UK Grocery Costs: What a Weekly Shop Actually Costs
A typical weekly grocery shop for one person costs between £35 and £80, depending entirely on which supermarket you use. Aldi charged £171 for a 95-item basket in March 2026. Waitrose charged £235 for exactly the same shop. This guide covers where you land between those two numbers — and what eating out and delivery apps add on top.
A typical weekly grocery shop for one person in the UK costs between £35 and £80 in 2026, depending on which supermarket you use — from budget chains like Aldi and Lidl to premium retailers like Waitrose and M&S. Where you shop, what proportion of your basket is own-label versus branded, and whether you live in London or the North East together determine which end of that range you land on. For the wider context of how groceries fit into total UK living costs, our cost of living in the UK hub covers rent, salaries, bills and council tax alongside food spending.
The data in this guide comes from the Office for National Statistics Family Spending survey, the Defra Family Food bulletin for the financial year ending March 2024, Kantar Worldpanel grocery market share data, and Which?’s monthly supermarket basket comparison. These are the only sources that track thousands of real transactions over extended periods — anecdotal estimates from forums are useful for flavour, not for budgeting.
The UK Supermarket Landscape: Budget to Premium
UK grocery retail is dominated by eight large chains, plus the online specialist Ocado. They fall into three broad tiers by price and positioning, and knowing which tier you’re shopping in is more important than any other single decision you make about your food budget.
Discounters — Aldi and Lidl focus on own-label ranges and a limited selection of branded staples. Their stores are smaller and more tightly stocked than the large chains. They consistently win Which?’s monthly basket comparison. Aldi held around 10.4% of the UK grocery market in the most recent published figures; Lidl claimed a record festive share of 7.8% in the 12 weeks to December 2025, per Kantar Worldpanel.
Mid-range supermarkets — Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons carry both own-label and branded ranges across value and premium tiers. Tesco holds the dominant market position at 28.7% as of December 2025 — its highest share since March 2015 — while Sainsbury’s sits at 16.3% for the same period.
Premium retailers — Waitrose and Marks & Spencer Food carry curated ranges at substantially higher price points. Waitrose consistently sits at the top of Which?’s basket price tables. M&S grocery sales grew 10.4% in the run-up to Christmas 2024.
If you live in central London or a city centre where large-format supermarkets are harder to reach, “Express”, “Local” or “Metro” format stores carry the same branding but significantly higher prices on many items — typically 10 to 30% more than the equivalent large-format store. Where possible, a weekly big-format shop beats daily convenience visits on cost, even accounting for an extra journey.
Weekly Basket Comparison: Aldi vs Tesco vs Waitrose
Which?’s monthly price analysis tracks a standardised basket of branded and own-label groceries across the eight largest UK supermarkets. For March 2026, the figures tell a clear story.
| Supermarket | 95-item basket | vs Aldi |
|---|---|---|
| Aldi | £171.32 | baseline |
| Lidl (with Lidl Plus) | £172.31 | + £0.99 |
| Lidl (no Lidl Plus) | £172.41 | + £1.09 |
| Asda | £193.37 | + £22.05 |
| Tesco (Clubcard) | £198.07 | + £26.75 |
| Sainsbury’s (Nectar) | £199.79 | + £28.47 |
| Morrisons | £201.02 | + £29.70 |
| Waitrose | £235.70 | + £64.38 (+37.6%) |
Source: Which?, March 2026 supermarket price comparison. 95-item basket of popular branded and own-brand groceries including milk, cheese and Hovis sliced bread.
The gap between Aldi and Waitrose — £64.38 a week, or around £3,350 a year for a household repeating the same shop — is the single most impactful financial decision most households make about food. A few nuances matter before treating the numbers as definitive.
Aldi and Lidl carry a more limited range of branded products. If your household relies on specific brands, the price difference narrows because you’ll supplement with a second shop at a large chain. Which?’s longer 223-item basket, which includes more branded products not typically stocked at discounters, gives a fairer comparison against the big chains: in March 2026 Asda led at £193.37 for that longer list, with Tesco-with-Clubcard at £198.07.
