How to Save $100 a Week on Groceries in Australia

A typical Australian family of four spends $300–$400 a week on groceries. Trimming a third off that without changing what you eat is possible — and it's easier than the meal-planning advice on the internet would have you believe. The single highest-leverage change is also the simplest: stop loyalty-shopping at one supermarket. The cheapest groceries in Australia are split across Coles, Woolworths and Aldi every week, the prices move, and the retailers want you to never notice.

Below is the playbook. Six tactics, in priority order. None of them require coupons, a Costco membership, or radical changes to what your household eats.

1. Split the weekly shop across at least two retailers

The biggest single move is to stop doing the whole shop at one store. Aldi's shelf prices on staples — dairy, eggs, flour, pasta, cleaning products — are consistently the lowest of the three Australian majors. Coles and Woolworths beat Aldi every week, but only on items they're running at half-price, and only on brands Aldi doesn't carry. The savings live in the gap between those two facts.

The simplest version of the split: do the bulk shop at Aldi for the things you buy every week (the pantry staples, household basics, fresh produce) and top up the half-price specials at Coles or Woolworths. Most households save $60–$120 a week compared to single-store loyalty. And because Aldi, the big two and a greengrocer usually cluster in or around the same shopping centre, that's one extra stop on the same trip — about twenty minutes — not a second drive.

2. Plan the week around this week's half-price specials

Every Wednesday morning AEST, Coles and Woolworths publish a fresh weekly catalogue. A chunk of the range hits half price — usually pantry staples, frozen items, meat, household goods. Aldi runs Super Savers on the same Wednesday cadence and adds Special Buys on Saturdays. If you open the Coles, Woolworths and Aldi pages on GroceryWise side-by-side and build the shopping list from the half-price specials you actually use, the list mostly writes itself.

A grocery bill calculator on the fridge isn't a bad idea but isn't the point — the point is to anchor the week's shopping list on what's on special rather than what you habitually buy. Two or three swaps a week — pork mince instead of beef because pork is half price, basmati instead of jasmine because basmati is in the Aldi catalogue — adds up fast.

3. Treat the catalogue as your meal planner

The conventional advice — plan meals first, then shop for those meals — is backwards if saving money is the goal. The faster approach: open the weekly catalogue, identify three or four half-price proteins and produce items, then build the week's dinners around those.

A good budget meal planner for Australia is anchored on the Wednesday catalogue, not on a fixed weekly rotation. The same chicken stir-fry is a $15-difference per cook depending on whether the chicken is half-price or full-price. Multiply by seven dinners a week and the gap is real.

4. Pay attention to Aldi's Special Buys cadence

Aldi's Special Buys are different from their weekly Super Savers. They drop twice a week — Wednesday and Saturday — and the good stuff is gone by the following weekend. GroceryWise refreshes Aldi twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday mornings AEST) so the Aldi page is always current. If the household needs anything beyond the standard Aldi range — small appliances, seasonal goods, occasional grocery brands that cycle in and out — checking on a Wednesday or Saturday morning is the difference between getting it half-price and missing the window entirely.

5. Buy fresh fruit and veg at the local greengrocer

The one category where none of the big chains is reliably the cheapest is fresh produce — and the cheapest option often isn't a supermarket at all. A local fruit-and-veg shop buys seasonal produce at the market and turns it over fast, and on a full produce shop the gap against Coles or Woolworths is bigger than most people expect.

Here's a real like-for-like comparison from May 2026 — the same fruit and veg, in the same quantities, priced at a local greengrocer and at Coles:

Same basket: $36.19 at the greengrocer against $56.99 at Coles — $20.80, or about a third, cheaper, for a family of two. The savings aren't even across the board: the cup mushrooms were actually cheaper at Coles and the capsicums were line-ball. But the staples a household buys by the kilo every week were a fraction of the supermarket price — tomatoes at $0.99/kg against the equivalent of roughly $5/kg, plus carrots and zucchini well under half. The bigger the family and the bigger the produce shop, the wider that gap gets.

Greengrocers don't publish a weekly catalogue, so this is the one tactic GroceryWise can't scan for you — but it's worth a standing weekly stop for the fresh produce, with the supermarkets kept for everything else.

6. Buy vitamins, baby and personal care at Chemist Warehouse

Not everything in the trolley is food. Vitamins, baby formula and nappies, toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant and other personal-care staples are things most households buy on the same weekly shop — and they're usually cheaper at Chemist Warehousethan at the supermarket. Its catalogue routinely runs these lines at half price or better, so the same move that works for groceries works here: buy the health and household-care items where they're on special. A $40 vitamin at full price in the supermarket aisle is often $20 on the Chemist Warehouse catalogue the same week.

