Two months after Carrefour began selling the Economy Ministry’s curated basket at a discount in a third of its branches, Economy Minister Nir Barakat said the program helped cut basket prices across the market by 4.75% in 50 Carrefour stores. But he did not present data on food prices across the sector as a whole, focusing only on the basket items themselves.
According to Barakat, Carrefour sells the basket for 1,099 shekels, while the price is 32% higher at Rami Levy’s Shikma Marketing and Yochananoff, at 1,451 shekels, and 54% higher at Shufersal Deal, at 1,694 shekels. He did not disclose prices at Carrefour City and Le Marche branches, where the chain does not sell the basket at the program price. A Calcialist review using Pricez found that a Carrefour City branch in Givatayim charged 1,680.4 shekels for 95% of the basket, about 53% more than participating branches and similar to Shufersal Deal. Prices were 1,634 shekels at Carrefour City on Ibn Gabirol Street for 92% of the items, and 1,626 shekels at Carrefour City Pinhas for 93%.
Although Carrefour is controlled by publicly traded Electra Consumer Products, Barakat did not wait for financial results due in about six weeks and instead cited partial figures saying the publicly funded campaign, costing 50 million shekels a year, brought in 150,000 new customers. That would put Carrefour at about 750,000 customers total, including roughly 600,000 it had before, compared with about 2.2 million club members at Shufersal.
Barakat also said Carrefour’s online sales rose 50% and its market share in basket products climbed from 2.2% to 7.2%, based on data he said came from Carrefour itself, whose representatives did not attend his press conference. The ministry later listed the fastest-growing items, including whole wheat spaghetti up 1,514%, black olives up 1,487%, frozen Tipoghan fries up 1,279%, basmati rice up 1,159%, and frozen Mama Off schnitzel up 1,147%. He also did not address Carrefour’s decision to raise cottage cheese prices by as much as 16% this month, compared with increases of up to 3% at Strauss and Tara, despite campaign assurances from spokesperson Eli Yatzpan that non-basket items would not be raised to offset discounts.
