Shoppers face £643 increase to yearly grocery bill
Shoppers are facing an additional £643 jump in their annual grocery bill as grocery price inflation breaks another record.
According to freshly published data from Kantar, grocery inflation sits at 13.9 per cent, the highest level since the data firm started tracking prices in the 2008 financial crisis.
The average household’s annual grocery bill is now set to be £5,265, after shoppers have seen the cost of their average shopping trip leap by £3.04 to £24.93.
Big 4 supermarket Asda ploughed ahead with boosting sales over the latest 12 weeks, enticing an additional 417,000 shoppers through its doors versus last year and increasing sales 5.5 per cent.
Its new Just Essentials range of affordable food items has no doubt helped attract new customers, Kantar’s head of retail and consumer insight Fraser McKevitt said.
Discounters Aldi and Lidl continued to take bigger bites of market share, with Lidl continuing to be the fastest growing grocer for the fifth month in a row, with its sales up 20.9 per cent over the 12 weeks.
“We’re generally reluctant to change what we eat, so this is more about sticking to the food we know and love while hunting for cheaper alternatives like supermarkets’ own label goods,” McKevitt explained.
Own label sales increased by 8.1 per cent this month, while branded items declined by 0.7 per cent, Kantar’s data showed.
However, there was no “dramatic evidence of diets changing” amid the crunch on household budgets, McKevitt insisted.
While frozen vegetable sales had increased slightly, shoppers had not been switching in their droves to fresh products, which were still “worth ten times more.”
However, shoppers had been keen to pick up cheaper wonky fruit and vegetables. Supermarket chains’ produce ranges, including Tesco Perfectly Imperfect and Morrisons Naturally Wonky were up collectively by 38 per cent.
Shoppers have been hunting for different ways to cook in a bid to minimise their energy bills, the research also revealed.
Sales of cooking appliances such as energy efficient slow cookers and air fryers rose 53 per cent.
Brits have also been buying merchandise to help them avoid putting the heating on, with duvet and electric blankets up eight per cent and candles up nine per cent.