Best Supermarkets In Australia- Brands, Comparison, Insights & Ratings

Supermarkets are fighting with each other to give best to their customers. Have a small peek to the rating and insights of Australian supermarkets. See who won best supermarket 2022 title and which supermarket get the biggest share of the industry.

Revounts Staff
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Revounts Staff
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Published On: May 2, 2023

Best Supermarkets In Australia- Brands, Comparison, Insights & Ratings

Australia is the 6th largest nation in the world. It's not much densely populated, but it has been the former foundation of many iconic brands.

Whether these are supermarkets, clothing, industry, or any other, these brands are well known worldwide. 

Though these brands have eased off countless shoppers' shopping experiences, yet too many brands have also confused many consumers.

When we talk about grocery shopping, Australia has some of the top leading supermarket brands in demand.

So do you want to savvy Australia's supermarkets and want to be aware of which supermarket is best in terms of shopping? Which supermarket provides the best money-value, customer supports, the best range of products, and more? 

You're at the right place.

We've assembled everything that will enhance and add up to your knowledge. 

Plus, it will also help you in making the right choice for grocery shopping. 

So without delaying more. Let's delve into this guide. 

Top Leading Supermarkets In Australia

There are a number of popular supermarkets in Australia. But just a few of the top supermarket stores are leading right now. Want to know which ones are these? Scroll down.

Woolworths

Woolworths

Woolworth is the largest and best supermarket in Australia. It was named after the founder Winfield Woolworths and got established in 1924. Woolworths has more than 900 branches and 19 convenience stores across Australia. 


Coles

Coles

It is the second-largest superstore in Australia. It was established in 1914 by George James Coles and also named after him. Coles has more than 800 supermarket franchises and 650+ Coles express locations.


IGA

IGA 

IGA is an independently owned best supermarket. It was also established in 1924 in the US and expanded to Australia in 1988. On the other hand, IGA operates under the name Foodland in South Australia. 


ALDI

ALDI

ALDI was founded in Germany in 1946 by Karl and Theo Albrecht. The store started its operation in Sydney in 2001. It is considered as the cheapest supermarket in Australia. 

Furthermore, a few more Australian supermarkets are doing great in providing services and goods.

The other popular Australian stores include; 

  • Harris Farm Markets
  • Drake
  • FoodWorks
  • Friendly Grocer. 

In concise to this, other small online shopping grocery stores such as Foodland and IGA are also evolving significantly and are getting ready to give a hard time to the big ones.

Comparison Between Leading Supermarkets

To make it easy for you, we've created a short comparison between different supermarkets. 

As we all know the Woolworths won the Canstar Blue consumer choice award and also the Mozo customer choice award for consecutively two years (2019 and 2020). 

This year Foodland become the best supermarket in 2022, according to a survey by Choice. 

While Woolworths and Coles got increasing points for their range of products and opening time, on the other hand, Aldi appeared as the best money value giver. 

Besides all of these, Coles and Woolworths are amongst the biggest supermarkets. They cover a large percentage of the shares of supermarkets. 

Woolworths vs Coles

Let’s see by comparing these two which is more beneficial for the consumers. 

According To The Choice Consumer Survey 

This survey was taken by Choice. The participants were Australian supermarket shoppers. They were asked about different aspects of shopping at Woolworths and Coles, and here's what the results uncover

Specifications 

Woolworths

Coles

Product range73%
69%
Specialty & discount availability or amount
70%
66%
Ease of search/ finding wanted items
68%
64%
Easiness in online shopping
73%
69%
Easy checkout and payment
80%
76%
Unit price clarity
74%
69%
Packaging and amount of bags
63%
56%
Level of product details
66%
56%

Level of product details

74%
64%
These are the overall customer response to Choice survey.


Beyond this there are also other things that were asked to the shoppers.

Supermarket Brands

Customer’s Favorite

Improvement 2019 VS 2022

Covid Safety 

Woolworths
71%
71%
67%
Coles
69%
69%
66%
Friendly Grocer
67%
67%
54%
FoodWorks
72%
72%
62%
Foodland
82%
76%
76%

Which Is Cheaper Coles Or Woolworths?

