The Not-So-Supermarkets

We all have a vague sense that groceries are really expensive. If you’ve been around long enough you might even be thinking ‘it never used to be this way’. But are we really being charged too much? According to the Commerce Commission the answer may well be yes. For the last 12 months they’ve been conducting a market study into the grocery sector. They recently published their draft report, and its findings are pretty damning for the two big supermarket chains. Simply put, they believe a lack of competition in the sector is keeping prices high and profits large. Unsurprisingly Countdown and Foodstuffs disagree with this analysis, maintaining that they have plenty of competition. In this episode of ‘Consume This’ we attempt to find some of it.

We’re joined by Sarah Balle, the founder of a new online only supermarket to find out why it’s so hard to compete with the current duopoly. Another Sarah – boss of Yum Granola, Sarah Hedger – explains how a product makes it onto the supermarket shelves, who sets the price, and importantly why she doesn’t sell it cheaper via her own web shop. The grocery industry needs to change, we need our $$$ to go further, but are the Commerce Commission really up for the fight?

You can find the full Commerce Commission draft report here & our submission to the ComCom market study here. This podcast only scratches the surface, for even more information on our supermarkets campaign check out the Consumer NZ website.

Thanks to this week's guests Sarah Balle, Sarah Hedger and Ramesh Patel.

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