15-Minute Weeknight Dinners: $19 Cheaper at Aldi

Woolies came in at $62.25. Coles at $59.85. Aldi, missing just one item, landed at $40.66. That's a $19.19 gap between Aldi and Woolies on a basket built entirely around quick weeknight dinners: pre-marinated proteins, microwave rice, jarred sauces, frozen pizza for the night nobody wants to cook.

IGA sits at $57.88 with the same one item missing, which puts it $17.22 under Woolies but still $17.22 above Aldi. Not the hero here.

If you cherry-pick, buying each product at whichever store has it cheapest, you'd pay $47.69. That's $12.16 less than Coles, the best full-basket result among the majors, and $14.56 less than Woolies.

What the basket costs at each store

Both Coles and Woolies carry everything. Aldi and IGA each miss one item, so neither gives you a full shop on its own.

Where Aldi pulls away, the biggest price gaps

The clearest wins at Aldi are on pantry staples and frozen goods, which is pretty much what you'd expect.

Penne (500 g) is $0.89 at Aldi. Coles and Woolies charge noticeably more. It's pasta, there's no meaningful quality difference for a mid-week bake.

Pasta sauce (500 g, x2) comes to $1.59 per jar at Aldi. That's the kind of price that makes you do a double-take. Both Coles and Woolies private-label versions cost more than that, and the Aldi jar does the same job.

Stir-fry sauce (275 ml) is $1.79 at Aldi. Salad dressing (350 ml) is also $1.79. These condiments are invisible line items until you add them up, and across four or five jars a week, Aldi's pricing is meaningfully lower.

Chicken thigh (1 kg) is $5.84 at Aldi. That's your protein for at least two of the five weeknight dinners in this basket, and it's comfortably the cheapest across all four stores.

Frozen pizza (500 g) at $1.99 from Aldi. That's Friday sorted.

Where prices are basically the same

Microwave rice (250 g, x4) is cheapest at Coles for $1.65. Woolies and Aldi come close, so this one barely moves the needle either way. Buy it wherever you're shopping.

Stir-fry vegetable mix (500 g, x2) is cheapest at Woolies at $3.00 per pack. If you're going through Woolies anyway, that's a good pick-up. But the difference across stores is small enough that you wouldn't cross town for it.

Garlic bread (1 each) is $2.09 at Aldi. Again, close enough across stores that it's not worth route-planning around.

Mixed salad (200 g) is $2.49 at Aldi, the cheapest across the four stores, but the gap to Coles and Woolies on this one won't change your week.

Is the cherry-pick worth an extra trip?

Honest answer: probably not for most households.

Cherry-picking saves you $12.16 compared to doing the whole shop at Coles. That's real money, over a year of mid-week baskets that's close to $630. But the cherry-pick across four stores is logistically brutal. You'd need Aldi for the pantry staples and proteins, Woolies for the stir-fry veg, and Coles for the rice. That's three separate shops, three separate queues, and a lot of time that a 15-minute dinner basket is specifically designed to save you.

The smarter move is a two-store approach: Aldi for the bulk of the basket (everything except the missing item), then a quick top-up at Coles or Woolies for whatever Aldi doesn't carry. That gets you close to the cherry-pick price without the logistics headache.

CHOICE's June 2025 quarterly report named Aldi the cheapest supermarket for a comparable basket of groceries, "the clear leader on value for money," to use their phrasing, and this basket confirms the same pattern. The savings aren't marginal. They're structural.

Who should shop where

If you're time-poor and want one store: Coles at $59.85 beats Woolies by $2.40 on this basket. Not a fortune, but it's the better single-store option.

If you live near an Aldi and don't mind a small top-up trip: Start at Aldi ($40.66), grab the one missing item at Coles or Woolies, and you'll spend well under $50 for five weeknight dinners. That's roughly $10 per dinner for a household of two, or less than $6 per dinner for a family of four.

If you're a retiree or a single person: The frozen pizza ($1.99), the microwave rice packs ($1.65 each), and the pre-cooked schnitzel ($7.50 at Woolies) do a lot of the heavy lifting here. None of them require much cooking or cleanup. Aldi's per-item prices on these are hard to beat.

Families with kids: The pre-cooked schnitzel ($7.50 at Woolies), garlic bread ($2.09 at Aldi), and frozen pizza ($1.99 at Aldi) are the items that buy you a peaceful dinner without anyone complaining. The stir-fry veg pack at $3.00 from Woolies sneaks vegetables in without a fight.

IGA shoppers: IGA lands at $57.88, cheaper than Woolies but not by much, and it's still missing one item. Unless Aldi and Coles aren't nearby options for you, IGA doesn't make a strong case for this basket.

The average Australian household of three now spends around $194 a week on groceries, according to Canstar Blue data. A five-dinner mid-week basket under $50 at Aldi, or under $48 with a basic two-store split, is one of the more practical ways to pull that number down without cutting out convenience entirely.

Pre-cooked schnitzel, microwave rice, and a bag of stir-fry veg. Dinner in 15 minutes, and you didn't pay Woolies prices to get there.