Mid-Week Dinners: Save $13 Choosing the Right Store

Feeding a family on weeknights without blowing the budget is one of the most-searched grocery questions in Australia right now. This basket covers a week of mid-week dinners, bolognese, stir-fry, pasta, a simple rice dish, using 13 staple items you'd normally grab in one trolley run. We priced everything at Coles, Woolies, Aldi and IGA to see exactly where your money goes furthest.

What the basket costs at each store

The spread is wider than you might expect.

Aldi comes in cheapest at $69.00, but one item isn't available there, so that's an incomplete basket. Coles fills the full basket for $70.04, making it the best single-store option if you want everything in one stop. Woolies prices the same basket at $82.43, and IGA lands at $87.97 (also missing one item).

The gap between Coles and Woolies alone is $12.39 for the same 13 items. Over a year, that's more than $640 just on mid-week dinner staples.

Cherry-picking the cheapest price for each item across all four stores brings the total down to $58.60, a saving of $11.44 compared to shopping everything at Coles.

Where the biggest savings are hiding

A few items drive most of the price gap, so it's worth knowing where to find them.

Chicken breast (1 kg) is the most striking line item. Woolies has it this week for $3.15, that's unusually cheap, and it's the lowest price across all four stores by a solid margin. If you're doing a hybrid shop, this is the one that pulls you toward Woolies.

Beef mince (1 kg) goes the other way. Aldi stocks it for $7.99, which is the lowest in the basket. Mince is the workhorse of mid-week cooking, bolognese, tacos, cottage pie, so a good price here matters.

Olive oil (500 ml) is another one to watch. Aldi's $7.99 price is meaningfully lower than what you'll find at Woolies or IGA. It's not a weekly buy, but if yours is running low, Aldi is where you top up.

Penne (500 g, x2) at Aldi is $0.89 a pack, and pasta sauce comes in at $1.65. Both pantry staples, both cheapest at Aldi. These aren't dramatic differences individually, but they add up across a full shop.

Where prices are basically the same

Not every item is worth hunting across stores.

Brown onions (1 kg) are $2.50 at Coles, the cheapest in the basket, but the difference between stores on this one is small enough that it shouldn't change your route. Same story with zucchini (500 g) at $0.98 at Coles.

Garlic (3 pack) and cup mushrooms (500 g) also show fairly tight pricing. Woolies edges it on both, $1.88 for garlic, $2.50 for mushrooms, but if you're already at Coles for the bulk of your shop, you won't save enough switching stores to justify the extra trip.

Jasmine rice (1 kg) at $2.99 from Aldi and soy sauce (250 ml) at $1.79 from Aldi are both good prices, but again, the gaps aren't dramatic on these lines.

The honest summary: about half the basket is genuinely competitive across stores, and half has a clear winner.

Is cherry-picking worth the extra trip?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Here it depends on your situation.

The theoretical saving from cherry-picking vs buying everything at Coles is $11.44. If you're already near an Aldi and a Woolies on the way home, that's a real saving for about 10 minutes of extra effort. But if visiting two stores means extra fuel, parking, and an extra 30-minute round trip, the maths gets murky fast.

The more practical play for most families: shop Aldi for the pantry-heavy items (penne, pasta sauce, rice, olive oil, mince) and grab perishables wherever is convenient. Aldi's pantry prices are consistently strong, and those items don't require the same freshness judgement you'd apply to produce.

If you're a one-stop-shop person, and there's nothing wrong with that, Coles at $70.04 gives you the full basket at a price that beats Woolies by more than $12. That's not a small difference.

Who should shop where

Families on a tight budget who live near an Aldi: Do the bulk of this basket at Aldi, mince, penne, pasta sauce, rice, olive oil, carrots, soy sauce. Pick up chicken breast at Woolies if you're passing one. You'll land close to the $58.60 cherry-pick total without much extra effort.

Families who value convenience above all: Coles is your store this week. It's the cheapest complete basket by $12-plus over Woolies, and the product range is strong across every category in this list.

Woolies loyalists: You're overpaying by about $12 on this basket compared to Coles. The chicken breast deal is genuinely good, but it doesn't close the gap on its own. Worth knowing.

IGA shoppers: IGA works when it's the only store nearby, but the premium on this basket, nearly $18 more than Aldi, nearly $6 more than Woolies, is hard to justify purely on convenience. If there's a Coles or Aldi within a reasonable distance, the trip pays for itself quickly.

One practical tip for any household: diced tomatoes (400 g x2) are on the cheapest list at Coles for $0.95 a tin. Stock up. Canned tomatoes are a long-shelf-life item and the backbone of half the dishes in this basket, bolognese, pasta sauce base, slow-cook additions. Buying a few extra when Coles has them cheap is rarely a bad call.