Click & collect vs delivery: counting the full cost
Two households can buy the identical basket from the identical store and pay pounds apart, purely because of how the shopping got home. Fulfilment — delivery versus collection — is where grocery pricing hides its quietest charges, and it's why BasketBadger puts the fee inside the total before naming a winner, never as an asterisk afterwards. Here's every component of the full cost, so you can count it the same way.
The slot fee, and when it's charged
Delivery slots are priced like airline seats: the popular times cost the most. An evening or weekend slot at a popular store can run £4–£7, while a wide daytime window midweek might be £1–£2 — or free with a delivery pass. Click & collect ranges from free to a few pounds, sometimes with a "picking fee" dressed in other words. Two traps recur. First, the fee is often revealed at the end of checkout, after an hour of list-building has created its own momentum — by then, most people pay it rather than start again, and stores know it. Second, saver passes and free-delivery thresholds are quoted against a headline basket size; if your real weekly basket is smaller, the pass may never pay for itself. Do the annual maths, not the monthly feeling.
Minimum baskets: the silent spend
Most online grocery services require a minimum order — commonly £25–£50 depending on the store and the service. A minimum basket is harmless when your list clears it naturally. It becomes a hidden charge the week your list comes to £31 against a £40 minimum, because the £9 of padding you add is rarely £9 of value: it's the extra biscuits, the second sauce, the premium version you'd never have chosen. Count padding at face value in the comparison. A store with no minimum, or a lower one, can be the cheaper shop for a small week even with higher shelf prices — and the reverse is true for a big week. This is one of the main reasons the cheapest store genuinely changes from week to week for the same household.
Substitutions: the cost nobody itemises
When an item is out of stock, a picker swaps in something else. Policies differ and they matter: some stores charge you the price of what you ordered when the substitute is dearer; some charge the substitute's price; some let you reject at the door or the collection point and refund automatically. The real cost isn't just price, though. A substitute you wouldn't have chosen — the wrong brand for a fussy eater, the wrong size for the recipe — can mean a second trip to a shop anyway, which quietly destroys the saving the delivery was meant to create. Collection has one underrated advantage here: you see the substitutes before you leave, and most stores let you hand them back on the spot. With delivery, check the receipt before the driver leaves if you can; every store's policy lets you reject, but the window is short.
Your time is a price too
Collection isn't free either — it costs a round trip. Be honest about what that trip costs you: fuel or a fare, parking, and twenty to forty minutes. But be honest in both directions. If the store is on a route you already travel — past the school, on the way home from work — the marginal cost of collecting is close to zero and delivery's fee is pure waste. If collecting means a special trip across town, delivery at £3 can be the bargain. BasketBadger's totals count the money fees by default, because those are identical for everyone; the time side is yours to judge, and the app shows the fee split out so you can.
A worked week. Same £64 basket, two stores. Store A: shelf total £64.10, delivery slot £4.50, minimum basket £40 — all-in £68.60. Store B: shelf total £66.30, click & collect free above £25 — all-in £66.30, plus a detour you already make. B wins by £2.30 despite losing on shelf prices by £2.20. Flip the week: you're isolating, nobody can collect, and B's delivery is £6.99 with a £50 minimum while A offers a £1.50 saver slot. Now A wins by a distance. Neither store changed. The fulfilment did.
The marketplace wrinkle
Ordering a supermarket's goods through a delivery marketplace is a third route: the marketplace's own prices can differ from the store's shelf prices, and it adds its own delivery and service fees. Sometimes that's worth it — speed, availability, a store that has no delivery service of its own. But it is a different price list, not the store's, and any honest comparison should show it as its own separate total rather than mixing marketplace prices into the shelf-price verdict. That's a rule BasketBadger follows: marketplace delivery appears, where it exists, as a clearly separate all-in delivered total you can compare against the winner — never blended in, and never allowed to move the verdict.
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