Budget Dinner Groceries for a Family: Aldi Saves $10

Five dinners. Four people. One week. How much does it actually cost, and which store makes it cheapest?

We built a 13-item basket covering the core of a budget dinner week: beef mince, chicken thighs, sausages, pasta, rice, lentils, a couple of pantry staples and enough veg to stretch it all across five nights. No breakfast, no snacks, no cleaning products. Just the honest cost of getting dinner on the table.

Here's what we found.

What This Budget Dinner Basket Costs at Each Store

Aldi is the clear winner at $49.48, sitting $10.42 under Woolworths and $10.31 under Coles. That gap is real money across a year of weekly shops.

The catch is that Aldi doesn't stock two items in this basket, so you'd need to pick those up elsewhere. More on whether that's worth it shortly.

IGA fills in the gap nicely on coverage, only one item missing, but its $56.85 total is a full $7.37 above Aldi and still $1.95 above Coles. For most households, IGA works best as a convenience option, not a budget one.

This aligns with what CHOICE found in their June 2025 quarterly supermarket survey, which confirmed Aldi remains the cheapest option for a standard grocery basket, followed by Coles, Woolworths, and IGA.

Where the Budget Savings Are Biggest

The meat items drive most of the difference. Beef mince (500 g) is $6.49 at Aldi, check what your Coles or Woolies charges for the same weight and you'll usually find it $1.50 to $2.00 higher. Chicken thigh (1 kg) comes in at just $5.84 at Aldi, which is genuinely hard to beat. And thin beef sausages (1 kg) at $3.89 at Aldi are the kind of price that makes you wonder what you've been paying elsewhere.

On the pantry side, Aldi's pasta (500 g) at $0.89 and pasta sauce at $1.59 are about as cheap as either gets in Australia right now. Jasmine rice (1 kg) at $2.99 also undercuts both Coles and Woolies.

These aren't tiny rounding differences. On the protein items alone, mince, chicken, sausages, Aldi's prices add up to savings of several dollars compared to buying the same things at Woolworths.

Where Prices Are Basically the Same

A few items barely move between stores. Brown onions (1 kg) at $3.00 are cheapest at Woolworths, but it's not the kind of gap you'd change your shopping habits for. Carrots (1 kg) at $1.70 and frozen mixed vegetables (500 g) at $2.80 are both cheapest at Coles, but again, we're talking cents.

Diced tomatoes (400 g x2) at $0.95 each are cheapest at Coles. Lentils (400 g) at $0.95 are cheapest at Woolworths. Both prices are similar enough across the big two that you'd buy wherever you already are.

Vegetable oil (750 ml) at $4.00 is cheapest at Woolworths. Potatoes (2 kg) at $4.50 are cheapest at Coles. Neither of these moves the dial enough to justify an extra trip on their own.

Budget Grocery Shopping: Is Cherry-Picking Worth the Extra Trip?

If you bought every single item at its cheapest store, you'd spend $49.59 total. Compared to doing your whole shop at Aldi ($49.48), that's... almost identical. The cherry-pick saves you literally eleven cents over Aldi.

Compared to doing everything at Woolworths, cherry-picking saves $14.96. That sounds good on paper. But you'd be splitting your shop across three or four different stores to get there, Aldi for the meat and pantry staples, Coles for the frozen veg and potatoes, Woolworths for the onions, lentils, and oil.

Honestly? The maths rarely justifies it. Petrol, time, and the mental load of running multiple shopping lists usually eat the saving. The one exception: if Coles or Woolies is already on your route and you're just adding a few items, that's free money. But restructuring your week around four separate shops to save $15 is a stretch for most families.

The smarter play for most households is to do the main shop at Aldi and pick up the two missing items at Coles or Woolies while you're out anyway.

Who Should Shop Where for Cheap Family Dinners

Aldi is the right answer for most budget-focused families doing a dedicated dinner shop. The protein savings alone justify the trip, and the pantry staples are consistently priced low. The two missing items are easy enough to grab anywhere.

Coles is the best of the big two for this basket, coming in $4.65 under Woolworths. If Aldi isn't convenient for you, or you rely on click-and-collect or home delivery, Coles is the sensible fallback. You also get full stock of every item.

Woolworths isn't the cheapest here, but it's not dramatically worse than Coles either. If you're already a Everyday Rewards member and you're stacking points or using member prices, the gap narrows. A few items, lentils, onions, oil, are genuinely cheapest here, so it's a reasonable top-up store.

IGA is for emergencies and convenience. Its prices are higher, but it stocks nearly the full basket and it's often the only option if you're in a regional area or just need one thing urgently.

Compared to the average Australian's weekly grocery spend of $206.54 (according to June 2025 data from CompareTheMarket), a $49.48 dinner-only basket at Aldi is a pretty efficient slice of the weekly total. Dinners don't have to blow the budget if you're buying the right things at the right store.

The Items Doing the Heavy Lifting

This basket is built around the ingredients that genuinely stretch. Lentils at $0.95 can bulk out a mince dish for two extra servings. Brown onions and carrots disappear into almost anything and cost almost nothing per serve. Pasta and rice between them cover at least three of your five weeknight dinners.

The chicken thighs at $5.84 per kilo (Aldi) are significantly better value than breast for slow-cooked or pan-fried dishes, they don't dry out, and they're forgiving for anyone cooking in volume. Sausages at $3.89 per kilo are a genuinely cheap protein when you're not sure what else to do on a Thursday night.

None of this is news to families who've been cooking on a tight budget for years. But it's useful to see the actual numbers laid out: this basket, shopped at Aldi, costs less than $50. That's five dinners for a family, at under $10 a night.