How 150 Swiss Households Saved CHF 30–60/Week on Groceries

On April 24, 2026, we opened a closed beta of Eini to the first wave of Swiss households who wanted help managing the weekly grocery bill. Fifteen days later, on May 9, we hit 150 households using the app on a real, weekly basis.

This post is a transparent breakdown of what we observed in those fifteen days. No marketing claims, no rounded-up numbers — the actual ranges, the household profiles, the patterns that worked, and the things that surprised us.

If you live in Switzerland and your grocery bill feels heavier than it should, this is for you.

The numbers, up front

The headline number — CHF 30 to 60 in weekly savings for a 2- to 4-person household — is a self-reported range from beta users comparing their first two Eini-planned weeks against their previous month's average grocery spend.

That is roughly CHF 130–260 per month, or CHF 1,560–3,120 per year for a single household. For context, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office puts the average Swiss household's monthly food spend at around CHF 636. So we're talking about a 20–40% reduction without buying worse food, just smarter food.

Where the savings actually came from

Across the 150 households, three behaviors did almost all of the heavy lifting. Not all three need to be present in every week — most users hit at least two of them.

1. Promotion-anchored planning (≈45% of total savings)

This is the single biggest lever. Instead of choosing a recipe and then shopping for whatever it calls for, the meal plan starts from this week's promotions across Coop, Migros, Lidl, Aldi, Denner and Aligro — roughly 1,800 of them, refreshed every morning at 6 AM — and works backward into recipes that use what's already discounted.

Concrete example from the first week of the beta: chicken breast was at -30% at Coop and Mediterranean vegetables were on Aktion at Migros. Roughly 40% of households that week ended up with some variation of one-tray chicken and roasted vegetables, plus a leftover-night repurpose into a wrap or grain bowl. Same recipe, dramatically lower cost, because the protein and vegetables were on sale at the same time.

2. Cross-store basket optimization (≈30% of total savings)

Swiss grocery pricing is fragmented for a reason: each chain dominates a different category. Lidl and Aldi tend to win on staples, dairy and own-brand pantry items. Migros and Coop fight closely on fresh produce and quality cuts. Denner cleans up on beverages and weekly specials. Aligro shines if you buy in bulk.

Beta users who selected three or more retailers in their setup saved roughly twice as much per week as users who selected only one. The split that emerged most often was Migros plus a discounter (Lidl or Aldi), sometimes with Denner added for beverages.

3. Less waste through tighter lists (≈25% of total savings)

This one is harder to measure precisely but came up in nearly every piece of feedback. When the shopping list is generated from a plan instead of intuition, the impulse purchases drop — and so do the soft cucumbers in the back of the fridge that get thrown out on Sunday.

The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) estimates that the average household in Switzerland throws away roughly 90 kg of edible food per person per year, worth an estimated CHF 600 per person. Even cutting that in half is a meaningful number on its own.

Three real household profiles

Aggregate numbers are useful for orientation, but the variance within those numbers tells the more honest story. Three patterns we saw repeatedly during the beta:

What didn't work

Three things genuinely surprised us in the first 15 days, and they are worth being upfront about.

One: Discount loyalty coupons (Cumulus, Supercard, Lidl Plus) are not yet integrated. Users repeatedly mentioned that they could stack another 10–25% on top of the public promotions if those personal coupons were factored into the plan. This is a real gap, and it is the most-requested feature from the beta. It is being prioritized for a future release, but it involves a privacy and engineering conversation we want to get right.

Two: Recipe matching for very specific dietary patterns (strict ketogenic, low-FODMAP, halal-only protein sources) sometimes pushed users toward a narrower subset of promotions, which reduced the savings ceiling. The catalog is being expanded weekly in all four languages, but if your dietary constraints are tight, the savings will skew toward the lower end of the range until coverage improves.

Three: Granularity at the individual store level. Two Coops in the same canton can have different fresh produce prices on a given day. Eini currently optimizes at the canton level, not the store level, which is fine for shelf-stable products but leaves a small amount of savings on the table for fresh items. This is the next layer of granularity in development.

How to start, even without an app

If you take nothing else from this post, the three patterns above are independently useful regardless of whether you ever open Eini.

1. Start with this week's promotions, not with recipes. Open the flyers from the chains nearest to you on Sunday evening. Scan for proteins and core vegetables on Aktion. Then build two or three meals that use them.
2. Pick at least two retailers, not one. Even the simplest split — your closest "main" store plus one discounter for staples — typically captures most of the available cross-store savings without making your week complicated.
3. Write the list before you walk in. Anything that is not on the list goes back on the shelf. This single rule cuts the average household's bill by 8–15% on its own.

The reason an app helps is not that any of these patterns are hard. It is that doing them every single week, in four languages, across six retailers and 1,800 weekly promotions, is a real time investment. Eini exists to compress that hour of Sunday-evening flyer-scanning into about 60 seconds.

What comes next

The beta is open to anyone in Switzerland. The next round of work focuses on three things: bringing in personal loyalty coupons (Cumulus, Supercard, Lidl Plus) so the savings stack on top of public promotions; expanding store-level granularity for fresh produce; and adding the next module of the broader Eini roadmap — beyond groceries, into the other places where money quietly leaks in Switzerland.

If you try the beta and something works for your household — or doesn't — write to us at info@eini.app. The numbers in this post exist because 150 households told us what they were seeing. The next post like this one will exist because of yours.