Supermarket pizza: rising costs of a budget favourite

What was once a quick, affordable meal is now becoming a costly indulgence. Ellie Muir wonders how we got here

-  Ellie Muir

It’s one of those Friday nights where my brain is imbued with an inevitable thought: I am craving pizza. I trot to my local supermarket and absentmindedly pick up a margherita pizza that looks worthy of an end-of-week dinner, plus a can of Diet Coke for good measure. At the checkout, I have a 5 note at the ready. That'll be 7.25 please,” says the server. I begrudgingly tap my card and scurry away. I check the receipt as I leave: the pizza was £5.75.

A trip down the pizza aisle used to be an inexpensive affair. There would be the pale, cardboard-tasting supermarket ownbrand pizzas for £1, Pizza Express Sloppy Giuseppes galore and Dr Oetkters stuffed in the freezer section. Being charged more than £3 would have been a punishable offence. You were guaranteed a simple, quick and satisfying meal (even if it wasn’t exactly high in nutritional value). Now, though, ready-meal aisles are filled with luxury, Neapolitan-style sourdough pizzas reminiscent of the Napoli slice that so aroused Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love.

There’s plenty of choice these days, and every supermarket is getting involved in gussying up the humble pizza. At Tesco, an oval-shaped funghi e tartufo pizza is topped with lashings of truffle, buttery mushrooms and mozzarella di bufala (£5.75). A Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference spicy pepperoni and roquito pizza with a “hand-stretched, wood-fired base” costs £4.75. Waitrose’s own brand Urban Pizza comes in a carbonara flavour as well as a pepperoni and sticky hot honey combo (both £5.50). M&S even sells a chicken Kyiv and garlic butter pizza (£6). It’s only at Lidl that I find a fancy-looking Italian ham, portobello mushroom and mascarpone Deluxe pizza for under a fiver (£3.99).