A few years ago I wouldn't have set foot inside Sainsbury's for a big shop.
I might have bought the odd item of clothing, as the TU range has always proved decent quality, but I would never have dreamt of filling my trolley with food. But with shoppers telling us they've swapped their usual supermarket for the retailer, I decided to do the same.
Read more: Mum says supermarket's 52p beans and sausages are 'better than Heinz'
Responding to our previous article about price hikes at Asda, a number of customers said they had made the unlikely switch to the 'posh' retailer - traditionally known as being among the most expensive.
Among them was mum Caitlin Rolle, who used to shop at Asda, Aldi and Morrisons, but said she was not only impressed with Sainsbury's Aldi Price Match scheme - which now has over 25% more products matched than last autumn - but believes the quality of food is better than you can get elsewhere.
Eager to find out for myself, I headed for a late night shop at Sainsbury's in Leigh to see exactly what prices are like in store. Things got off to a good start from the moment I entered and was greeted with a huge display of Heinz soups for £1 each.
Everyone knows how much Heinz products have risen over recent months, with ketchup reaching £4 a bottle and beans around £1.40 a tin. Soup is up to around £1.70 a tin in most supermarkets and to get it cheaper you have to buy in bulk, so it was refreshing to see it for a quid for a single tin.
In fact it was 'special offers' like this that impressed me more than anything as I made my way through the store.
Unlike a previous big shop at Morrisons, where I found I had to buy at least two of the same thing to benefit from any sort of discount, here the offers are on individual items.
Most items I'd typically buy were on offer in one way or another.
As well as the special offer prices - such as Birds Eye crispy chicken breasts reduced from £4 to £3.50 and Warburtons breakfast muffins down from £1.05 to 75p - much of what I bought benefited from the Aldi Price Match.
The soft white Hovis loaf for example, at £1.40, tinned tomatoes for 32p from its budget Hubbard's range, and fresh orange juice at £1.39 for 2 litres were just a few of the products matched in price to the budget retailer, along with meat including gammon, meatballs, burgers and mince.
The 750g pack of 5% fat mince was already cheaper than Aldi, at £4.29 instead of £4.49, but had been reduced to £3.44 with a yellow sticker even though it was still in date. And the joint of gammon, which would have been the same as the budget retailer, at £3.79 a kg, was also cheaper thanks to a yellow sticker, despite it still having two days left on the 'use by'.
A lot of the fruit and veg was price matched too - like the 1kg bag of carrots for 50p, melons and pineapples for 95p each and cabbages for 65p.
Half price pears were a particular bargain, at £1 for a pack of four 'ripe and ready' fruit and even though they weren't labelled as 'price match', the 2.5kg bag of Maris Piper potatoes was the same as Aldi.
On top of those promotions there are products that have been 'price locked', like the 12-pack of Walkers Crisps for £3 (25p a bag) and giant 910g box of Shreddies for £3.25, which is 54p cheaper than Lidl's current price of £3.79. There's also a bulk buy section, making certain items even cheaper, like a box of 32 Walkers for £5.10 (equating to 16p a bag), and a huge bag of 600 Yorkshire Tea Bags for £12.50. Both Tesco and Aldi are priced £5.49 for a 210 pack, while Asda's 240-pack is £6.30.
The Tetley tea bags I bought, at £4.50 for the 240 pack, were also cheaper than elsewhere - with both Tesco and Aldi 10p more at £4.60.
The half price offers were quite literally the cherry on the cake.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been avoiding Mr Kipling cakes because of their price hikes, but at half price I decided to stock up. Who knew a £1.37 price tag on a box of French Fancies could be the source of such excitement.
But when households are being hammered from all corners with rising energy costs, food bills and goodness knows what else, any saving is sweet.
And it's not just on food where you can save either. Mum Caitlin told us she'd found that Fairy products were reasonably priced at Sainsbury's too.
After pricing them up - and finding offers on those too - I have to agree. The 112-wash 'mega pack' fabric softener was priced locked at £6, just a penny more than B&M's, while the 38-wash non bio platinum stain remover gel was reduced from £9.50 to £7.75. B&M's smaller 27-wash tub is £6.49, so that gives you some idea of the savings.
Of course not everything is as cheap, or cheaper, than elsewhere. I don't think any supermarket can argue that. And there were still some prices that made me wince - like the 500g pack of dried apricots for £3.70. Even after a price rise at Aldi, theirs are still £2.69 a pack and at Tesco they're £3.25.
