With the supermarket inquiry looking into the Coles and Woolworths duopoly, and the cost of living crisis resulting in most of us having to re-think where we buy our food from, grocery stores are under more scrutiny than ever. One Reddit user has taken it upon themselves to showcase just how many products in our favourite food aisles are actually owned by the same mega-corps. And yep, it’s about as bad as you suspect.
We all know cereal boxes are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to shrinkflation — AKA when a product becomes smaller or has less value but is still retains its price at the supermarket.
According to CHOICE, Coles’ cereal Mighty Grain used to cost $4.50 in October 2022 for 560 g. In March this year, the box costs the same — but now you only get 495g of cereal.
Woolworth’s brand of grain-style cereal Max Charge went through the exact same value change.
You’d think, if we’re going to have to deal with this BS, that it would at least be the result of struggling small businesses, or even Australian businesses — and not massive international companies that are raking in heaps of profits without feeling the burn of the Australian economy. Alas, that is not the case.
Reddit user u/QuantumFluxations13 has begun posting a series titled “Who owns which ‘Australian’ foods” on r/australia where they interrogate which companies own beloved Aussie brands of food. Their first post honed in on cereal, and unsurprisingly, Big Cereal is so real.
Yep, Kellanova (a US company and the parent of Kellogs, which also owns Pringles, Pop-Tarts, the list goes on) has a monopoly over majority of our cereal. It’s responsible for Froot Loops, Coco Pops, Corn flakes, Crunchy Nut, Sultana Bran and Nutri Grain, just to name a few.
The other main corporation is Seventh-day Adventist Church. Which might be confusing, but yes, this religious organisation owns Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company, which is behind Weet-Bix, Up & Go, Honey Puffs and Marmite. And because Sanitarium is owned by a church and therefore operates as a charity, it’s tax-exempt. Despite having an annual revenue of about $365 million. Sigh. At least it’s Australian owned?
Also, just a little fun fact for you: the Seventh-day Adventist Church is also responsible for the invention of Corn Flakes — the Kellog family’s recipe came from the church’s religious teachings which claimed a grain-based diet would prevent people from participating in the evils of masturbation or excessive sex.
u/QuantumFluxations has also posted about the confectionary aisle at Coles, with the main players this time being Mondelēz International, Mars, Quadrant Private Equity and Nestlé.
Mondelēz International is one of the world’s two largest chocolate suppliers and owns Cadbury. It’s also the company that was accused of illegal deforestation and was the subject of a class action lawsuit in 2021 that accused it of enslaving children on cocoa plants. Hershey’s, Mars and Nestlé were also named in that class action lawsuit. Fkn yikes.
The third post in the series was about who owns the chip aisle, and like the others, it’s looking stark.
PepsiCo owns majority of the brands, including Smiths, Doritos and Red Rock Deli — which, if you’ll recall, was going for $12.60 a bag at Coles in February 2023. Truly absurd. You can literally buy a fast food burger for that cost. (Red Rock Deli sea salt chips are now $6.30 per 165g bag).
Pfeifer & Langen came second, it’s the parent company of Intersnack which owns brands like Cheezels, Natural Chip Co, French Fries and CCs. There were a few Woolworths options in there, as expected considering its a Woolworths aisle, but remember that Coles has its own brandsed snacks too.
Honestly, this series has been greatly illuminating. I know we all know huge conglomerates own are food — but it’s certainly different seeing it in a graphic like this.
OP is doing God’s work, and I’m interested to see what’s next in the series.
