Same product, double the price — we checked one bag of ptitim across 29 chains
From ₪4.90 to ₪10.90 for the exact same barcode, on the same day
It is easy to say "prices differ between chains". It is much harder to feel by how much. So we took a single product, as ordinary as they come, and checked what it costs everywhere it was sold on one day.
The product: a 500g bag of ptitim
We picked baked couscous ptitim, 500g (barcode 7290100702628) not because it is special but because it is the opposite: a dry, basic staple that sits in almost every supermarket in the country and that nobody checks the price of before dropping it in the trolley.
On 13 August 2026 it had 716 active prices across 29 different chains. Same barcode, same bag, same 500 grams — so there is no question of a different pack size or a different brand here. This is the same thing compared against itself.
The figures below cover chains with at least five branches, and take each chain's median price, so that a single branch running a promotion cannot speak for a whole chain. Outside that boundary there was a lower price still — ₪4.40, at a wholesale distributor with just two branches.
The result: ₪5.50 against ₪10.90
The lowest median price was ₪5.50 — at Yochananof, matched by two smaller chains. At the priciest, Super Yuda, the median was ₪10.90. That is 1.98× — almost double, for the same bag.
Drop down to individual branches and the extremes stretch further: the cheapest branch in our sample sold it for ₪4.90, the dearest for ₪10.90. A ₪6 difference on a product that costs less than ten.
Most of the large chains sit in between, and even there the order is clear: Rami Levy ₪5.80, Carrefour ₪6.45, Shufersal Deal ₪6.50, Mahsanei Hashuk ₪6.90, Tiv Taam ₪7.90, Freshmarket ₪8.90.
The interesting part: inside a single chain
Shufersal appears three times in this measurement, because it runs several store formats — and each one carries a different price for the same bag: Shufersal Deal ₪6.50, Shufersal Sheli ₪6.90, Shufersal Express ₪7.90.
That is policy, not a data glitch: a large discount format out of town and a small neighbourhood shop in the city centre are not priced the same way. At Carrefour we saw the same effect within one format — 64 branches, prices ranging from ₪5.10 to ₪6.90.
The practical conclusion: "the chain I shop at is cheap" is not a promise. Even your branch down the road is not necessarily priced like the same chain's branch in the next town.
Why a gap like this exists at all
Three main forces. First, the chain's pricing policy: discount chains price staples low to win the whole weekly shop and make their margin elsewhere. Second, the cost of running the branch — rent in central Tel Aviv and a small convenience format both cost money, and that lands on the shelf.
Third, plain inattention on our side. A product that costs a few shekels does not feel like a financial decision, so nobody compares it — and when nobody compares, nothing forces the gap to close.
What it is worth in real money
One bag a month: about ₪65 a year. That is not life-changing. But a weekly trolley holds 30 to 50 items, and most of them behave exactly like this bag of ptitim — a gap of tens of percent that nobody checks.
At that scale it is hundreds of shekels a month, and the only difference between the people who pay them and the people who do not is two minutes of checking before the shop.