Price Pulse · Weekly

Your Coffee Just Jumped 60c, but the Fry-Up Is the Real Story: Inside the Irish Trolley This Week

BasketWatch tracked every price at Aldi, Tesco, SuperValu and Dunnes from 28 May to 4 June. The shelf-price headline barely moved, yet underneath, the cost of an Irish breakfast quietly climbed while the salad bowl got cheaper.

If you reached for a sachet of Nescafe latte in Tesco this week, you may have done a double-take at the till. Overnight on 4 June, an entire line of the brand's barista-style coffees, nine of them, from Toffee Nut to Cappuccino to the Irish Latte, jumped from €3.00 to €4.80. That's a 60% hike, €1.80 a box, and not a temporary offer ending: it's a clean, new shelf price with no "was" tag attached. For a household that buys a box a week, that's the better part of €100 a year added to the same coffee.

It was the single biggest genuine price rise on a branded grocery line anywhere across the four retailers all week. And yet, zoom out, and the national picture looks eerily calm.

The calm on the surface

Across all four chains, BasketWatch crunched 383,932 individual price observations over the eight-day window. The verdict on underlying grocery prices: flat. 0.00%. Strip out promotions, and the shelf price of the average Irish grocery item didn't move a cent between the start and end of the week.

The number that did move was the price loyalty shoppers actually paid, up 0.44%, and that gap tells the real story. Prices aren't rising; the deals are simply rotating. Tesco Clubcard, SuperValu Real Rewards and Dunnes' "Only €" tickets are doing the heavy lifting, not the cost of the goods themselves.

So if the average is flat, where's the drama? In the detail. And nobody moved more prices this week than Aldi, which repriced 94 lines outright, more than Tesco (28), Dunnes (14) and SuperValu (5) combined.

The Irish breakfast got dearer

Here's the finding that should make you look twice at your Saturday-morning trolley. While Aldi's average sat still, the discounter pushed up a tightly clustered set of Irish breakfast staples, and it wasn't subtle.

• Black and white pudding: €0.55 → €0.99 (+80%)
• Irish pork sausages, 9-pack: €1.45 → €1.99 (+37%)
• Irish pork fillet: €2.99 → €3.79 (+27%)
• Smoked & unsmoked back rashers, 6-pack: €1.99 → €2.49 (+25%)

Add a few cans of Corona for the weekend (€2.90 → €3.75, +29%) and the "treat-yourself Irish fry plus a few beers" basket is the clear inflation hotspot of the week. Every one of these was a genuine shelf change, verified day by day, with no promotion expiring to explain it away. A full-Irish breakfast for the household just got a couple of euro more expensive at the cheapest of the big four.

…but the salad bowl got cheaper

The flip side, and the reason Aldi's overall average barely budged, is that the discounter took the knife to fresh produce in the very same week:

• Joya apples, 6-pack: €2.79 → €1.49 (−47%)
• Red pepper: €0.89 → €0.49 (−45%)
• Salad tomatoes, 6-pack: €1.29 → €0.79 (−39%)
• Large oranges: €1.99 → €1.29 (−35%)

It's a near-perfect seasonal swap: as the weather turns and summer salad season arrives, the fruit-and-veg aisle is where the value has landed. Fill the bottom of the trolley with produce and you're quids in; it's the meat counter that's quietly clawing it back.

Where the real deals are this week

For shoppers chasing a bargain rather than a barbecue, the standout markdowns, all checked and live as of 4 June, skew heavily toward the drinks aisle and the weekend roast.

SuperValu is running the most eye-catching grocery promotion in the country right now: Cava Jaume Serra Brut down from €26 to €12.99, a clean 50% off a bottle of fizz. It also has Reservado Rioja Reserva (6 bottles) cut from €89.99 to €50, €40 off a case, and a deep run of gin offers (Malfy varieties €38 → €23).

Tesco answers with the Sunday dinner: Irish Beef Sirloin Roast at half price, €17.50 per kg (down from €35), with a matching half-price deal on its Finest Irish round roast and pork crackling joint. Add half-price NIVEA Sun kids' sprays (€23.15 → €11.50) for the school-holiday beach run.

Dunnes leaned into the sweet tooth, deepening its Cadbury 100g sharing-bag offer, Buttons, Twirl Bites, Crunchie Rocks and the rest, down to €2.00 a bag (from a €4 regular), the best chocolate-aisle value of the week.

Basket Watch: who's actually cheapest?

We priced a basket of identical, like-for-like staples across the three chains that stock them, same pack size, same brand. The headline: on the big-name basics, there's often no point shopping around at all.

Item	Cheapest	Price	Dearest
Kerrygold Irish butter, 454g	Dunnes = SuperValu = Tesco	€4.99	, (all level)
Brennans white pan, 800g	Dunnes = SuperValu = Tesco	€2.09	, (all level)
Heinz Beanz, 415g tin	SuperValu	€1.89	€1.90
Coca-Cola Zero, 2L	Dunnes / Tesco	€3.40	,
Barry's Tea Original, 80 bags	Dunnes €3.00	€3.00	SuperValu €4.19
Lyons Tea Original, 80 bags	SuperValu €3.00	€3.00	Tesco / Dunnes €4.00

Butter and bread are priced to the cent across all three, Kerrygold is €4.99 and a Brennans pan is €2.09 wherever you go. The genuine battleground is the tea caddy. Thanks to competing offers, Dunnes has Barry's 80s at €3.00 while SuperValu charges €4.19 for the very same box, a 40% gap, yet flip to Lyons and the tables turn completely: SuperValu wins at €3.00 against €4.00 in Tesco and Dunnes. The lesson for the loyal tea drinker: your brand, not your shop, decides whether you're getting a deal this week.

The takeaway for your weekly shop

Underlying Irish grocery prices held perfectly still this week, but "still" hides a reshuffle worth real money. The smart trolley right now buys its fruit and veg at Aldi while produce is being slashed, sidesteps the quietly dearer breakfast meats and barista coffees, lets SuperValu's cava and Tesco's half-price roast carry the weekend, and checks which tea is on offer before deciding where to fill the kettle. To see where any of these lines is cheapest for your own basket, run them through our grocery price comparison tool. Flat on paper; anything but flat in the basket.