Pantry Staples Basket: Save $7.55 Cherry-Picking Stores

Grocery bills keep creeping up. A July 2025 Canstar Blue survey found the average Australian household now spends $178 a week on groceries, up 6% on last year. That's real money. So when you're stocking the pantry with the basics, flour, rice, pasta, canned goods, oil, coffee, knowing which store to walk into first actually matters.

We priced 13 pantry staples at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA this week. Here's what we found.

What Does This Pantry Basket Actually Cost?

Buy everything at a single store and the numbers look like this:

• Aldi: $47.70
• IGA: $56.90 (one item unavailable)
• Woolworths: $120.50
• Coles: $460.05

That Coles number looks alarming, and it is. A handful of items in this basket are sitting at full price or high-ticket variants at Coles this week, which blows out the total. Aldi is the clear winner on a straight single-store shop, coming in $9.20 cheaper than IGA and a long way ahead of the big two.

Cherry-pick the cheapest item at each store, and you get the basket down to $40.15, saving $7.55 compared to doing it all at Aldi.

Where Aldi Runs Away With It

Several items in this basket are genuinely cheap at Aldi, and they're the kinds of things you buy in quantity.

Pasta is the standout. Both penne and spaghetti (500 g each, two packs of each) come in at $0.89 per pack at Aldi. That's among the cheapest dry pasta you'll find anywhere in Australia right now. The quality is fine. It cooks like pasta. Don't overthink it.

Tea bags (100-pack) are $1.75 at Aldi. Instant coffee (150 g) is $3.25. If you're a household that gets through a lot of both, buying these at Aldi rather than Coles or Woolies is an easy, painless saving over a year.

Tuna in springwater (425 g) is $3.29 at Aldi, and baked beans (400 g) are $1.09 each. Both are solid pantry proteins, both regularly eaten in Australian households, and both noticeably cheaper at Aldi than their branded equivalents at the majors.

Plain flour (1 kg) and olive oil (500 ml, $7.99) also sit cheapest at Aldi. Olive oil in particular can vary wildly between stores, so $7.99 is a decent price right now.

Where Coles and Woolies Hold Their Own

Not everything is a blowout at the big two. A few items in this basket sit cheapest elsewhere.

Long grain rice (1 kg) is $1.80 at Coles, which is actually the cheapest in the basket for that item. Same with table salt (1 kg, $2.00 at Coles) and diced tomatoes (400 g, $0.95 at Coles). For canned tomatoes especially, $0.95 a can is genuinely competitive, you'd use three cans in a bolognese without thinking twice, so the difference adds up.

Vegetable oil (750 ml) is also $4.00 at Coles, which beats Aldi on that item.

White sugar (1 kg) comes in cheapest at IGA at $1.80. It's a small win for IGA, but it's there.

So the cherry-pick case exists, even if it's not dramatic.

Is the Cherry-Pick Worth an Extra Trip?

Honest answer: probably not for most people.

The cherry-pick saves you $7.55 off the Aldi price. That's not nothing. But it means shopping at multiple stores, which costs time, fuel, and mental energy. If you're already driving past an Aldi and a Coles on your regular route, grabbing rice and canned tomatoes from Coles while you do the main shop at Aldi is low-effort and worth doing.

If you'd need to make a dedicated extra trip, park, shop, pack, drive, the $7.55 probably isn't worth it. A Canstar Blue survey found Australians are already spending more time and effort trying to manage grocery costs, and there's a real fatigue to constant store-hopping.

The smarter approach is to identify the two or three items where the savings are consistent week-to-week and fold them into a trip you're already making. For this basket, that means buying pasta, coffee, tea, and olive oil at Aldi whenever you're there, and not stressing about the rest.

Who Should Shop Where

Aldi-first households, budget-focused families, students, retirees on a fixed income, get the best overall result here. Aldi's private-label pantry staples are reliable. The flour, pasta, and coffee especially have been consistent performers in price comparisons over the past few years.

Coles and Woolies regulars who don't want to change their routine can close the gap somewhat by buying rice, canned tomatoes, salt, and vegetable oil on their existing shop. These four items sit cheapest at Coles in this basket and aren't worth a separate trip, but they're worth grabbing at Coles if you're going anyway.

IGA shoppers in areas without an Aldi nearby get a reasonable result here, especially if they grab white sugar and check what's currently on special. The $56.90 total (with one item unavailable) isn't far off Aldi's $47.70 once you factor in the missing item.

Households that bake regularly should note that plain flour is $2.39 at Aldi. It's a minor saving per bag, but if you're baking bread, cakes, or pizza dough through the week, buying four bags at Aldi instead of the branded equivalent elsewhere adds up quickly.

The pantry basket is where Aldi's model makes the most sense. These are low-differentiation products, salt is salt, dry pasta is dry pasta, and paying a brand premium on staples you'll never notice in a finished meal is the one grocery habit most worth breaking.