A Survey Found a ₪244 Gap Between the Cheapest and Priciest Grocery Chains Serving Israel's Haredi Public. Our Own Index Says the 'Pricey' One Is Cheaper Than a Big Haredi Chain the Survey Never Named

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-14 · 5 min read

₪4.90–₪6.90 — The price of the identical Elite 'Smiles' badatz-certified chocolate cookies (150g) across chains Superclear tracks today — a 41% gap on the same barcode, the same week a survey crowned a different chain in the group 'the pricey one' of the Haredi-focused sector (Superclear data, August 2026)

This week the Institute for Retail Research, led by Dr. Hezi Gur-Mizrahi, published a survey checking 87 identical, leading products across 9 grocery chains that serve Israel's Haredi public. The headline finding: a ₪244 gap on the same shopping basket between the cheapest chain, Osher Ad, and the priciest, Ma'ayan 2000. We checked both chains — plus one more large Haredi-sector chain the survey never named — against Superclear's own independent index, built from the official pricing files chains are legally required to publish. The picture that emerges is more complicated than the headline number.

An 87-product basket, a gap of hundreds of shekels

Per the survey, published in Maariv, the gap builds up chain by chain: Osher Ad is the cheapest of all nine, Yesh Chesed runs about ₪69 above it on the full basket, Shefa Bracha HaShem about ₪135 above, and Ma'ayan 2000 — the priciest of the nine — about ₪244 above. In specific categories the gaps sound even more extreme: a frozen salmon fillet showed roughly a ₪45 gap between chains, another fish fillet about ₪18. The survey's own framing: "once a product clears the kashrut threshold, a familiar consumer battle begins — price, promotions, package size."

That gap carries different weight in the Haredi sector specifically. Per figures the survey cites, the average Haredi household has 5.1 members versus 2.8 in a non-Haredi Jewish household, with average gross monthly income around ₪14,816 against average monthly consumption spending of about ₪15,190. In other words: the average Haredi household spends more on consumption than it earns. A separate Kikar HaShabat survey from June found 47% of Haredi consumers shop regularly at Osher Ad, against just 18% at Yesh Chesed — so the gap being measured isn't theoretical; it runs straight through the chain where a large share of this community already shops.

What Superclear's index says about Osher Ad and Ma'ayan 2000

We checked the two chains at the survey's extremes against Superclear's own priciness index, which is built from tens of thousands of prices across every tracked chain, not 87 products. At the cheap end, the data lines up completely: Osher Ad isn't just the cheapest of the nine Haredi-sector chains — it's the cheapest of all 33 chains Superclear tracks nationwide, sitting 20% below the national median. That's about as strong a confirmation of the survey's finding as data can offer.

At the other end, though, the picture gets messier. Ma'ayan 2000, crowned "the pricey one" of the nine in the survey, sits just 8% below the national median on Superclear's index — still squarely in our "cheap" band. Ma'ayan 2000 is significantly pricier only relative to Osher Ad's extreme discount positioning, not relative to the Israeli market as a whole. Per our data it's still cheaper than most of the chains Israelis actually shop at every week, Shufersal, Carrefour and City Market included.

The big Haredi-sector chain the survey never named

And here's the twist: when we checked the rest of the chains serving the Haredi public in Superclear's index, we found one bigger than Ma'ayan 2000 that sits closer to the national median — meaning, per our numbers, it's pricier. Netiv Hased, a roughly 91-branch chain concentrated in cities with large Haredi populations — Bnei Brak, Elad, Ashdod and Modiin Illit — which acquired rival Barkol in 2019, sits just 6% below Superclear's national median, against 8% for Ma'ayan 2000 (Wikipedia). We don't know whether Netiv Hased was among the survey's nine chains — five went unnamed in the published report — but if it was, our index suggests it, not Ma'ayan 2000, should carry the "pricey" label.

It's also worth noting exactly who's being compared. Ma'ayan 2000 itself started life as "Kol Tuv" in 1997, and today runs 37 branches spanning Jerusalem, Beersheba, Beit Shemesh, Bnei Brak, Harish, Tiberias and Nazareth Illit — a mixed-sector chain that also serves a non-Haredi customer base, not one built for the Haredi market from the ground up (Wikipedia). That doesn't disqualify it from the survey — it clearly does serve Haredi shoppers too — but it means "chains serving the Haredi sector" spans both general-market discount chains and chains built and run specifically for the community.

Same barcode, a 41% gap

To check this at the single-product level, we looked in Superclear's data for one identical item carried across several of these chains: a box of Elite "Smiles" badatz-certified chocolate cookies, 150g — the same barcode everywhere. The result: ₪4.90 at Het Cohen, ₪5.90 at Ma'ayan 2000, ₪6.10 at Netiv Hased, and ₪6.90 at Shefa Bracha HaShem — a roughly 41% gap on the identical product, under the identical kosher supervision, in the same week. Notice the order: Ma'ayan 2000, the chain the survey crowned "pricey" of the nine, comes out cheaper on this specific item than both Shefa Bracha HaShem and Netiv Hased — two chains the full-basket survey ranked as cheaper than it. On Tnuva's 5% mehadrin cottage cheese, 250g, Osher Ad is still cheapest at ₪5.90, but Ma'ayan 2000 (₪6.50) trails Shefa Bracha HaShem and Netiv Hased (₪6.60 each) by only a few agorot — nothing like the gap an 87-product average might suggest.

The bottom line

The Institute for Retail Research survey holds up at one end: Osher Ad really is, decisively, the cheapest chain around — not just among chains serving the Haredi public, but of all 33 chains Superclear tracks in Israel. But the "priciest" label Ma'ayan 2000 picked up says more about who it's being compared against — Osher Ad's extreme discount positioning — than about where it actually sits in the broader Israeli market. And at least one large Haredi-sector chain, Netiv Hased, which the survey never named at all, is pricier by our numbers. If you shop at one of these chains, the survey's first message — "Osher Ad is the cheapest" — still holds. Its second message — "Ma'ayan 2000 is the pricey one" — depends on who you're comparing it to.

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