Has Meat Become a Luxury? And Are Supermarkets Still the Smartest Place to Buy It?

Community buying saves cost-of-living crisis pressure in ways that individual households may struggle to achieve alone. There was a time when deciding what meat to buy for dinner was largely a question of preference. Steak on Friday night, lamb chops on the barbecue, a roast on Sunday, chicken breasts thrown into the trolley for an easy midweek dinner. Today, for many Australian families, another question increasingly comes first: how much is it going to cost?

But perhaps there is an even bigger question we should be asking. Are supermarkets still the smartest place to buy everything we eat? As household budgets are squeezed, Australian families are becoming far more creative about how they source what they need. Some are switching supermarkets or splitting their weekly shop between several. Some are buying cheaper cuts or eating less meat. Others are heading back to independent butchers, buying directly from farmers and producers, growing food at home, swapping excess produce with neighbours or joining together with other households to access bulk pricing.

It is a fascinating shift because for decades convenience largely won. We became accustomed to driving to one supermarket, filling a trolley and accepting the price on the shelf. Now cost-of-living pressure is forcing families to reconsider not only what they buy, but the entire system through which they buy it.

At the same time, supermarkets are fighting hard for the value-conscious family dollar. New results from Finder’s 2026 Supermarket Customer Satisfaction Awards have named ALDI Australia’s best supermarket for meat, with the retailer winning 75 per cent of the meat categories assessed. More than 50,000 Australians contributed ratings across the awards, with supermarket meat judged across Most Loved, Most Recommended, Top Value and Top Quality.

That creates a far more interesting debate than simply asking which supermarket has the cheapest mince. Has meat genuinely become unaffordable, or do Australian families need to rethink how and where we source our food?

Have we quietly stopped buying the meat we used to?

Cost-of-living changes don’t always arrive as dramatic household decisions. Often, they happen one supermarket aisle at a time. You pick up the lamb chops, look at the price and put them back. Steak becomes something you buy for an occasion rather than an ordinary Tuesday. The Sunday roast gets compared against how many other meals the same amount of money could provide. You buy 500 grams of mince instead of a kilogram and stretch the bolognese further with lentils or vegetables. Chicken thighs replace breasts. Sausages appear more often. Or perhaps one or two dinners a week quietly become meat-free.

Nobody necessarily announces that the family is cutting back on meat. You just start buying less of it. That is what makes the question interesting. At what point does adapting become going without? And how many of the changes Australian families have made over the past few years have quietly become permanent?

Is $10 for 500g of mince now considered good value?

This is where our perception of affordability becomes fascinating. ALDI has permanently reduced prices across parts of its meat, poultry, seafood and deli range by up to 20 per cent. Its 500g 5 Star Beef Mince is now $9.99, rolled boneless lamb leg $19.99, lamb loin chops $23.99 per kilogram and 1kg short-cut bacon $9.99.

Those reductions are welcome, but there is a bigger question hiding behind them. Have we reached the point where Australian families look at $9.99 for half a kilo of mince and think that’s pretty good? For a larger family, two packets of mince already create a $20 starting point before you’ve added pasta, vegetables, sauce, cheese or anything else to the meal. That is where supermarket statistics collide with the reality of feeding a household. Saving 50 cents on one packet might not transform a family budget. But grocery shopping doesn’t happen in isolation. Fifty cents here, two dollars there and another few dollars somewhere else, repeated across an entire trolley and 52 weeks of the year, starts to matter.

Does paying less mean compromising on quality?

There remains a powerful assumption around food that paying more means getting something better. The latest Finder results challenge that idea because ALDI didn’t simply perform strongly on value. Consumers also rated its products highly for quality, recommendation and how much they actually liked them.

ALDI took all four awards, Most Loved, Most Recommended, Top Value and Top Quality, across overall beef, beef burgers, beef mince, beef roast and beef sausages. For beef steak, ALDI won Most Loved, Most Recommended and Top Value, while Coles took Top Quality. It performed similarly across chicken, winning all four measures for overall chicken, chicken breast, burgers, drumsticks, mince, thighs and wings. Across the listed lamb categories, ALDI took all four measures for overall lamb, lamb chops, lamb cutlets, lamb mince and lamb roast.

Taylor Blackburn, personal finance specialist at Finder, said the results show that value isn’t solely about price, saying: “It’s about providing products that actually deliver on quality.”