Some of the other Heinz products were high too, £2 for a tin for ravioli for example. But unlike other supermarkets, where these are on offer - 3 for £5 at Tesco, 5 for £6 at Asda - there was no such promotion this time.
Sainsbury's CEO Simon Roberts has however shared his vision for the retailer to become 'as cheap as Aldi' and says it's seeing 'more customers coming back to us from the discounters' - a claim Aldi refutes, saying industry data suggests the opposite.
I know one of the main bugbears of Aldi and Lidl shoppers, apart from the fact they don't do widespread home delivery, is that you can't always get the branded products you want and end up having to go elsewhere. So it's easy to see the appeal of a supermarket with both budget prices and big boy brands in the one place, especially when it offers delivery too.
How things will pan out is anyone's guess. But if Sainsbury's wants to take on Aldi who are we to argue. There's usually only one winner in a supermarket price war and that's the customer. Let battle commence.
My full Sainsbury's shop
- Conference pears 4-pack £1
- Babycorn 175g £1.70
- Cherries 500g £3
- Carrots 1kg 50p
- Bananas (78p a kg) 58p
- Maris piper potatoes 2.5kg £1.59
- Chopped tomatoes (2 x 32p) 64p
- Easy peelers 600g £1
- Heinz Beanz 4-pack £4
- Heinz tomato soup (2 x £1) £2
- Kidney beans 70p
- Hubbard's Pasta 1kg 82p
- Spirali pasta 500g 95p
- Mild cheddar 600g £3.03
- Beef quarter pounders x4 £2.75
- Beef meatballs 350g £2.25
- Gammon 1.178kg £3.99 (yellow sticker)
- Mince 750g £3.44 (yellow sticker)
- Richmond 12-pack thick sausages £2
- Breaded ham 300g £1.75
- Bacon 250g £1.39
- Pork cocktail sausages 35-pack £2
- Fairy non bio gel 38-wash £7.75
- Fairy fabric softener 112-wash £6
- Tetley tea bags 240-pack £4.50
- Skimmed milk 4 pint £1.65
- Clover Lighter 500g £1.75
- Eggs 10x mixed weight £1.43
- Vegetable oil £1.99
- Shreddies 910g £3.25
- Hash browns 700g £1.70
- Birds Eye potato waffles £2
- Birds Eye Crispy Chicken x4 £3.50
- McCain Lighter Home Chips 1kg £2
- Hovis soft white thick £1.40
- Warburtons muffins 75p
- White bread rolls 69p
- Garlic flatbread £1.50
- Granulated sugar 1kg 95p
- Light mayo 450ml £1.15
- Tomato puree 50p
- Tomato and mascarpone sauce 350g £1.80
- Sharwood's cooking sauce £1.75
- French Fancies £1.37
- Mini Battenberg £1.15
- Angel slices £1.72
- Magnum white x4 £3.50
- Walkers ready salted 12-pack £3
- Orange juice 2L £1.39
Total - £101.22
What do the supermarkets say?
A Sainsbury's spokesperson said: “With costs going up, we are working hard to keep prices low. Last year we announced that we would invest over £550m by March 2023 into lowering prices as part of our goal to put food back at the heart of Sainsbury’s.
“We're committed to doing everything we can to support customers with the rising cost of living. Through initiatives such as our Aldi Price Match campaign, Price Lock and My Nectar Prices, customers can find low prices on the products they buy most often both in stores and online.
“Our focus on value means that all our customers will find great deals when they shop with us and do not need to go anywhere else to get the best prices on their weekly shop.”
Aldi says it would be 'entirely wrong' to suggest that customers are switching from the budget retailer to Sainsbury's.
It says the price gap between the two is 'significant' with the latest Which? survey, from last month, finding that a basket of 45 everyday items was £13.62 – or 17% – more expensive at Sainsbury’s than at Aldi.
An Aldi spokesperson said: “Week after week, independent price surveys confirm what shoppers know already – that Aldi is the lowest-priced supermarket in the UK. That’s why Aldi has been named by Which? as the UK’s cheapest supermarket for two years running.
"In the last three months alone, Aldi attracted an additional 1.3 million customers, as shoppers switch in their droves from every single major UK supermarket, including Sainsbury’s.”
Have you swapped supermarkets since the cost of living crisis took hold? Have you moved to Sainsbury's from another retailer or found it cheaper than it used to be? Let us know in the comments.
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