Want to save 41% on your weekly purchase?

You will not believe it, but an average family can save almost 10,000 shekels a year - and if we become smart, the way will lead the big manufacturers to realize that the Israeli consumer has stopped being a sucker.

This week we tested a basket with expensive brands versus an identical basket with cheaper brands.

The results are amazing, all the prices inside

Dr. Hezi Gur Mizrahi

13/01/2022

Thursday, 13 January 2022, 11:57 Updated: 15:14

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In 2013, Yair Lapid, the current deputy prime minister and then finance minister, approved the "law to promote competition and reduce centralization."

In the same term in 2014, Yair Lapid also approved the "Food Law" and as it is called the "Law to Encourage Competition in the Food Industry", its goal as its name implies, is to encourage competition and lower the cost of living.

A regulation was made in the law of who is a retailer and who is a large retailer as well as who is a large supplier - and in the same breath were written what are the duties, rights and prohibitions in each business class, all in order to provide a platform for small and medium businesses in the market. Prices in real time to the website of the Ministry of Economy.

The idea and initiative are welcome, but like many laws and reforms they are stuck in the middle: what worked wonderfully in the cellular market, a failure in the food market.

The small manufacturers and medium-sized suppliers did not get the opportunity they expected and of course we, the consumers, do not really enjoy the reduction in the cost of living in Israel.

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Expensive brand basket versus basket with alternative brands (Photo: Daniel Malakhovsky)

In recent months we have been living around consumer events like price increases, suspicions of price coordination and more.

And now, despite the big noise, prices continue to skyrocket, the companies that dominate the consumer goods market are taking advantage of the momentum and submitting new price lists to the marketing chains.

Expensive vs. Cheap, Barn Products (Photo: Daniel Malakhovsky)

Very quickly even the smaller ones will not want to lose momentum - and prices will rise, if not now, then towards Passover - the holiday in honor of which many manufacturers release kosher products for Passover, and it is easy to confuse consumers who will lose the ability to compare to the previous price. To the chametz shelves - and we will all wake up to a much more expensive consumer reality.

Expensive vs. cheap, more from barn products (Photo: Daniel Malakhovsky)

It is important to emphasize that an average price increase of 5% may not sound particularly high, but it is equivalent to an average of NIS 120 per month, which is NIS 1,440 per year - a significant amount, about the cost of a family cellular bill per year.

If we detected an increase, say, in the price of pasta from NIS 5.50 to NIS 5.80, this is not what will make us abandon the cart in the supermarket, but we will slowly feel the cumulative damage in credit charges.

Another variety of products that can be saved by choosing competitors (Photo: Daniel Malakhovsky)

But it turns out that if we act wisely in shopping, and apply consumer logic that we, the Israelis, lack a little, we can save not only the minimum increases we expect but hold tight!) Up to 9,000 shekels a year on our consumer products - without protests and without boycotts, The big ones fight for every cart and cart.

Baking, cleaning and preservation: Here too we found gaps between the expensive and cheap brands (Photo: Daniel Malakhovsky)

To achieve this result, we will need our partners - the retailers, whom we will have to move from the side of the big manufacturers to our side. Today the balance of terror works in favor of the big manufacturers - retailers are afraid to open a front against them. So, just for the sake of the undecided retailer, the following story is presented, just before we move on to our price survey, which this time is meant to make our purchase more affordable by opting for alternative outlets.

The protagonist of the story is a brave family in the retail world, who changed the rules of the game and in a big way: in 1961 the Albrecht family from Germany opened their first supermarket, in 1976 they established the first branch in the US and captured the American dream, today it has more than 2,000 branches 36 countries and rolls in more than $ 121 billion a year.

This network is called ALDI and what is special about it?

That the Albrecht family started from a small shop and sold at cheaper prices than those presented by the large and old shops.

The big manufacturers piled difficulties on it, began to restrict sales, questioned its power - and tried to get it to follow market rules or not sell goods to it.

The Albrecht family was not alarmed.

If the big manufacturers threaten it, it will cooperate with the small ones:

they built a line of alternative products with small producers and slowly also taught the consumers that you really do not have to have "Heinz" written on your mayonnaise (or "barn" ketchup, in Israel) to Put in a sandwich.

More than 60 years later, they are still operating and succeeding.

A store of the "Aldi" chain (originally from Germany).

Will there be an "Israeli Aldi" for us? (Photo: ShutterStock)

Needed: A retailer who does not hold an account to the expensive manufacturers and importers

Will there be the "Albrecht" in Israel who will sweep away his colleagues and choose, in the war on the cost of living, on our side and not on the side of the big manufacturers like Osem and Snow?

Until such a factor is found, we checked a shopping basket (without vegetables and fruits and fresh products) and found insane gaps, no other word: the exact same basket - once with branded products that are considered expensive - and in front of it a basket with products from less prestigious manufacturers, although many In the same way: NIS 476.7 for the expensive basket compared to NIS 280.1 for the cheap basket, that is - even if you are addicted to Bamba of Osem for Wissotzky's tea and Snow Jewel, is it not worth trying a replacement brand at such price differences?

• Of money

• consumption

Tags

• Snow

• barn

• Carmel Wineries

• yield

• Wilifood

• Cost of living