The new Just Essentials range of basic grocery items, at lower prices, has been launched at Asda (June 2022).

This has new, bright yellow, branding, but if you focus on their Just Essentials range it can save you money on your shopping as you know that what you’re selecting is the cheapest brand of that type of product in the store.

It makes price comparison easier as these products will have the lowest £/Kg price when compared to the other brands they sell instore.

You can view the whole range on this link: Asda Just Essentials.

I have just run through and counted how many products are in the range and it looks like 91; I’m happy to be corrected if wrong!

How to Filter to Find Products

At the top of the page you can sort products by price, or even individual nutrition details.

The Brand drop down box is pretty irrelevant here as they’re all in the Asda Just Essentials range.

It’s unfortunate, you can’t filter by category of product here – you’ll have to find them the other way round, by finding all of one product type, then choosing the Asda Just Essentials brand.

Obviously they don’t want customers to focus on their cheapest ranges, nor to find them “easily” – but, with only 91 products in the range it’s not too arduous to just look through them all.

Prices Have Gone Up

The prices I can see here still represent a 2-5p per product price increase compared to what I’d expected to see if I’d been shopping in Asda 2-3 months ago, but all prices have gone up, so you can’t knock that.

Today, the cheapest beans in Asda are 25p/can, (61p/Kg); the cheapest sliced white loaf is 39p.

My Opinion on the Asda Just Essentials Range

It’s good that it exists and is well branded, but it seems to be lacking in what I’d call essentials! However, looking around, they still have the Asda Smart Price ranges, also known for their keen prices. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve got this dual branding running through their lines… maybe time will tell.

Perhaps there’s a transition period as products flip from one to the other – watch that space!

Strawberry jam isn’t in the Just Essentials range, but Asda Smart Price jam at 31p/jar is.

I had heard Asda planned to ensure their cheapest ranges were always stocked at all their branches – and maybe this is the “hidden secret” – perhaps they’re committing to these yellow label Just Essentials ranges to fulfil that promise, which then allows them to pick/choose which Asda Smart Price products are stocked!

I’ll take it for what it is…… there are TWO cheaper/cheapest ranges in Asda now: look out for the yellow Just Essentials labels and the Green Asda Smart Price labels!

By making it easier for people to retain access to cheaper, budget, ranges, they’ve simultaneously managed to make it a little more confusing for some!

Happy money saving!

Cost of Living Price Update September 2022

Asda: 3 Items Per Customer Rule

Just a quick update. The Essentials range became so popular (mostly driven by social media viral posts where people filled their trolleys!) that Aldi felt it necessary to limit purchases to “3 items per customer”. These restrictions were only applied to the Essentials range + were applied “per product”.

You could buy 3 items of any product; you could buy 3 items of everything in their range. What you couldn’t do was buy 4 of a single product.

This doesn’t affect me as I’m only ever buying 1-2 of any item at any one time, but it caught a few people short when they wanted to buy 4-6 of one item and “stock up”. Asda said it was necessary so that more people stood a chance of buying what they went shopping for and not being faced with empty shelves.