Customers always want to grab the best price, and therefore they usually opt for the best deals supermarket. If they get the same thing with less price on other supermarkets, it’s obvious that they will go for it without thinking much.

The question that consistently triggers customer’s mind, “is Coles cheaper than Woolworths"? 

Let us guide you, the grocery prices of both stores have a very minimum or no difference. Most of the time, customers use grocery coupons to save money that helps them in the cheapest online grocery shopping. But in-store shopping prices matter the most. 

Products

Woolworths

Coles

Olive Groove Margarine lite spread tub (500g)
$3.50
$3.60
Kiwi fruit
$0.71 each
$0.60 each 
Ferrero Rocher 30 Pack
$20.00
$20.00
Mountain Dew 375ml cans (24)
$16.50
$24.55
Chicken breast fillet per kilogram
$8.00
$14.00

Well here's a little shock for you because ALDI beats Coles and Woolworths. ALDI supermarket gives the best price, if compared to biggest supermarkets of Australia (Coles and Woolworths).

Which Store Does Best Online Grocery Delivery?

All superstores aim at delivering the cheapest grocery at the doorsteps. Woolworths Australia and Coles both are known for its delivery services. Let’s see which store has best delivery system.

Supermarket Brands

First Time Delivery

For Further Deliveries

Delivery Specials 

Woolworths
Free on more than $100
$3 to $19 according to windows. Free over $300
Delivery unlimited 
Coles
Free on at least $100
$4 to $20 according to windows
Flexi-free delivery 

The unlimited delivery by Woolworths gives you a 30-day free trial. Customers can get free delivery on spending $100 for all next day, one-hour and three-hour same-day windows. 

However with Flexi-free delivery by Coles, the customer can get free delivery on all orders of $150 or more. To be eligible for this service, the customers have to choose an eight-hour delivery window. 

The customer can also get free delivery on spending $50 or more by signing up at flybuys Max. 

With these comparisons, we foundWoolworths having the most affordable grocery delivery system.  

The other Australia best supermarkets are also doing their best to grab the attention of the customers and did an excellent job in the past years. Foodland, Harris Farm Markets, Drakes greatly impacted customers as the best grocery stores in 2022.  Let’s see their delivery charges.

Supermarket Brands

Delivery Charges

Drakes$10 for below $200 bill, and free on order over $200
Harris Farm MarketsSave $5 on orders over 120
ALDI$5.99 and free for express membership holder


Ratings 

Rating helps consumers in choosing the right supermarkets for shopping. There are several websites available from where the customers can find ratings that are surveyed by shoppers. 

Canstar Blue

As we've mentioned above that Canstar Blue considered Woolworths best supermarket Australia and gave the customer choice award to the store. The recent rating of the site shows the below results. 

Given below are the Canstar reviews for Woolworths, Foodland, ALDI, Coles, and IGA. The stores are compared on the basis of their product quality, variety, freshness, special deals, customer services, value for money, and customer satisfaction.

Specifications

ALDI

Foodland

Woolworths

Coles

IGA

Overall satisfaction
54333
Money value
54443
Freshness of foods
55334
Presentation of store/ layout
54443
Customer service/ staff accessibility
35334
Deals and special availabe
54443
Product variety
35443
Quality of private level products
53443

These are the stars ratings the store gets from 5 stars. And the statistics are from the year 2020.

Mozo - Expert Comparisons & Reviews

Mozo is not a rating website. But it surveys the Australian citizen and then announces the winner of different categories. If you want to learn more, then this year's report is available on the Mozo website with the total results. Here's a quick insight for all our readers:

  • ALDI won the award for in-store outstanding customer satisfaction, freshness, value for money, most recommended, and store environment. 
  • Woolworths won the category of the best range of products. Because it has a comprehensive range of products featuring at the store.
  • IGA won the staff friendliness award. 
  • Woolworths won the second award of outstanding online customer satisfaction, range of products, freshness, online shopping experience, click and collect delivery service, and most recommended. 

All the awards are totally based on Australian citizen's votes.

Choice - Australia's Leading Consumer Advocacy Group

We've already talked about the choice before in the blog to compare the supermarkets. Again a quick look at which is the best supermarket according to the citizens, surveyed by Choice. The report was updated in May 2022.

