How to Cut Your Grocery Bill Using Supermarket Catalogues (2026 Guide)

Groceries are the line in the household budget that hurts most right now. Food prices rose 3.7% in the year to early 2026, with beef up 13.5% and lamb up 13%. A family of four now spends around $274 a week — over $14,000 a year — just to keep the fridge full. The good news? The single fastest way to claw that money back is already sitting in your letterbox and your app store: the weekly supermarket catalogue.

Every week, Woolworths specials and Coles deals put hundreds of everyday items at half price or better. Planning around those catalogues — instead of shopping on autopilot — can help households reduce unnecessary grocery spending. Here's exactly how to do it.

Why catalogues are free money

Supermarket catalogues aren't marketing fluff — they're a published list of the loss-leaders each chain is using to get you through the door this week. Woolworths and Coles both refresh their specials every Wednesday, and ALDI drops its Special Buys twice a week. The discounts are real and often steep:

• Half-price staples — pantry basics like pasta, tinned tomatoes, olive oil, cereal and coffee regularly drop to 50% off on rotation.
• Meat markdowns — mince, chicken and family roasts get catalogue pricing that's often cheaper than ALDI's everyday price.
• Multi-buys — "2 for $X" deals on freezer and lunchbox items that are worth stocking up on.

The 4-step catalogue method

1. Read the catalogue first, then decide what to cook.

Most people plan meals and then shop. Flip it. Skim this week's specials, note the proteins and staples that are cheap, and build your dinners around them. If chicken thigh is half price, that's three meals sorted before you've spent a cent.

2. Stock up on half-price non-perishables.

When a pantry staple you use every week hits 50% off, buy two or three. Tinned tomatoes, pasta, rice, oil, long-life milk and cleaning products don't spoil. Buying a term's worth at half price is a guaranteed return no savings account can match.

3. Cross-reference across stores.

This is where the real savings — and the real hassle — live. The cheapest total shop almost never sits in one catalogue. Your meat might be best at Coles this week, your pantry run at Woolworths, your fresh produce at ALDI. Comparing three or four catalogues by hand every week is exactly why most people give up.

For a dated comparison of the same basket across all four supermarkets, see the MealPantry Weekly Grocery Index before you choose where to shop.

4. Write the list around the deals, not your cravings.

Impulse buys are where budgets die. A catalogue-driven list keeps you anchored to what's genuinely cheap this week.

Getting the most from Woolworths specials

Woolworths runs its biggest half-price event of the week from Wednesday. Pair the catalogue with an Everyday Rewards account to stack points on already-discounted items, and check the "Prices Dropped" range for longer-term markdowns that aren't in the weekly flyer.

Getting the most from Coles deals

Coles mirrors the Wednesday half-price cycle and adds regular "Down Down" pricing that holds for months. The Flybuys catalogue often surfaces personalised bonus-point offers — worth loading before you shop so your staple purchases earn extra.

How much can you actually save?

Independent testing by CHOICE in March 2026 found a 16-item basket ranged from $68.60 at ALDI to $86.33 at IGA. See how your planned basket compares across the supermarkets MealPantry covers, then choose the shop that suits your list. Even modest weekly savings can exceed MealPantry's subscription cost, although results vary by household, location, products and availability.

Let MealPantry do the reading

The catalogue method works — the only catch is the time it takes to compare four flyers every single week. MealPantry automates the whole thing. Every Wednesday it ingests the latest specials from Woolworths, Coles, ALDI and IGA, cross-references them against thousands of recipes, and hands you a 7-day meal plan and shopping list built around this week's cheapest deals.

Stop clipping catalogues. Start banking the savings.