A Year without the supermarket

The Challenge

Every busy mum of 5 young kids wants to totally upend the way she grocery shops for her family. Right? Who am I kidding, nobody has time for that; but I’ve decided to do it anyway. I’ve decided that 2025 will be the year in which my family doesn’t shop at the supermarket. To be more specific; it will be the year that we don’t buy anything from either of the 2 main supermarket providers in New Zealand, Foodstuffs or Woolworths.

Question: Is it practical for an everyday family to shop without relying on the major supermarket chains, and without spending extra time or money?

Where Are we at Now?

There’s been a lot of attention lately on New Zealand’s supermarket duopoly. Two very large companies dominate the food retail sector in New Zealand. They operate under a range of store brands including Woolworths, PaknSave, New World and 4 Square. There are concerns that the market lacks competition and this has attracted a lot of regulatory and media attention.

At a personal level, I’m mum to 5 young kids and spend a lot of time talking with other mothers. Inevitably these conversations turn to the price of groceries. In the case of my own family groceries are our single largest household expense. Recent years of high inflation levels and disrupted shipping chains have brought even more attention to the cost of groceries.

New Zealand is far from alone in this. Talk to anybody from Australia, the US, UK and so on and you’ll hear the same stories of ever-increasing prices.

So What Next?

So there’s action happening at the government end to try to increase competition, how successful that will be is yet to be seen. But there’s another hugely influential force that we can all control, and that’s how we choose to spend our own dollars. If we want a more competitive and dynamic grocery sector than we can use our own purchasing behavior to influence that. That’s where 2025; the year without the supermarket comes in.

So why do people shop at supermarkets?

For something that is a relatively new invention supermarkets have been hugely disruptive to the grocery sector. The first ones only opened in New Zealand in the 1950’s but now Woolworths and Foodstuffs between them receive a whopping  80-90% of the grocery market.

Shoppers choose to shop in supermarkets because of a perception of them being more convenient and cheaper than other shopping options. But is that actually true? Are supermarkets really more convenient? Do they really save you money? We’re about to find out.

the rules of the game

So that brings us to the challenge : a year without the duopoly.

Question: Is it practical for an everyday family to shop without relying on stores owned by Foodstuffs or Woolworths, without spending extra time or money?

We’re going to spend the next year finding out.

What is the challenge not

This isn’t a question of whether it is possible to shop without the duopoly. Logic would say that it almost certainly is. This is a question of whether or not it is practical.

The challenge is deliberately very simple. I can buy whatever I want wherever I want, as long as it’s not a Woolworths of Foodstuffs owned store.

This is not an exercise in self reliance. I’m not intending to suddenly start producing a whole lot of our own food. What we produce may evolve slightly as we go along but I’m not aiming to replace store bought food with home produced. I’m simply aiming to source our food in other places.

This also isn’t an exercise in eating NZ made, or eating only organic or any other particular type of food. This isn’t about changing the type of food we eat. That’s a whole rabbit hole of its own and potentially a project for another time. I expect that this experiment will have some impacts on what we buy but that isn’t the focus of the experiment. Any changes to what I buy will be an interesting side effect rather than being the goal.

The challenge will look different depending on where in the country you live. If you’re in Auckland you’ll have a lot of options (hello Costco). If you’re in rural New Zealand options might be few and far between. In our case we live in regional New Zealand so we have options but not some of the good ones (did I mention Costco?).

The challenge includes everything sold by Foodstuffs and Woolworths, including their petrol.

I’ll be allowed to use up whatever I already have in the house when the challenge begins but there won’t be any specific pre-buying occurring.

Why me?

My fascination with food production began when I worked for Woolworths as a teenager, stacking the shelves. I actually really enjoyed that job, it was an interesting insight into this enormous industry. I then went on to complete an engineering degree, specialising in food production

I’m also mum to 5 growing kids and own my own small (very small) farm. So you could say I have a number of different perspectives on the food industry.  

But, going back to the mum of 5 kids thing, groceries are already our single largest household expense and I’m not exactly flush with spare time. Hence the requirement that this challenge can’t take more time or money than I would normally devote to grocery shopping. How hard can it be right?