No two IGAs are the same: why your local's prices match no one else's
IGA isn't one supermarket — it's hundreds of independent ones. Here's what that does to prices, and how to shop it anyway.
Coles is Coles wherever you stand: one catalogue, one set of specials, (mostly) one national shelf price. IGA doesn't work like that. Every store is an independently owned business — from a Tucker Fresh in the south-west to a Foodies in the suburbs — and each one sets its own prices and runs its own specials. We measured just how different they really are.
Two suburbs apart, two different supermarkets
We compared IGA stores in neighbouring suburbs — same banner on the door, same week. The results:
- Only 12–28% of shared products were priced identically between nearby stores.
- Around 40% of one store's range wasn't stocked by the other at all.
- Specials were the store's own — a half-price ticket at one IGA usually doesn't exist at the next.
So "the IGA price" of anything is a fiction. There is only your IGA's price.
Why it works this way
IGA is a brand shared by independent retailers, supplied through Metcash but owned and priced locally. That independence is the whole point — it's why your IGA can stock the local bakery's bread and cut a meat tray the majors wouldn't. The trade-off is that no national price list exists, and any app that shows you a single "IGA price" is showing you some other store's price.
It also cuts both ways at the register: your local can be sharper than the majors on some lines and dearer on others — and genuinely generous when it runs its own specials.
Pick YOUR store, get YOUR prices
This is why Mai Pantry has a "My IGA store" picker. Choose your store once and the app collects prices and specials from that store's own online range — so the IGA column in every comparison is your actual shelf price, not a state average or someone else's store.
Your list, priced across Coles, Woolworths, ALDI, Spudshed — and your IGA.