Loyalty schemes close some of the gap on the big chains but not all. In March 2026 a Clubcard saved 1.66% at Tesco and a Nectar card saved 2.71% at Sainsbury’s on the 95-item basket — rising to 6 to 7% on branded-heavy baskets. The savings are largest on brand-name goods and promotional items; on own-label staples the discounters remain meaningfully cheaper regardless.
Monthly Grocery Budgets by Household Size
ONS Family Spending data for the financial year ending March 2024 shows UK households spent an average of £70.50 per week on food and alcoholic drinks — roughly £305 per month. Defra’s Family Food bulletin reports £47.19 per person per week across all food and drink including restaurants and takeaways. Applying a 10% uplift for food inflation between FYE 2024 and early 2026 gives the following monthly ranges.
| Household | Budget shop | Standard shop | Healthy / premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single adult | £160–£200 | £220–£280 | £300–£400 |
| Couple, no children | £280–£360 | £390–£490 | £520–£680 |
| Couple + 1 child | £380–£480 | £520–£650 | £680–£880 |
| Family of 4 | £670–£780 | £880–£1,020 | £1,010–£1,180 |
Source: Moving to the UK analysis of ONS Family Spending (FYE 2024) and Defra Family Food (FYE 2024), adjusted for CPI food inflation to early 2026. Illustrative ranges only.
Food inflation has eased substantially from its 2023 peak. Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose 3.3% in the 12 months to February 2026, down from 3.6% in January and well below the 19.1% peak of March 2023. Kantar’s grocery price inflation measure ran at 4.0% in the four weeks to 25 January 2026 — the lowest rate since April 2025. Private-label products now account for more than half of total supermarket purchases, reflecting a structural shift toward own-brand that is unlikely to reverse quickly.
Eating Out: Pubs, Restaurants, Coffee and Takeaways
Defra’s Family Food data shows UK households spent £11.25 per person per week on food and drink consumed outside the home in FYE 2024 — about a quarter of total food spending. The proportion of household expenditure going on restaurants and hotels was 7% in FYE 2024, still below the 9% seen before the pandemic.
| Meal or drink | Typical UK price | Central London |
|---|---|---|
| Pub lunch main course | £12–£18 | £15–£22 |
| Mid-range restaurant main | £15–£25 | £20–£35 |
| Sunday roast at a pub | £18–£28 | £22–£35 |
| McDonald’s meal | £6.50–£8.00 | £7–£9 |
| Pret / Leon lunch | £7–£10 | £8–£12 |
| Takeaway coffee (large) | £3–£4 | £3.50–£4.80 |
| Pint of beer | £4.00–£6.00 | £5.50–£7.50 |
| Glass of mid-range wine | £6–£9 | £7–£12 |
Source: Moving to the UK analysis of pricing at major UK pub chains, restaurant price guides and London cost-of-living sources, April 2026. Prices vary by venue.
Two conventions are worth knowing for anyone new to UK dining. First, most sit-down restaurants add a discretionary service charge of 10 to 12.5% — check the bottom of the menu. It is always discretionary and can be removed if asked. Second, pub meals are typically ordered and paid for at the bar, not at the table. Tipping culture is significantly lighter than in the US: 10% is considered generous at a restaurant; nothing is expected in pubs, cafes, or fast-food counters.
Delivery Apps vs In-Store: The Real Cost Difference
Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat dominate UK food delivery, with the market worth around £8 billion annually. The costs layer up in ways that are easy to miss until you add them together.
On Uber Eats, delivery fees typically run £0.99 to £5.99 per order, with a variable service fee of 5 to 15% on top, plus a small-order fee for baskets below the minimum threshold. Deliveroo and Just Eat use a similar structure. Subscription services — Uber One at around £5.99 per month, Deliveroo Plus at a similar rate — remove delivery fees on eligible orders above around £15 to £20, but leave service fees and menu markups in place.
The cost most households underestimate is the menu price markup. Restaurants and grocers typically price items 10 to 20% higher on delivery apps to offset platform commissions of 14 to 35%. A £0.90 in-store bottle of cola frequently lists at £1.13 to £1.30 on delivery apps; £10 items commonly appear at £11.50 or more. Across a full basket, these markups add several pounds before delivery and service fees are applied.
Tesco Whoosh via Uber Eats, Sainsbury’s Chop Chop, and Deliveroo grocery partners typically apply the same 10 to 20% menu markup as restaurants. A trolley costing £80 in a Tesco superstore can come to £95 or more via a 15-minute delivery app, before the delivery fee. For regular grocery delivery, a scheduled slot directly from the retailer’s own website is almost always cheaper than a rapid-delivery app.
How to Reduce UK Grocery Costs
A handful of habits consistently reduce grocery bills, ordered roughly by impact.
- Switch the core shop to a discounter. Moving a 95-item weekly basket from Waitrose to Aldi would have saved £64.38 in March 2026 — roughly £3,350 a year. Even switching from Morrisons or Sainsbury’s to Aldi saves around £30 a week on an equivalent basket.
- Use loyalty cards on branded goods. Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar save 6 to 7% on branded-heavy baskets. The schemes also unlock loyalty-card prices at Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local, narrowing the convenience-store premium.
- Shift branded staples to own-label. Shoppers typically save around 30% per basket by switching to own-label equivalents on items where the branded version offers little practical difference — pasta, tinned tomatoes, flour, rice, tea bags, basic dairy.
- Use yellow-sticker reductions. UK supermarkets mark down perishables steeply in the late afternoon and evening, typically starting around 6pm. Batch-cooking or freezing yellow-sticker fresh meat, fish or ready meals bought the same day can cut a weekly shop by 10 to 15%.
- Use a price-tracking tool. Trolley.co.uk tracks prices across major UK supermarkets on tens of thousands of products, alerts shoppers to price drops, and flags shrinkflation where pack sizes shrink while prices hold flat. It is free and web-based.
- Plan around store format. Large-format supermarkets carry the cheapest range. Express, Local, Metro and Simply Food convenience stores charge noticeably more on most items. A weekly big-format shop combined with occasional top-ups beats daily convenience-store visits on cost.
Regional Variation: The London Premium
Grocery prices are not uniform across the UK. London supermarkets average around 9% above the UK price index, while rural Wales and parts of Scotland sit several percentage points below. For a family of four shopping at mid-range supermarkets, that difference translates to roughly £40 to £60 per month on groceries alone.
Several factors drive the regional gap: higher rents for retail space, the London weighting uplift on staff wages, and the dominance of smaller convenience-format stores in central London that structurally charge more than large-format equivalents. At the other end, Defra data shows households in the North East of England have the lowest average food spend in Great Britain, around 11% below the UK average, while Yorkshire sits 6.6% below.
Within London, the variation is sharp. Research comparing grocery basket costs by borough finds Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Camden carry grocery prices 10 to 20% above the London average, while Bethnal Green, parts of Greenwich and outer east London sit at or below it. For a new arrival choosing where to live, proximity to an Aldi, Lidl or large Asda can meaningfully reduce a monthly food bill.
For most people arriving in the UK, how much groceries cost depends less on the country than on three decisions made after landing: which supermarket the weekly shop happens at, what proportion of the basket is own-label versus branded, and how often eating out and delivery apps are used. The gap between a disciplined Aldi-and-own-label shopper and a Waitrose-and-Deliveroo household is substantial — easily £3,000 to £5,000 a year for a couple, and significantly more for a family of four.
A realistic starting point for budgeting is £160 to £280 per month for a single adult doing their own cooking, £390 to £650 for a couple, and £880 to £1,020 for a family of four, assuming a standard mix of own-label and branded products at a mid-range supermarket. Layering in a restaurant meal or takeaway once a week adds roughly £100 to £150 per person per month on top.
Food inflation has eased from its 2023 peak but has not returned to the low-inflation environment of the late 2010s. The Bank of England said in March 2026 that CPI is likely to sit between 3.0% and 3.5% in the second and third quarters of 2026, with domestic labour costs continuing to put modest upward pressure on food prices. For anyone budgeting a year ahead, adding 3 to 4% headroom to current spending is a reasonable working assumption.
Frequently asked questions
A typical weekly grocery shop for one person in the UK costs between £35 and £80 in 2026, depending on the supermarket and product mix. Aldi and Lidl baskets sit at the lower end, mid-range retailers like Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the middle, and Waitrose or M&S at the upper end. ONS Family Food data for the financial year ending March 2024 shows the average UK adult spends around £32 per person per week on groceries for home consumption, with a further £11 on food consumed outside the home.
According to the Which? monthly basket comparison, Aldi was the cheapest UK supermarket in March 2026 with a 95-item basket costing £171.32. Lidl with Lidl Plus discounts was second at £172.31, a difference of 99p. Waitrose was the most expensive, at £235.70 for the same basket — £64.38 or about 37.6% more than Aldi.
The ONS Family Spending bulletin for the financial year ending March 2024 reported that UK households spent an average of £70.50 per week on food and alcoholic drinks, equivalent to roughly £305 per month. Defra’s Family Food figures show spending of £47.19 per person per week across all food and drink including food eaten outside the home. Typical monthly grocery budgets range from about £160 for a single adult to £700 or more for a family of four.
Grocery prices in London and the South East are typically 5% to 10% above the UK average, driven by higher rents for retail space, greater reliance on smaller convenience-format stores, and a heavier concentration of premium retailers. London supermarkets average around 9% above the UK price index, while rural parts of Wales and the North of England sit several percentage points below.
Delivery apps such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat typically charge a delivery fee of £0.99 to £5.99 per order plus a variable service fee. Grocers and restaurants on these platforms also commonly mark up menu prices by 10% to 20% to offset commission, meaning a £10 in-store item may be listed at £11.50 or more on the app. A subscription such as Uber One at around £5.99 per month removes delivery fees on orders over a minimum threshold but leaves service fees and menu markups in place.
Which? analysis found that in March 2026, loyalty prices saved shoppers an average of 1.66% at Tesco with a Clubcard and 2.71% at Sainsbury’s with Nectar on a 95-item basket, rising to 6.42% at Tesco and 7.35% at Sainsbury’s on a longer 223-item list that included more branded products. The savings are largest on branded goods and promotional items, so loyalty cards matter most for shoppers who buy a lot of brand-name products rather than own-label staples.
ONS figures show food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 3.3% in the 12 months to February 2026, down from 3.6% in January 2026 and well below the peak of 19.1% in March 2023. Kantar’s Worldpanel data reported grocery price inflation of 4.0% in the four weeks to 25 January 2026, with shoppers continuing to favour own-brand staples as private-label products now account for more than half of total supermarket purchases.
A casual pub meal typically costs £12 to £18 per person in the UK in 2026, a mid-range restaurant main course runs £15 to £25, and a Sunday roast at a traditional pub averages £18 to £28. A pint of beer costs £4 to £6 in most of the country and £5.50 to £7.50 in central London. A takeaway coffee at a major chain is around £3 to £3.50. ONS Family Food data shows UK households spent £11.25 per person per week on food and drink outside the home in FYE 2024.
Aldi and Lidl primarily sell their own-label ranges, which frequently win industry taste tests. They stock a limited selection of branded staples — Coca-Cola, Heinz Baked Beans, some branded snacks — but do not carry the full range found at Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Asda. Shoppers looking for specific brands may need to visit a larger supermarket alongside their discounter shop.
A core shop at Aldi or Lidl — where a 95-item basket cost £171.32 and £172.31 respectively in March 2026 per Which? — combined with own-label products, seasonal fresh produce and meal planning around yellow-sticker reductions late in the day. Using loyalty cards for branded products at Tesco or Sainsbury’s, batch-cooking to reduce waste, and avoiding convenience-format stores where items run 10 to 30% more expensive than large-format equivalents also make a measurable difference.
A typical UK family of four — two adults and two children — spends between £155 and £272 per week on groceries in 2026, equivalent to £670 to £1,180 per month. A budget-focused discounter shop sits at the lower end, a standard mix of own-label and branded goods sits in the middle, and a diet aligned with the NHS Eatwell Guide sits at the upper end. Actual spending varies significantly by region, dietary preferences and store choice.
Figures are illustrative estimates based on ONS Consumer Price Inflation (February 2026), ONS Family Spending (April 2023 to March 2024), Defra Family Food FYE 2024, Kantar Worldpanel grocery market share data, and Which? supermarket price comparison (March 2026). Verify supermarket prices directly with the retailer before making financial decisions. Household grocery costs vary significantly by region, family size, dietary preferences and lifestyle. This is general information only — not financial advice. Last verified: May 2026.
UK Cost of Living News
ONS data, supermarket price changes and expat finances — updated regularly.