Someone posted online recently asking where people do their grocery shopping. Simple enough question. The thread ran long and the range of answers was genuinely interesting, not because anyone said anything revolutionary, but because it illustrated just how much cognitive load the average household is quietly carrying around something as mundane as buying butter beans.

The short answer from most people: Aldi for the bulk of it, one of the big two for the gaps. That’s more or less where my household has landed too, though we arrived there slowly and without any particular plan.

A Reddit post caught my eye this week that I think deserves a lot more attention than it’s probably getting. Someone has spent the last 18 months meticulously tracking Woolworths catalogue pricing data — actual receipts, actual numbers — and has now made it all publicly available in a Google Sheet. Given that the ACCC is currently sniffing around supermarket pricing practices, the timing couldn’t be more pointed.

My first reaction was honestly just admiration. Eighteen months. That’s not a weekend project. That’s a commitment. As someone who works in tech and has a reasonable appreciation for the unglamorous grind of data collection, I know how tedious this kind of thing gets. You start enthusiastic, then life happens, and somewhere around month four you’re questioning all your choices. This person kept going, and now we have something genuinely useful.