The Coles Christmas survey shows that the Reserve Bank’s interest rate policy is set to grinch the festive season but it will be the owners of restaurants and cafes who’ll feel the pinch the most. The investigation into what shoppers want showed 20% of customers plan to do more cooking at home.

When you think about it, it's ironic that big supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths must be partly responsible for the food inflation of 6.7% last year. As this increase in the price of food added to the cost of living, it meant that their customers are now saying they’ll spend more with them instead of restaurants and cafes.

The kings of the supermarket i.e., Coles and Woolies are in an enviable economic position because even in recessions we don’t dump them. As Mel Brooks said in The History of the World: “It’s good to be the king!”

And this gain for the supermarkets at the expense of restaurants and cafes was rammed home by the new Coles CEO Leah Weckert. “We’re definitely seeing ... that people are buying into products that help them to replicate an experience that they may have got by going to a restaurant or takeaway for example,” she said, noting that coffee pods were in double-digit growth,” she told the AFR’s Carrie LaFrenz.

But it’s not all beer and skittles for the big supermarkets, with the Reserve Bank’s interest rate policy likely to be behind the growth of the five-finger discount shopper.

For financial record purposes, supermarket theft (aka shoplifting) is now called “shrinkage” and this year Coles came out with an astounding number on the subject. The combined loss from turfing out fresh food (wastage) beyond its use-by-date and theft was up 20%!

The AFR reports that restaurants are starting to feel the pinch. “We are seeing restaurant bookings turn negative and on-premises sales
soften, with a normalisation in out-of-home consumption set to add greater than $2 billion of sales to the grocery market,” revealed Ben Gilbert, who is head of research with Jarden.

Despite this cost-of-living advantage for Coles and Woolworths, their share prices have fallen. Coles is off 13.8% over the past six months while Woolworths is down 3.3%. This is why Woolies is seen as the best supermarket business in the country. To rub it in, Coles’ share price is down 3.6% over the year, while Woolies is, wait for it, up 14.8%!