemeal bread - 39p / £1.35
- Wholemeal rolls - 52p / £1.15
- Spread - 83p / £2.40
- Cheese - £3.65 (825g) / £3.25 (300g)
- Scones - 49p / £1.45
- Cheesecakes - £1 / £2.20
- Egg custards - 75p / £2.10
- Jam 34p / £1.50
- Bolognese sauce - 39p / £1.60
- Gravy - 32p / £1.65
- Orange juice - 75p / £2.75
- Tea bags - 31p / £1.40
- Chocolate - 33p /£2
- Tortilla chips - 43p / £1.25
Totals - Just Essentials £32.45 / Extra Special £69.72 - (difference of £37.27)
Read more of today's top stories here
READ NEXT:
