Health food stores have no chance in a price war

Healthy, sustainable and fair. These are the three cornerstones of organic products. Despite inflation and a flattening trend, organic is still quickly buying up. It’s no surprise that almost every grocery store these days sells products labeled organic.

The Müller chain’s health food store bankruptcy has brought prices under the spotlight. Its bosses cited the low prices of the competition as one of the reasons for the decline, especially from large distributors’ subsidiaries.

In addition to selling its products under its organic brand, Migros also sells through its cooperation partner Alnatura, which offers its products at 734 points in total through Migros and its own organic supermarkets. Coop has been selling organic products under its own brand, Naturaplan, for 25 years. Finally, Aldi also has a range of products under an organic label. From breakfast muesli to red wine for dinner.

Blick conducted a price analysis between these suppliers and the regional health food chain Bachsermärt for three comparable products. All of the price samples were taken from the city of Zurich.

At Bachsermärt you pay CHF 10.46 for 500 grams of muesli. The cheapest organic muesli can be found at Aldi. 500 grams is 3.29 francs. Aldi muesli comes from Germany. Made in Lüneburg. But the muesli from Bachsermärt also comes from a court producer in Bremen, Germany.

Migros offers the second most expensive muesli. 500 grams there is 5.95 francs. This is followed by Coop with 500 grams of 5.40 francs Surprisingly: Organic muesli is at the lowest price in Alnatura, partner of Migros: only 3.53 francs. All three of these organic mueslis are made in Switzerland. So Alnatura is 6.93 CHF cheaper than Bachsermärt. This underscores the health food store boss’s statement that smaller stores are not keeping up with the low prices of large retailers.

The Bachsermärt health food store is also the most expensive supplier of dried mango slices. Migros ranks second again with its product, which is already 1.70 CHF cheaper. However, there is a small price difference of only 50 centimeters between him and the other three companies for a 100 gram package.

The milk comes from Swiss cows at all retailers. You can find the cheapest organic milk at Aldi for 1.89 CHF per litre. The most expensive provider, Bachsermärt, charges 61 cents more.

Solution

The price comparison shows that organic products are actually more expensive at health food stores. Aldi usually offers the cheapest product in this selection. In addition, some of the Alnatura products are cheaper than the Migros organic series. All random samples confirm that large retailers offer clearly lower prices than smaller stores.