  • Foodland tops the list with an 82% choice score.
  • Drake supermarket chain is the runner-up with a 79% choice score.
  • Harris Farm Markets supermarkets chain is in the third position with a 78% choice score. 
  • ALDI and Costco supermarket chain holds the fourth position with a 75% choice score. 
  • IGA/ Supa IGA supermarket chain is in fifth place with a 74% choice score. 
  • FoodWorks holds a sixth place with a 72% choice score. 
  • Woolworths supermarket chain is at seven with a 71% choice score. 
  • Coles supermarket chain is surviving at eighth place with the overall 69% choice score.
  • The friendly Grocer supermarket chain is last on the list with a 67% choice score. 

An Overview Of Australian Supermarkets Insights

The year 2020 was a competitive year for the Australian supermarkets. There was massive competition because of the increasing cost, brand repositioning, emerging global challenges, etc. Here's an insight that you might want to look at: 

Market Shares

Woolworths group is leading the chart with a percentage of 37.5 of the total good grocery market as per market shares. Coles is in second place with 29.6% shares followed by ALDI 9.9% and Metcash 7.3%, and other superstores have 15.7% of shares in the market. 

insights

It is noticeable that the shares of the two largest supermarkets (Woolworths and Coles) dropped due to the growth of ALDI.  It is expected that in future years, ALDI growth will increase more. 

Furthermore, over the past 5 years, the industry was highly affected by the growth of the food delivery service and meal-kit delivery service platforms such as UberEats HelloFresh, Marley Spoon, etc. 

Keep The Customers

The "keep the customers" competition is going on harshly between supermarkets. They want to sustain their customers. And for this, they are now giving value to money. 

In the following year, more value offers, prepositions, and convenience offers can be seen. The superstore will give more attention to loyalty programs and promotions.  

Private Labels

Woolworths and Coles are more towards expanding their private label, up to 40% in some cases. The trend of these private labels allows the citizens of Australia to enjoy luxurious products with minimum money. 

Online Presence

All superstore keeps their focus on being the best online supermarket. A 32% online sales growth of Woolworths and Coles (combined) was recorded for the year 2020. Both superstores investing heavily to improve online operations. 

Metcash also started the online services in 2020 as IGA shop online as Covid response. But they are now fully motivated to continue the process. 

Possible Prospects For Customers

With the improvements and changes in the supermarkets' store (online and in-store). The customers can avail themselves of the following benefits.

They can avail themselves of healthy meals, plant-based meals, meal kits, ready meals, private labels, premium spirits, and many more other things under single roof.

They can avail their groceries at home through online delivery. The apps make it so much easier to shop with just some clicks. 

Easy to shop with too many value offers and rewards and cashback.

The future of online grocery shopping is seen to be much brighter. 


Why Customer Switch Supermarkets? 

There can be the certain reason that the customer switch to a different superstore. Some of the reasons can be:

  • To save money. Customers may switch to other superstores because of the range in pricing. Maybe there is a good discount going on in another supermarket. Or deals, offers, and rewards can be other reasons. 
  • Convenience. The location of the store is also important. Maybe the newly build supermarket is more near to the customers’ house so that they switched to this one. Or maybe the other supermarket has a larger parking lot, parking becomes easy. Anything can be a reason.
  • The quality of the products. People switch to a different store if they did not find the quality of the product good enough. 
  • Or the items the customers trying to search like Best shampoo and conditioner Australia and want to buy but they`re sold out. And they went to another supermarket and got it there. Now they will always go to the other one.   

Wrap Up

The supermarkets are working immensely hard in providing the best experience to the customer. They are probably working on the in-store environment because of the Covid condition. 

The online presence is also being improved for easy use. The best supermarket now wants to gain new customers as well as sustained the previous one. 

Although if we go thoroughly through the comparison, ratings, and insights. Then the supermarkets like Woolworths, Foodland, Harris Farm Markets, Coles, IGA, ALDI are doing great. 

They are constantly working and have command over each other in terms of money value, product range, customer service, etc. 

We hope that this will help you to choose your next shopping spot with ease. 

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