Is it cheaper to buy your groceries at The Warehouse or the supermarket?

Thursday, 16 February 2023

The Warehouse has stepped up its grocery game and is now offering fruit and vegetables at selected stores.

But how does the price of its groceries compare to what you pay at supermarkets?

Since August, Stuff has been collecting grocery price data at three different supermarkets in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

The Warehouse doesn’t offer all the products on our monthly grocery list, so we took the items it does have and compiled it into a list to compare the prices at The Warehouse with a New World, Pak ‘n Save and Countdown in Auckland.

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Both The Warehouse and all three supermarkets offer a 2L bottle of home-brand milk, a 500g block of butter, a 1kg block of cheese, Purex 8-pack mega roll toilet paper, a 12-pack of size 7 Farmer Brown eggs, a 1.2kg box of Weet-bix, 400g of canned tomatoes, 150g of Bluebird Ready Salted chips, a loaf of bread and 1kg of carrots, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and a bunch of bananas.

So how do The Warehouse prices stack up? The table below shows the full list.

In our comparison, the fruit and vegetables looked to be favourably priced. Carrots were on the only produce item that could be found cheaper elsewhere.

Overall, The Warehouse was cheaper than New World and Countdown, but still not cheaper than Pak ‘n Save.

This was likely due to the fact The Warehouse does not yet have its own range of dairy products, which pushed the price of its trolley up – with the most expensive item being the 1kg block of cheese.

The Warehouse has previously said it has saved families millions by selling cheaper breakfast items like $4 butter and $3 milk and would continue to expand its grocery range as the cost of living rises.