Mid-Week Dinners: Aldi Saves Families $12.30 a Shop

Aldi wins this basket by $12.30 over Woolworths, $11.15 over IGA, and $12.30 over Coles. Five weeknight dinners, spag bol, a roast chook, stir-fry, pasta bake, and a leftovers meal, using the proteins and veg most Australian households actually buy. Here's what each store costs you, and where it matters.

What Does a Week of Mid-Week Dinners Cost?

Aldi is cheapest by a solid margin. That $12.30 gap over Woolies doesn't sound life-changing on its own, but across 52 weeks it's over $600 a year just on weeknight groceries. Canstar Blue's July 2025 survey put the average Australian household grocery spend at $178 a week, so savings like this are exactly where families are looking to claw back ground.

Where Aldi Has the Biggest Edge

Three items in this basket drive most of the Aldi advantage, and they're all staples you'll buy every single week.

Beef mince (1 kg) is $6.49 at Aldi. Coles and Woolies both sit well above that, mince is one of those items where the private-label gap is real and consistent. If spag bol is on your rotation (and for most families it is), this alone starts to add up.

Olive oil (500 ml) is $7.99 at Aldi. This is one of the bigger-ticket pantry items in the basket, and Aldi's house brand consistently undercuts the name-brand shelf at the big two. You're not getting a cold-pressed single-estate oil, but for cooking a stir-fry or finishing a pasta bake, it does the job.

Penne (500 g, x2) comes in at just $0.89 per pack at Aldi. Two packs, so $1.78 total. Pasta is arguably the easiest win at Aldi, the quality difference between their house pasta and Coles' own brand is genuinely hard to notice once it's in a sauce.

The soy sauce (250 ml) and jasmine rice (1 kg) also favour Aldi, at $1.79 and $2.99 respectively. These pantry staples are the kind of items you stock up on, so getting the cheaper version without any real quality trade-off is just sensible.

Where the Prices Are Pretty Much the Same

Not every item in this basket is dramatically cheaper at Aldi. A few are close enough that it's not worth crossing town for.

Brown onions (1 kg) are actually cheapest at Woolies at $2.50. Coles and Aldi are very close. It's a $2-3 item either way.

Garlic (3 pack) is cheapest at Coles at $1.98. Again, not a meaningful gap.

Diced tomatoes (400 g, x2) are cheapest at Coles at $0.95 a can. These are so close across stores that the "savings" here are cents, not dollars.

The lesson: fresh produce and pantry basics are where prices converge most. When a tin of tomatoes is $0.95 at Coles and $1.10 somewhere else, the difference across a year of pasta bakes is real, but it's never going to make a trip to a second store worth it on its own.

Cup mushrooms (500 g) are worth flagging. At $6.29 at Aldi, they're the priciest veg item in the basket and sit higher than you'd expect for 500 g. If your local IGA has them on special, that's worth a look. Mushrooms are notoriously volatile on price week to week.

Is It Worth Cherry-Picking Across Stores?

Buying each item at whichever store has it cheapest drops the basket to $56.96. That's $4.32 cheaper than buying everything at Aldi, which is already the best single store.

Honestly? Probably not worth the extra trip. You'd save $4.32 by visiting two or three different stores. Fuel, time, and the friction of a second trolley run usually eat that saving pretty quickly, especially in the school term when Tuesday evenings are already chaos.

The cherry-pick does make sense for a handful of things if you're already going past a Coles: grab your garlic and diced tomatoes there while you're doing the Aldi run for the meat and pantry staples. That's the version of cherry-picking that actually pays off, not a dedicated second shop, just a minor detour.

Who Should Shop Where

Families who live near an Aldi: Do your main shop there. This basket demonstrates why Aldi consistently comes out on top for family-sized quantities of everyday staples. CHOICE has also found Aldi's home-brand basket to be the cheapest among the four major chains, and this week's prices back that up.

Families without a nearby Aldi: Woolies at $72.10 nudges out Coles at $73.58. The gap is $1.48 this week, which is close enough that loyalty points or an existing Everyday Rewards balance could tip it back the other way. Shop where you already earn rewards.

IGA shoppers: One item from this basket wasn't available at IGA, and the total of $67.43 for the rest lands between Aldi and the big two. If IGA is your local and you're not near the others, that's a reasonable outcome for 12 out of 13 items. Just source your missing item elsewhere.

Chicken breast (1 kg) is worth calling out separately: it's actually cheapest at Woolies at $4.20, not Aldi. If you're a Woolies shopper anyway, that's a small win to hold onto.

The $12.30 you save by doing a full Aldi shop instead of Coles pays for nearly two packs of penne, a jar of pasta sauce, and still leaves change. That's a decent return for just switching where you park the car.