Big Tub vs Single Yogurt: The Swiss Unit-Price Test

Per kilo, the big tub almost always wins. A single 150 g pot of branded fruit yogurt lands around CHF 5.30 per kilo, the same style in a 500 g tub sits near CHF 3.90, and a plain own-brand kilo bucket drops under CHF 1.80. The number that exposes the gap is the Grundpreis — the price per kilo printed in small type on every Swiss shelf label.

Read it once and the maths is blunt. A two-person household getting through two pots a day pays roughly CHF 48 a month buying singles, against about CHF 14 for the same volume as own-brand tubs. That is close to CHF 400 a year for an identical breakfast, minus the fruit you stir in yourself.

Is a big yogurt tub really cheaper per kilo

Almost always, and usually by more than people expect. Filling, lidding and handling cost roughly the same whether a machine packs a 150 g pot or a 1 kg tub, so the small pot carries a far higher share of that fixed cost per gram of yogurt. That is why single-serve is the most expensive way to buy nearly any dairy product in Switzerland, where food already runs about 61% above the EU average.

The table below lines up the shelves you would see at Coop or Migros, with the Grundpreis worked out for each format. The pattern is consistent: every step up in pack size drops the price per kilo, and every step from brand to own-brand drops it again.

How to read the Grundpreis on the shelf label

Swiss price-indication rules require a unit price on pre-packed food, so every shelf label already does the hard part for you. Look for the smaller figure, usually in brackets, reading 100 g = or 1 kg =. That is the Grundpreis, and it is the only number that lets you compare a 150 g pot with a 500 g tub honestly, because it strips pack size out of the equation.

The catch is that the Grundpreis is printed small while the headline price is printed big, so the eye lands on the wrong one. Two products side by side can show CHF 0.80 and CHF 1.95 on the front, yet the CHF 1.95 tub is cheaper per kilo. If you want the full method for decoding these labels across the whole shop, our guide to the Grundpreis unit-price trick walks through it aisle by aisle.

Own-brand yogurt: where it wins

Plain nature yogurt is close to a commodity. Coop and Migros — which between them hold roughly 80% of the Swiss grocery market — fill their own-brand tubs from the same kind of dairies that supply the big labels, and for plain yogurt the difference in the pot is hard to taste. The difference on the receipt is not: own-brand plain yogurt routinely costs half the branded equivalent, and discounters Aldi and Lidl undercut even that, running roughly 12% below Migros on comparable staples.

Where brands earn their premium is flavour and texture — Greek-style, high-protein, a specific fruit blend or a set yogurt you genuinely prefer. Those are worth paying for when you notice them. For everyday plain yogurt that becomes a sauce, a marinade or a bowl with your own fruit, the own-brand tub is the rational default. We rank the formats in our look at Swiss supermarket own-brands.

The premium hidden in single pots

The single-serve pot sells convenience, and convenience is priced. You are paying for the extra plastic, the extra lid, the extra filling step and the portioned format that fits a lunchbox. Across the formats above, the move from a kilo tub to single pots often doubles the price per kilo, and can triple it once you also switch to own-brand — the same yogurt, wrapped in more packaging and sold in smaller units.

None of that is a scandal; it is a choice. The problem is buying single pots by default, without a glance at the Grundpreis, for yogurt that never leaves the house. That is the habit the unit-price test is built to catch, and it is exactly the kind of quiet overspend that stacks up against the average Swiss food bill of about CHF 636 a month.

When single pots are the smart buy anyway

Unit price is not the only cost. If a big tub goes off before you finish it, the cheapest Grundpreis on the shelf still lost you money. Single pots earn their premium when they prevent waste or genuinely fit your life:

• One-person households who would not get through a kilo before the date.
• Lunchboxes and Znüni, where a sealed pot travels without a second container.
• Variety, when a multipack of flavours keeps everyone eating yogurt at all.
• Portion control, if a fixed pot stops the open-tub habit of a bigger second helping.

The honest answer is a split: buy the big tub for the yogurt you eat daily, and keep a few single pots for the school bag. For the wider dairy picture, see our guide to the cheapest dairy in Switzerland.

Run the 20-second unit-price test

You do not need a spreadsheet in the aisle. The test is four quick steps:

1. Find the Grundpreis on each label — the small "1 kg =" or "100 g =" figure, not the big front price.
2. Compare like with like: plain against plain, Greek against Greek. Format, not flavour, is what you are testing.
3. Check the tub actually gets eaten. If half ends up binned, recalculate on what you finish, not what you buy.
4. Set a personal ceiling — say CHF 2 per kilo for plain yogurt — and make anything above it justify itself.

Consumer group K-Tipp runs the same style of per-kilo comparison across Swiss supermarkets, and its price tests keep landing on the same lesson: the format and the label, not the brand on the front, decide what you pay.

What the switch saves over a year

Yogurt is a small line on the receipt that repeats every week, which is exactly why it rewards a one-time decision. Two worked examples, using the prices in the table:

• Two-person household, two 150 g portions a day: about CHF 48 a month as single pots versus roughly CHF 14 as own-brand kilo tubs — a saving near CHF 34 a month, or CHF 400 a year.
• Family of four, four portions a day: about CHF 96 a month as singles versus roughly CHF 29 as tubs — close to CHF 67 a month, or CHF 800 a year.

Stir in your own fruit and the plain tub still lands well below the fruit pots it replaces. Keep buying a few singles for lunchboxes and the real-world saving settles a little lower — but on a purchase you make fifty times a year, even the modest version is worth the ten seconds it takes to read the label.