Shoppers miffed as Sainsbury’s tops cheapest supermarket survey

Sainsbury’s has been named the cheapest UK supermarket of 2019, but shoppers are having none of it.

Which? crunched thousands of prices across Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Tesco, Ocado and Waitrose. Its trolley of groceries contained 53 common items, from Andrex toilet tissue and Heinz baked beans to Weetabix cereal and Sure deodorant.

Sainsbury’s came out at £107.01, compared to £107.65 for Asda and £112.40 for Tesco, with Waitrose the most expensive at £117.81. The former was understandably thrilled at the news. Many shoppers, however, took to social media to berate Which? for not including two key players in its research.

“Don't be swayed folks, Lidl and Aldi still beat Sainsbury's hands down on price and that's what us consumers want,” one Twitter user wrote.

The German discounters are the fifth and seventh biggest supermarkets in the UK. But Which? said: “We collect our data by monitoring online pricing, which means that only shops that sell all of the branded items online can be considered in the ranking. As a result, we’re unable to include Aldi or Lidl, as they don’t sell groceries online and don’t stock a full range of branded products.”

Twitter users were unimpressed by that explanation. “You have got to be kidding. You need to re-evaluate your parameters. Excluding Aldi and LidlGB by manipulating the criteria just makes the whole survey farcical,” said one person.

Another wrote: “Lol. Naming Sainsbury’s the cheapest supermarket because you haven’t included Aldi and Lidl is like declaring Chris Pratt the sexiest Chris because you inexplicably decided to exclude Hemsworth and Evans.”

Sainsbury’s shrugged off the scepticism, with a spokesperson declaring: “The stats don't lie!”