Cheap Family Breakfast Groceries: Woolies Wins at $47.39

Breakfast for a family of four sounds simple enough. Weet-Bix, milk, bread, eggs, bananas, Vegemite, peanut butter, yoghurt, butter. Nine items. Nothing fancy. But across Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA, the price gap on this exact basket runs to over $13, and the winner isn't who you'd expect.

What This Basket Costs at Each Store

Here's the full picture on a like-for-like basket of nine standard breakfast items:

• Woolworths: $47.39 (complete basket, all nine items)
• Aldi: $52.81 (complete basket, all nine items)
• IGA: $54.20 (complete basket, all nine items)
• Coles: $38.93, but one item wasn't available

That Coles number is misleading. The $38.93 total is for eight items only. If you're counting on a single Coles run to cover your whole breakfast week, you'll hit a gap on the shelf and have to make do without one product. For a proper apples-to-apples comparison, Woolworths at $47.39 is the cheapest full basket.

Aldi coming in at $52.81 for the full basket will surprise shoppers who've heard Aldi is always the cheapest. It's not always true, and this basket shows exactly why. Aldi stocks its own-brand equivalents, and for some items in this basket those equivalents come in slightly larger or different formats, meaning the per-unit price can look cheaper while the shelf price is higher. The product range also varies by store.

According to a June 2025 CHOICE survey of a 15-item basket, Aldi came in at $55.34, ahead of Coles at $56.75 and Woolworths at $57.20. Our breakfast basket tells a different story, which is a good reminder that "cheapest overall" depends heavily on what's in your trolley.

Where the Cheap Family Breakfast Groceries Actually Are

Seven of the nine items are cheapest at Aldi. That's worth knowing even if Aldi's full basket total doesn't win, because it shapes how you shop.

Bananas are the standout. Aldi has them at $0.81 per kilogram this week. That's a strong price for free-range-eating, lunchbox-packing families who get through a bunch or two every week. Woolworths and Coles regularly sit above $2.00/kg, sometimes higher.

Free range eggs (12-pack) come in at $5.99 at Aldi. For a household going through a carton a week, weekend scrambled eggs, school morning omelettes, the occasional baking project, that's a price worth hunting. Free range eggs vary wildly across stores, so locking in $5.99 is genuinely useful.

Wholemeal bread (700 g) is $2.99 at Aldi. It's one of those items where you don't taste the difference between Aldi's own-brand and the branded loaves costing $4.50 to $5.00 at other stores.

The one item where Coles beats everyone is full cream milk (3 L) at $4.95. Woolworths charges more for the same size. If you're already shopping at Coles for something else, pick up your milk there.

And here's the one that surprises people: Vegemite 220 g is cheapest at IGA at $4.50. IGA doesn't often win on price, but for iconic branded pantry staples it's occasionally competitive. Don't build a shopping trip around it, but file it away.

Where Prices Are Basically the Same

Weet-Bix (1.2 kg), peanut butter (375 g), Greek yoghurt (1 kg vanilla) and butter (250 g) are all cheapest at Aldi, but the gaps between Aldi and Woolworths on these items are often under a dollar each. You're not losing a lot by buying these at Woolies if you're already there.

The bigger spread is on eggs, bananas, and bread, those three items account for most of the variation across stores. If you're going to cherry-pick, focus your energy there.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth the Extra Trip?

Buying each item at its cheapest store gets you to $41.16, saving $6.23 compared to doing everything at Woolworths. That's the price of a flat white, roughly. Over a month of weekly shops, it adds up to about $25.

Whether it's worth it depends on your situation. If Aldi, Coles and IGA are all within a few kilometres of each other, and you're already driving past them, then yes, the cherry-pick math works. But if the Aldi detour adds 15 minutes and a petrol stop each week, you're likely burning more than $6 in time and fuel.

Canstar Blue's 2025 survey found Australians are spending an average of $178 per week on groceries, up 6% from 2024. For families already feeling that squeeze, even $25 a month is worth caring about. But the honest answer here is that $6.23 is a modest saving on a breakfast-only basket. It's not the $20+ saving that makes a multi-store run feel automatic.

Who Should Shop Where

Woolworths is the call if you want a single-store shop and reliability. You'll get everything on the list, and at $47.39 you're not paying much of a premium over cherry-picking. Good option for busy households who value time.

Aldi first, Coles for milk is a workable two-store strategy. Grab your bread, eggs, bananas, Weet-Bix, peanut butter, yoghurt and butter at Aldi, then swing by Coles for milk. If both are on your route, you'd trim the basket meaningfully without too much extra effort.

IGA makes sense only if it's your closest store, or if you're doing a top-up shop and need Vegemite in a pinch. At $54.20 for the full basket, it's the most expensive single-store option by a decent margin.

Coles only works if the missing item doesn't matter to you that week. The incomplete basket price of $38.93 is low, but you'd need to know which item is unavailable before you get there.

A Canstar 2025 survey found Aldi shoppers spend around $174 per week on average versus $178 at Coles and Woolworths. Over a full weekly shop that includes dinner ingredients and snacks, Aldi's advantage becomes larger. But for this specific nine-item breakfast basket, it's Woolworths that takes out the single-store crown.