Yochananof's CEO Says His Chain Nets Only 3% and Blames Taxes for the Cost of Living. His Numbers Check Out. His Own Branches Don't Agree.

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-09 · 5 min read

25% — The gap between Yochananof's cheapest branch (Holon Hamerkava) and its priciest (Tel Aviv's Ahad Ha'am) on an identical comparison basket — per Superclear's index, August 2026, the same month its CEO said taxes, not retailers, are to blame for the cost of living

On an episode of the "Managers Program" podcast that aired July 17, 2026, Eitan Yochananof, CEO and owner of the Yochananof supermarket chain, made clear he's tired of how the public sees retailers. "The state's constant enthusiasm for piling taxes on us — that's what creates the cost of living," he said. Then, addressing the criticism aimed at chains like his own: "To come and blame us for the cost of living when we're making 3% profit is a bit pathetic" (Ynet).

That's a claim you can actually test. Yochananof isn't a private company hiding behind closed books — it's publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (Globes), files quarterly reports, and runs 47 branches that sit inside Superclear's own price index. So we checked: is the 3% figure real? And if it is, does that actually mean the sole culprit behind what you pay is the Treasury, and not any pricing decision the chain itself makes?

Yochananof's own numbers back up the claim

In its Q3 2025 report, Yochananof posted revenue of ₪1.3 billion and net profit of ₪40.4 million — a 23.2% drop in profit from the year before, even as sales rose 5.1%. Operating margin fell to 5.7% of revenue (Calcalist). Net profit of ₪40.4 million on ₪1.3 billion in revenue works out to roughly 3.1% of turnover — almost exactly the number Yochananof cited in the interview.

By Q1 2026, the trend had reversed: revenue of over ₪1.4 billion (up about 19%) and net profit of ₪60 million — a 45% jump from ₪41 million in the same quarter a year earlier (Globes). That puts net margin at roughly 4.3%, a touch above what he stated, but in the same range. In other words: the "3%" isn't a number invented for the podcast. The chain's last two published quarters both back it up.

What Superclear's own index says about Yochananof vs. its rivals

Nationally, Yochananof doesn't look bad either. Per Superclear's own price index, as of August 2026 Yochananof sits 14% below the national median — exactly the same distance as Rami Levy, the chain the public perceives as "the cheap one." By our own numbers, the two chains are currently in a dead tie on the ranking of the 33 chains we track. If the only question were "is this chain pricier than average," Yochananof would pass easily.

But that isn't the only measurement we have.

Same chain, same day, a quarter apart

Superclear's index doesn't just rank chains against each other — it also measures the price gap within each chain, branch to branch. And at Yochananof, that internal gap is relatively wide: the chain ranks 8th of 33 for internal price variance.

Looking at the underlying data directly, Yochananof's cheapest branch — Holon Hamerkava — sits 21% below the national median. Its priciest — the Ahad Ha'am branch in Tel Aviv — sits just 1% below it. That's a gap of roughly 25% on an identical comparison basket, on the same day, at the exact same chain. (Superclear has documented a similar pattern before, when chains like Yochananof converted branches into pricier "city" formats — but this gap holds up today regardless of which sign hangs over the door.)

VAT in Israel is a flat, nationwide rate. Import duties don't change between Holon and Tel Aviv. If taxes, not the retailer, are what determines what you pay, it's hard to explain how the same chain, carrying the exact same tax burden, ends up a quarter apart between two of its own branches.

The industry-wide picture

The broader context isn't especially flattering to the claim either. A Competition Authority study covering 2019 through mid-2023 found that retail chains' share of the food sector's combined gross-profit pie grew from 56% to 63.5%, while suppliers' share fell from 44% to 36.5%. Per that same study, of every ₪10 a consumer spends, about ₪2.4 lands as retailer gross profit, versus roughly ₪4.9 in supplier procurement costs (Calcalist). This is a sector-wide study — it doesn't examine Yochananof specifically, and it doesn't speak to net margin after operating costs. But the direction it points to — chains gaining ground against suppliers, not losing it — runs counter to the "blame the tax code, not us" framing. A separate Calcalist piece from the same period put it more bluntly: food chains were "celebrating price hikes with improved profitability" (Calcalist).

So who's right

The honest answer is: both, depending on what you're asking. If the question is "is Yochananof lying when it says it nets around 3-4%" — the answer, per its own filed reports, is no. The figure is real, and matches what the CEO said on the podcast.

But if the question is "does that mean chains shouldn't be scrutinized, and that what you pay is set entirely in the Treasury" — Superclear's own data, drawn from Yochananof's own branches, says otherwise. A thin net margin at the national level is entirely compatible with large branch-to-branch pricing gaps — because a national average is just that, an average, and averages hide exactly the kind of decisions a chain makes about where to price higher and where to price lower, with no connection to VAT rates. The bottom line for Yochananof shoppers: the CEO isn't making up the 3%. But he isn't the only one deciding what you pay, either — which branch you're standing in matters just as much.

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