1. INTRODUCTORY
"Hi, I'm Molly and I'm going to talk about buying baked beans in New Zealand supermarkets.
All of our 3 main stores, sell as many as 10 brands of baked beans in tomato sauce, in various sizes of cans, grades of quality, and seemingly prices to match, ranging from around a dollar, to
as much as 6 or 7 dollars for packages of 3.
From a quality point of view, it is fair to say that the lower priced products are not the best, but when considering quantity, the prices advertised, and labelled, that you pay at checkout,
are really quite meaningless when the average shopper tries to figure out where to find best value for dollar.
In fact, it is the unit price of a can, or package, per 100 grams, that allows direct comparison of can, or package sizes, in terms of quantity,because the lower a unit price might be, the
more beans you will be getting for your money.
Unfortunately, however, prices are changed by some supermarkets so often, sometimes as special offers, club "savings" etc., that a shopper can be caught off guard and pay more than needed.
Another downside is that usually, lower unit prices are tied to larger quantities, such as the packaging of 3 cans, so that only people with spare cash can take advantage.
If you need to make your money go as far as possible in the supermarket when buying baked beans, a few examples follow that will help you on your way."
2. TABULATION EXPLAINED
Hi again. Let's work our way down through our tabulation, with some simple explanations of its purpose.
Look at the top line here, which shows that on the day in question, your cheapest checkout price and best value for quantity at SM1, would have been a 400 gram can, of Pams Value, for
$1.09, which equated to a unit price of 27 cents per 100 grams. However, before purchasing, you would have been advised to check prices by clicking the link provided in the left hand
column.
Continuing down the table, unit prices increase proportionately with package sizes, and their checkout prices, as might be expected, but the final item, a Wotties pack of 3 number,
220 gram cans, 660 grams in total, defies such expectations, and seems extremely expensive, compared to the pricing for the previous and much larger Watties package, of 1.26
kilograms!
Moving on to SM2, the picture is much the same, but with some very expensive cans of imported Heinz putting in an appearance, which is ironic because the cheaper Wotties are rumoured
to be processed locally under licence to Heinz!
Inexplicably, identical beans in a single, little Watties 220 can, have a 20% higher unit cost than those in a single 420 can!
And SM3 has much the same range of choice as SM1, with slightly lower prices, but on 2nd August 2025, those gold plated 220 gram cans, served their usual function of creaming off a
little extra profit from whomever was silly enough to have put them in their basket! Anyway, as will have been noted, Watties appear to have the widest choice of sizes and combinations thereof,
in New Zealand, and therefore deserve separate attention, in another video to come.
3. FOCUS ON WATTIES
Amongst all the brands of baked beans available in New Zealand, Watties probably sits somewhere in the middle of the league table in terms of quality and value for money quantity wise. It
is also the brand that is most frequently subjected to price adjustments, mostly passing unnoticed by customers.
Looking at our table extract, sorted by unit price, we can see that all three supermarkets offer the package of 3, 420 gram cans as their best value for money, between 44 and 52 cents per
hundred grams, if you have in the region of six dollars to spend.
The next best bet, again for all 3 supermarkets, is the single 420 can, and finally they all use the 220 cans, to lure people into paying up to twice as much more per bean, than they
would if they had more cash to spare!
Why, you might ask, would anyone buy such expensive small cans? Well, probably because they don't understand unit pricing!
From these examples, you might conclude that Watties lovers should always buy the 3 by four twenty packs, but that would be a big mistake without first checking all prices! Supermarkets
frequently change prices, up or down. For example, on one particular day not long ago, in one store it was cheaper to buy 3 individual cans than the pack of 3!
On another day the price of an item to "Club" members, was higher than to "non-club" members!
Enjoy your beans!
