Tesco has struggled to match prices at the discounters. But on the evidence of products selected from a flyer sent out to customers ahead of its launch in Chatteris this week, its new discounter format, Jack’s, is going to give Aldi and Lidl a run for their money, price-wise at least.
We matched prices on 35 products in the flyer, and Jack’s came in with a total of £38.60. Aldi and Lidl were each charging more than £40 for the same or equivalent products.
CEO Dave Lewis has promised that Jack’s will be “very, very, very competitive”. “The intention is to be cheapest in town”.
“What we have said is we will be cheapest in town. For example, we will make sure that here in Chatteris we will be testing baskets to make sure we are cheaper than anyone else. We can’t be national with 10 or 15 stores. That’s why we’ve set pricing parameters to be the cheapest in the towns we operate in.”
Lewis also stressed at Wednesday’s media tour of Chatteris, that with 24 hours still to go before the store opened, price checking against local competition (there’s an Aldi less than a mile away) meant prices were not finalised, and were likely to change right up to the last minute.
For example, in-store, there were multiple prices displayed for the bananas (13p and 14p), and these in turn were significantly lower than the price on the flyer.
Jack’s prices vs Tesco, Aldi and Lidl
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