The split-shop comparison at a glance

Where each retailer typically wins on a normal week. Verify on each retailer's own page before you shop — this is a directional guide, not a guarantee:

What this looks like in a single week

A worked example for a household of four spending $350 a week:

• Wednesday morning: Open GroceryWise, scan the half-price specials at Coles, Woolworths and Aldi. Pick three proteins on special (say, pork mince, chicken thighs and a family pack of sausages).
• Build dinners around them:San choy bao with the pork; chicken stir-fry; sausages with mash and veg. Three half-price proteins anchor three of the week's seven dinners.
• Bulk shop at Aldi: milk, eggs, flour, pasta, rice, oil, household cleaners, the standard pantry restock.
• Fresh produce at the greengrocer:the week's fruit and veg, where the same basket runs about a third less than the supermarket.
• Top-up at the big two: the half-price proteins, plus any brand-name groceries the family specifically asks for that are on special.
• Total saved:on a typical week, the same basket runs $250–$280 instead of $350. That's the $100.

Frequently asked questions

• How much can an average Australian family realistically save?

  Households that switch from single-store loyalty to splitting the shop between Aldi and one of the big two typically report $60–$120 a week in savings on a $300–$400 baseline grocery bill. The $100/week figure is achievable for a family of four cooking most meals at home, without changing what they actually eat.

• Is Aldi actually cheaper than Coles and Woolworths?

  On everyday pantry staples, dairy, eggs, and household basics, Aldi's shelf prices are consistently the lowest of the three. Coles and Woolworths beat Aldi when their weekly half-price specials hit a brand or category Aldi doesn't carry — which is the whole reason a split shop works.

• When do the weekly grocery catalogues refresh?

  Coles and Woolworths refresh their weekly catalogues every Wednesday morning AEST. Aldi runs the same Wednesday cadence for Super Savers, plus a second Special Buys drop on Saturdays. Plan your shopping list on Wednesday morning to capture the full week of half-price specials.

• Isn't splitting the shop across stores a waste of time and petrol?

  The real cost is extra driving, not extra stores — and in most Australian suburbs you don't have to drive between them. Aldi, Coles or Woolworths, a greengrocer and often a Chemist Warehouse are usually clustered in or around the same shopping centre, so a split shop is one trip with a few extra minutes on foot, not a separate drive for each store. Where the stores genuinely are spread out, keep it simple: do the bulk shop and the half-price top-up at whichever centre has the most of them under one roof, and only make a special trip when the saving clearly beats the fuel.

• Do half-price specials apply online and in-store?

  For Coles and Woolworths, weekly catalogue prices generally apply both in-store and to their online shop. For Aldi, the specials apply in-store only and to Aldi Special Buys; Aldi doesn't run a general online grocery service in Australia, so there's no online checkout to apply them to.

• Are local greengrocers cheaper than the supermarkets for fruit and veg?

  Usually, and by more than people expect. In a May 2026 like-for-like comparison, the same fruit-and-veg basket cost $36.19 at a local greengrocer versus $56.99 at Coles — $20.80, or about a third, less. Greengrocers buy seasonal produce at the market and turn it over quickly, so staples bought by the kilo (tomatoes, carrots, zucchini) are often a fraction of the supermarket price. The savings aren't uniform — some lines are line-ball, and the occasional item is cheaper at the supermarket — but on a full weekly produce shop the greengrocer typically wins, and the gap widens with the size of the basket.

• Where does Chemist Warehouse fit into a grocery budget?

  For the non-food items on a weekly shop — vitamins, baby formula and nappies, toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant and other personal-care staples — Chemist Warehouse's catalogue is usually cheaper than the supermarket, often at half price. Treat it as a fourth stop for health and household-care items rather than groceries: buy those lines where they're on special, the same way you split the grocery shop.

• What's the single biggest mistake people make?

  Building the shopping list from a meal plan and then shopping for those ingredients regardless of price. The faster way is the inverse: open this week's catalogue first, see what's half price, and let the specials shape two or three meals for the week. The same dinner with chicken-on-special versus chicken-at-full-price can be a $15 difference for a family.

Get the weekly best buys without doing the scanning yourself

The whole playbook above runs on knowing what's on special this week. If reading a catalogue every Wednesday isn't your idea of a Wednesday, we send the biggest half-price deals at Coles, Woolworths and Aldi straight to your inbox every Wednesday morning AEST. Free, unsubscribe anytime.

Or browse this week's catalogues directly: Coles specials, Woolworths specials, Aldi specials and Chemist Warehouse specials.