If your grocery bill feels heavier lately, cooking oil is probably part of the reason. It’s one of those items every Kenyan household buys without fail, and right now, the price tag depends heavily on which brand you reach for, what size you buy, and which supermarket you walk into.
Shop around, and you’ll notice something interesting: a litre of some well-known brands is going for upwards of Ksh300, and if you’re buying in bulk, some larger packs will set you back more than Ksh1,000.
A recent market survey backs this up too, putting the average price of a litre of cooking oil at around Ksh358, a sign that prices have crept back up after dipping earlier.
Still the brand most Kenyans reach for first. At Naivas, a 1-litre bottle is going for Ksh329, discounted from Ksh350 as part of a current promotion. Over at Carrefour, the 3-litre pack costs Ksh1,030 and the 5-litre goes for Ksh1,563, working out to roughly Ksh343 and Ksh313 per litre
Carrefour has the 2-litre Rina Vegetable Cooking Oil listed at Ksh660, which comes to about Ksh330 a litre
Also at Carrefour, a 3-litre bottle of Avena is currently discounted to Ksh925 from its usual Ksh999, bringing the per-litre cost down to roughly Ksh308. Marketed as a sunflower oil option, Rinsun’s 2-litre pack retails at Carrefour for Ksh945, or about Ksh473 per litre, noticeably pricier than the others.
Browsing the Naivas online catalogue, you’ll find no shortage of choice: Fresh Fri, Pika, Olitalia, Le Blanc, Somo, Noor, Rina, Rinsun and Avena all sit on the virtual shelf. Whatever your budget or preference for a particular type of oil, there’s likely something that fits.
Prices reflect online listings at the time of checking and may shift depending on location, ongoing promotions, and stock levels.
The math is pretty clear: buying bigger usually costs less per litre, but only if you can actually afford the upfront cost and have somewhere to store it.
Take Fresh Fri as an example: the 5-litre pack at Carrefour works out to about Ksh313 a litre, cheaper than the Ksh329 you’d pay per litre for the 1-litre bottle at Naivas.
There’s also a real gap between brands themselves, which is reason enough to check prices before committing to a shopping list.
This tracks with what earlier price comparisons across Naivas, Quickmart, Carrefour and Chandarana Foodplus have shown: cooking oil prices simply aren’t uniform across retailers.
With food budgets already stretched thin, timing your shopping around a promotion, or opting for a larger pack when you can swing it, might be one of the simpler ways to claw back a bit of savings on something every kitchen needs.
Read Also: A Look At Prices Of Sugar Across Naivas, Cleanshelf, Quickmart And Carrefour