Israelis Crowned Rami Levy 'The Cheap Chain.' The Price Data Says Otherwise.

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-30 · 4 min read

6 points — The gap between Rami Levy (14% below the national median) and the chain that's actually cheapest, Osher Ad (20% below median) — per Superclear's price index, July 2026, the same month a national consumer study crowned Rami Levy 'the cheap chain'

For the past few weeks, Israeli headlines have been declaring that the public has already decided: Rami Levy is the country's "cheap chain." A large-scale consumer study examined not just opinions but actual shopping habits, and found that's exactly the image most Israelis carry around. The problem: during those very same months, two other independent price checks — including our own — looked at where prices are actually lowest, and both came back with a different answer.

The Study That Crowned a "Cheap Chain"

On July 13, 2026, Maariv published an analysis based on research by the Institute for Retail Research, led by Dr. Hezi Gur-Mizrahi, which surveyed 726 consumers and mapped where their big weekly shop happens, how their basket splits across chains, and when they actually switch stores (Maariv). The headline finding: each chain occupies a fixed "role" in the shopper's mind — Rami Levy is where the big, cheap shop happens, Yochananof is the "experience" chain, Shufersal is the accessible "top-up" chain. Gur-Mizrahi made the same point in Walla Finance: shoppers don't pick a supermarket off a price spreadsheet alone — habit, convenience, trust and familiarity with a store matter just as much (Walla Finance).

An earlier study by the same institute, from December 2025, already complicated the picture: Rami Levy leads on perceived low prices, but suffers on entirely different dimensions — cleanliness, order, service and atmosphere. As it put it at the time, "consumers appreciate the low prices, but note that the experience itself is less pleasant and sometimes even off-putting" (Maariv). A separate piece by the same institute from October 2025 found that the Tishrei 2025 holiday basket had gotten more than 8% pricier year over year, and noted that the historical price gaps between chains — once as wide as 25% — have narrowed considerably, meaning even Rami Levy, the chain people associate with savings, may no longer deliver the edge shoppers expect (Maariv).

Two More Price Checks, Same Answer — and It's Not Rami Levy

Here's what the headlines missed: during those exact same months, two independent checks that looked at actual prices rather than image reached the same conclusion — and it wasn't Rami Levy.

Lobby 99, a consumer organization, checked around 500 holiday products at eight leading chains using the official transparency data chains are legally required to publish, and released its findings on May 13, 2026: "the clear winner is the Osher Ad chain, showing prices 17.2% below average." Rami Levy (large format) came second, 16.1% below average, with Yochananof third at 11.3% (N12/Mako).

Superclear's own price index, built from the actual published prices of all 33 chains we track, reaches the same conclusion, with an even wider gap: Osher Ad sits about 20% below the national median — the cheapest chain in our entire index. Rami Levy sits about 14% below median: cheap, but not in first place, and in fact essentially tied with Yochananof (also about 14% below) — the very chain the behavioral study defines as the "experience" chain, not the cheap one (Superclear data, July 2026).

So Why Does Everyone Think Rami Levy Is the Cheapest

The answer probably isn't the price itself — it's access. Rami Levy runs about 99 branches in Israel, per our data — roughly four times Osher Ad's 24. If Osher Ad really is the cheapest chain but most Israelis simply don't live near one of its stores, the "best deal in practice" becomes whichever chain is actually reachable, not whichever is cheapest on paper — which is exactly the point the Institute for Retail Research's behavioral study is making: habit, distance and convenience weigh at least as much as price, sometimes more.

There's one more detail neither study checked, and our data exposes it: even within Rami Levy itself, "cheap" isn't a fixed number. The gap between the chain's cheapest and priciest branch, per Superclear's index, runs about 13 percentage points — from stores sitting just 6% below the national median to ones sitting 18% below it. At Osher Ad, by contrast, the gap between branches is only about 4 points. In other words: walk into "a Rami Levy," and you can't actually be sure whether you're getting the bargain version the surveys describe, or one considerably pricier — with no sign on the door to tell you which.

The Bottom Line

None of this means Rami Levy is lying about its image — the chain genuinely runs well below the national median, and even accounting for the spread between its branches, it still beats the average most of the time. But the title "cheapest chain in Israel" belongs, according to every independent price check run this year — Lobby 99's and Superclear's alike — to a different chain: Osher Ad. If saving money is the actual goal and distance isn't a dealbreaker, it's worth checking whether an Osher Ad branch is within reasonable reach — rather than settling for the reputation everyone already knows.

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