And perhaps that’s where our definition of value needs to change. The cheapest meat isn’t good value if your family doesn’t enjoy it or half of it ends up in the bin. Equally, the most expensive meat isn’t automatically better simply because we’ve paid more for it.

But why are we only comparing supermarkets?

This is where the conversation gets much more interesting. When Australians talk about grocery affordability, we almost automatically talk about supermarkets. ALDI versus Coles versus Woolworths. Which one has the cheapest basket? Who has the specials this week? Is it worth driving somewhere else to save $20?

What if the bigger change coming to family shopping isn’t another supermarket at all? The same cost-of-living pressure pushing families towards cheaper supermarket options is also creating renewed interest in buying differently. Farmers and producers can increasingly reach consumers directly. Local butchers can offer meat boxes. Families can buy in bulk. Neighbours can combine orders. Someone with an overflowing lemon tree can share what they won’t use. Backyard eggs, homegrown vegetables and excess produce can circulate locally rather than being wasted.

Technology makes it much easier for those small exchanges to happen at scale. That is one of the ideas behind Australian community platform SayCooee. Rather than treating every household as an isolated consumer, SayCooee is built around the idea that communities already have things, skills, produce and purchasing power that become more valuable when people can find one another.

For groceries, that could mean Community Buys where enough local households wanting the same product create one larger order directly with a supplier or producer. But it can go further than buying.

It might be a neighbour sharing excess herbs or lemons. Someone swapping homegrown tomatoes for eggs. A local grower making seasonal produce available to nearby families. Households putting a Cooee out for something they’d like to source and discovering that another 20 families nearby want exactly the same thing.

The common thread is simple: before automatically paying retail, could we first ask whether there is another way to source it?

Community Buying Saves Cost-of-Living Crisis Pressure

This is where community buying could become particularly interesting in a cost-of-living crisis. One household asking a farmer, butcher or supplier for a better price has limited purchasing power. Twenty, 50 or 100 households collectively saying they want the same product is a very different proposition. Supermarkets have always benefited from scale. They aggregate enormous consumer demand, negotiate accordingly and then sell products individually to households.

Community buying asks a provocative question: could consumers aggregate some of that demand themselves? Imagine 30 local families wanting a monthly meat box. Instead of 30 separate supermarket transactions, there is one predictable local order. Or households wanting seasonal fruit and vegetables combining their demand so a producer knows exactly how much has already been sold before delivering into that community. For families, the attraction is potentially better value and greater connection with where their food comes from. For smaller producers, it could mean something equally valuable: predictable orders without having to individually acquire dozens of customers.

This is why community buying saves cost-of-living crisis pressure can become more than an SEO phrase. The underlying idea is that households may be able to improve their purchasing position by acting collectively rather than always shopping as isolated consumers.

It doesn’t automatically mean cheaper. Freight, minimum quantities, storage, seasonality and supplier pricing still matter. Nor is a Community Buy going to replace the supermarket run when you suddenly discover at 5pm that you’ve run out of milk. But it gives families another option, and options matter when household budgets are tight.

Would you buy meat with 20 of your neighbours?

This is where the idea becomes real. Would you buy a meat box directly from a producer if ten other families in your suburb were ordering too? Would you take a larger quantity if the price per kilogram was significantly lower and you had freezer space? Would you buy imperfect fruit and vegetables directly from a grower if your community could collectively order enough to make delivery worthwhile? Would you swap the excess produce growing in your backyard for something another family has too much of? Would you share something you only occasionally need rather than every household buying one?

These aren’t particularly radical behaviours. In many ways, they’re very old behaviours being made easier by new technology.

Before supermarkets and one-click shopping made individual consumption incredibly convenient, communities shared, swapped, traded, grew and bought locally because that was simply how everyday life worked. Perhaps the cost-of-living crisis is making some of those behaviours relevant again.

Are we paying for convenience without realising it?

The supermarket’s greatest advantage may not actually be price. It is convenience. Everything is there. You don’t need to coordinate with anyone. You don’t need freezer space for a bulk order. You don’t need to know which farmer has produce available this month. You can decide you want lamb at 4pm and have it cooking by 6pm.

That convenience has enormous value, particularly for busy parents. The question is whether every purchase needs that level of convenience.

