A New Survey Just Knocked Osher Ad Down to Third Place. Our Full-Year Index Still Calls It Israel's Cheapest Chain — By 5 Points Over the Store That Beat It
By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-15 · 5 min read
5 points — The gap that survives between Osher Ad and Rami Levy in Superclear's full-year index — 19% below the national median versus 14% — even though an August 2026 survey of discount-aisle prices alone flipped the order and ranked Osher Ad only third
In August 2026, the Institute for Retail Research, led by Dr. Hezi Gur-Mizrahi, published a weekly survey that checked an identical 110-product basket in the discount aisles of seven grocery chains. The headline that came out of it: "Osher Ad in third place" — the chain that Superclear's own year-round index consistently ranks as Israel's cheapest lost this round to Rami Levy and to another chain most Israelis have probably never heard of. We checked that finding against our full-year index, which is built from every price file the country's large retailers are legally required to publish year-round — not just what's sitting on the discount shelf in a given week.
The survey: Rami Levy first, Neto Hisachon a surprise
The check ran through the Pricez comparison site, in the discount sections of seven different chains, to see how much the same shopper pays for the same basket when only the chain's name changes. The result: Rami Levy led with a basket costing ₪1,209.65, Neto Hisachon surprised in second place at ₪1,238.88, Osher Ad came third at ₪1,244.74, Carrefour Hyper was close behind at ₪1,256.37, then Yohananof at ₪1,257.37, and at the expensive end, King Store at ₪1,575.72 and Tiv Taam at ₪1,655.99 — a gap of ₪446.34, nearly 37%, between the cheapest and priciest basket (Maariv).
Inside the basket, individual products showed even sharper gaps: nectarines sold for ₪4.90/kg at Rami Levy versus ₪22.90 at Tiv Taam — a 367% gap. Sweet potatoes went for ₪2.90 versus ₪11.90, and melon jumped from ₪1.90 to ₪5.90 between chains. The article itself, worth noting, warns against a hasty conclusion: "beware of the headline 'Israel's cheapest chain' ... a total basket is an important comparison tool, but the new consumer is learning to break it apart too" — meaning even the survey's own author doesn't present the ranking as a final verdict.
What Superclear's full-year index shows
Superclear computes an annual priciness index for every chain based on every official price file it publishes throughout the year — not just a curated set of promotional items for one week. Checking the six chains from the survey that we do track, the picture shifts substantially: Osher Ad is the cheapest of all 33 chains in our index, 19% below the national median. Rami Levy and Yohananof sit in roughly the same spot, 14% below median — cheap, but well behind the top, and nowhere near first place the way the survey found. King Store, ranked second-priciest in the discount-basket survey, sits just 4% below median in our data — "cheap," not "expensive." And Tiv Taam, which led the survey as the priciest chain by a 37% margin over Rami Levy, sits just 1% above the national median in our index — nearly average, not at the top end.
Yeinot Bitan, which operates the Carrefour brand in Israel — including the Hyper format the survey checked separately — is the one chain where the two measures roughly line up: 2% above median in our data, a mid-table position in the discount survey too. Worth flagging: our index blends all of the chain's formats (148 stores) under one number, and doesn't separate "Carrefour Hyper" from other formats the way the survey did — so this particular comparison isn't perfectly apples-to-apples, though the general direction matches.
The chain nobody can check
Neto Hisachon, which took the survey's surprise second place, belongs to the Sapir Group — the same family-owned group that also runs Super Sapir, which is in our index (66 stores, 1% below median). Neto Hisachon itself, by contrast, doesn't appear anywhere among the 34 chains Superclear tracks. It's a discount banner aimed mainly at the ultra-Orthodox market, with a flagship branch that opened in Ashdod in 2024 (Ice) and further expansion under way, including a first branch announced for Beersheba (Ynet) — but unlike its sister chain, its price files aren't part of the dataset we scrape. That means this one-time survey result is currently the only public signal about its pricing at all. No systematic comparison tool, ours or anyone else's, sees it.
Why the numbers don't line up
The most likely explanation is a methodological gap between the two measures. The Institute for Retail Research survey, by its own definition, checks discount-aisle prices only — items a chain chooses to feature as that week's "deal" to pull shoppers in. Superclear's index, by contrast, is built from the complete price files every large chain is legally required to publish — every product, in every store, all year round, not just whatever's chosen as that week's marketing spearhead. A chain can run an aggressive promotion on a narrow basket of items while its overall pricing, or the "regular" price behind the deal, tells a completely different story. That's likely exactly what's happening with Tiv Taam, a chain known more for imported and specialty goods than for discount positioning: its promotional shelf is less competitive, but its pricing across the full year sits much closer to the national average than an August discount basket would suggest.
The bottom line
"Israel's cheapest chain" is a headline that depends entirely on what's being measured: a narrow basket of promotional items in a given week, or everything a chain sells across an entire year. The new survey answers the first question; Superclear's index is built to answer the second — and both answers are real, each within its own scope. Anyone trying to work out where their weekly shop, not just their bargain-hunting, actually pays off should look at both.