Nothing much personally grabs me in this Wednesday’s ALDI Special Buys in Australia. But it does include yet more examples of how ALDI specials on brand-name foods – not its own house brands – are rarely any better than what you’ll also see popping up at Woolworths and Coles.
For $3.99, this week you can pick up 500mls of Maggie Beer Gourmet Liquid Stock in beef, vegetable or chicken. That’s a solid discount, and lower in unit price terms than the $9 you’d pay for a litre of the stuff at other supermarkets, or the $5.50 the 500ml pack normally costs.
But it’s not a unique special. As it happens, Woolworths is running effectively the same deal right now, charging $4.00 for 500ml. So that’s only 1 cent more than ALDI. The day after the Woolworths special ends, the ALDI one begins.
The same applies even more to San Remo’s 80g La Pasta Snacks (boy, that takes me back to university days). ALDI has these for $1.39 as part of this week’s deals. But you can buy that size from either Woolworths or Coles for $1.40, and that’s the regular price. You don’t even need to wait for a special to run.
Yet again, the lesson is that ALDI will match brand name specials, but it won’t generally beat them in a meaningful way. (For more examples, see Tim Tams and Vegemite.) Buy by all means if you’re there anywhere and those products appeal, but don’t make a special trip. And don’t buy the vinyl records, obviously.
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