Tesco’s chief executive officer, Ken Murphy, personally took home over 9.1 million pounds last year, higher than any other supermarket CEO in the UK. It would take the average Tesco employee around 334 years to earn this amount.
Tesco
Tesco is the biggest supermarket in the UK – they hold nearly 30% of the market share as of 2026 and are forecast to earn annual profits of around 3.1 billion pounds this year. Despite this, Tesco supposedly suffered from slow sales over the 2025 Christmas period due to efforts to ‘keep prices down’, something that seems to contradict the fact that Tesco scored sixth place in Which’s 2025 Cheapest Supermarket list and has been found to overinflate its prices for non-members.
Tesco also offer the Aldi Price Match, which is designed to provide similar items to Aldi and offer the cheaper prices too. It almost sounds too good to be true – because it is. BBC Panorama conducted an investigation and found Tesco’s matched products were consistently of a lower quality than Aldi’s. For instance, for the same price, Aldi’s chicken nuggets contained sixty percent chicken, whereas Tesco’s only contained 39% chicken. Aldi’s chilli con carne contained 27% beef compared to Tesco’s, coming in at a mere 15%.
Sainsbury’s
Arguably the second biggest supermarket in the UK is Sainsbury’s, who hold around 15% of the market share. Remaining consistent with how the majority of supermarkets operate, Sainsbury’s is no stranger to overinflating their non-member prices either. For instance, Birds Eye Chicken Nuggets were £5 for everyone but then inflated to £5.50 after the Nectar offer was put into place. On top of this sneaky overinflation of prices, Sainsbury’s have also been slowly removing their Aldi price match items with them falling to 556 items in February of 2025, down from 681 in November 2024.
With consumers receiving less value on products and a lack of transparency on prices, what is Sainsbury’s doing to combat this? They are paying their CEO, Simon Roberts, an excess of five million pounds. This would take the average Sainsbury’s employee 184 years to achieve.
Aldi and Lidl
These are grouped together for two reasons – both supermarkets started in Germany and then opened branches in the UK afterwards, and both shops generally offer fewer branded products than Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
Lidl’s product quality can be deemed as lower than average, with them only receiving a score of two out of a possible five on Which’s overall quality of own-label and fresh products. Although cheaper than Tesco and Sainsbury’s, Lidl does not do enough to prevent its suppliers from using chemical pesticides on its produce and it leaves it to a third-party to address the task. Furthermore, Aldi is generally behind other supermarkets for ensuring its workers and consumers are safe from pesticides used on produce. So, while they both offer cheaper alternatives than Tesco and Sainsbury’s, the consumer should not have to put their health at risk to afford food.
The government
Although supermarkets cannot be solely to blame for the food poverty crisis, they play a large part in allowing the inequality and wealth hoarding to continue. The government has done little to address or stop this profiteering by supermarkets and allow a fairer price on foods. In fact, in 2022, most supermarkets began to remove the best-before date on certain items, especially fresh produce, to reduce waste. However, instead of reducing waste on their own dime, supermarkets have passed on the problem to consumers and allowed the same high prices for lower quality produce.
One step the government could take to combat this profiteering is a price cap, as seen in Hungary and Croatia. This would help ensure staple foods such as milk, eggs and vegetables are more affordable and prices do not sky-rocket. This idea was suggested in 2023 but was strongly rejected by supermarket executives – possibly due to the fear of having their own salaries reduced. Another step that could be taken is a general profit-cap for supermarkets – ensuring their CEOs are not taking away such large sums whilst consumers are struggling.
So, while millions of people in the UK suffer from food poverty, the CEOs of supermarkets continue to earn abhorrent amounts of money and offer low quality items to their consumers. All while the government refuses to address the blatant wealth gap and inequality in the country. Until this is addressed, consumers will carry on being faced with unfair prices, low quality products, and an inability to afford having their basic needs met.
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