Perhaps the future family shop is much more fragmented. Milk and last-minute essentials come from the supermarket. Meat might come through a monthly direct order. Seasonal fruit could arrive through a Community Buy. Herbs might come from the garden. Lemons could come from the neighbour whose tree produces more than their household could ever use. Children’s outgrown items might be swapped rather than replaced new.

Instead of asking, “Which supermarket should I shop at?”, families may increasingly ask, “What is the smartest way to source this particular thing?”

That is a very different consumer mindset.

When did the family barbecue become something we budget for?

There is an emotional side to this conversation too. Food is intertwined with Australian family life. The Sunday roast, sausages after Saturday sport, lamb chops on the barbecue and bacon and eggs on a slow weekend morning aren’t simply sources of protein. They’re rituals. When prices rise, families don’t necessarily abandon those rituals. They adapt them.

Perhaps steak night happens once a month. Maybe the barbecue has more sausages and fewer steaks. Lamb becomes something saved for when friends or grandparents come over. Parents watch specials and freeze meat rather than deciding what they feel like cooking that evening. Cost-of-living pressure isn’t only about whether a household technically has enough money to buy groceries. It’s also about the gradual disappearance of spontaneity. When every item requires a calculation, ordinary family pleasures start becoming purchases that need justification.

Is eating less meat actually a problem?

Not necessarily. Some households are intentionally reducing their meat consumption for health, environmental, ethical, cultural or dietary reasons. Others have discovered that lentils, eggs, legumes and other proteins can produce inexpensive meals their children genuinely enjoy. There is, however, a significant difference between choosing to eat differently and having price make the decision for you.

If your family has consciously decided to eat two vegetarian dinners each week, that’s a choice. If you’ve stopped buying foods you would otherwise serve because the price makes them inaccessible, that’s something different. There is no universal amount of meat an Australian family should buy. The more revealing question is whether households still feel they have genuine choice about what goes onto the table.

Perhaps supermarket loyalty is the real luxury

ALDI’s results make a compelling argument that families don’t necessarily have to pay more to find meat they rate highly. Simon Padovani-Ginies, Group Director at ALDI Australia, said: “Australians don’t need to choose between great quality meat and low prices.”

But even the Finder results don’t suggest that one retailer wins at everything. Coles won Top Quality for beef steak, IGA performed strongly in fresh seafood and Woolworths dominated the rotisserie chicken category. Perhaps the smartest grocery strategy in 2026 isn’t loyalty at all.

It could mean buying the mince at ALDI because the value stacks up, getting another product on special elsewhere, supporting the butcher when their offer makes sense, buying a box directly from a producer, joining a SayCooee Community Buy when enough neighbours want the same thing, growing what you can and swapping or sharing the excess.

Families aren’t necessarily becoming bargain hunters. They’re becoming far more strategic consumers.

So, has meat become a luxury?

For some Australian households, certain cuts probably have. But the more interesting story may be what families do next. For decades, we’ve largely accepted a retail model where producers sell into supply chains, retailers aggregate the products and individual families arrive at the other end to buy them.

Platforms such as SayCooee raise another possibility. What happens when communities can aggregate their own demand, connect more directly with local suppliers and producers, grow and share what already exists locally, swap what they have for what they need, and use the collective purchasing power of a suburb rather than behaving as hundreds of completely separate households?

That doesn’t make the supermarket obsolete. Far from it. The latest ALDI results show why supermarkets remain a powerful part of the value equation. It simply means the supermarket may no longer be the only answer.

And perhaps that is the real cost-of-living conversation we should be having. Not simply, “Why is everything so expensive?”, but “Could community buying save families money during the cost-of-living crisis?”

So we want to know: has the price of meat changed what your family eats? Have you changed cuts, reduced how much meat you buy or switched supermarkets? Would you buy directly from a farmer or producer? Would you join 20 families in your suburb to access a better bulk price? Are you already swapping, sharing or growing food locally? Or is convenience still king?

Because this isn’t really just a debate about the price of mince. It’s a much bigger question about whether Australian families can reclaim some purchasing power by changing not only what they buy, but how they buy it.

The Finder 2026 Supermarket Customer Satisfaction Awards information and ALDI pricing referenced in this article were supplied by ALDI Australia. Prices and product availability may change. Parenthood360 encourages readers to compare current pricing and product information when making purchasing decisions.