Cheese deals in Switzerland: when Gruyère, raclette and fondue get cheap

Cheese goes on promotion all year round in Switzerland, and since February 2026 every major chain has reset its promo week on Thursday. The busiest window is raclette and fondue season, roughly autumn to late winter. Because pack and piece sizes vary widely, the per-100g price is the only fair comparison. You can see this week's live cheese deals in the Rappn app.

Sources checked regularly: Migros press release on the new promo start (February 2026), watson.ch, the RTS flyer analysis via watson.ch, MySwitzerland.com, Swissmilk/TSM, foodaktuell.ch, Switzerland Cheese Marketing and SECO on the Price Indication Ordinance. This week's exact prices are live in the Rappn app, not in this guide.

Rappn is the only neutral grocery price comparison app in Switzerland, with no commercial agreements with any retailer.

How often does cheese go on promotion?

At roughly 23 kg per person per year, Switzerland is one of the world's biggest cheese consumers (source: Swissmilk/TSM). Cheese sits firmly in the promo carousel: Coop even runs a dedicated, weekly changing cheese-deals category on coop.ch. Since 5 February 2026, Migros and Denner have also started their promo week on Thursday, joining Coop, Aldi Suisse and Lidl (source: Migros press release, watson.ch). In practice, the cards are reshuffled every Thursday, at all major chains at the same time.

There is no guarantee that your favourite cheese is discounted somewhere every single week, though. An RTS analysis of 415 flyer products found that sweets, snacks and heavily processed products make up around 57 percent of advertised promotions, while dairy, eggs, legumes and meat together account for only about 19 percent (source: RTS via watson.ch). Cheese deals are rarer than chocolate deals. Instead, the classics rotate: Gruyère, Emmentaler, raclette cheese and fondue mixes keep reappearing across the season, just not every week at every chain.

A practical side effect of the Thursday start: shopping early in the promo week gives you the widest choice, as popular promo items such as raclette slices can be partly sold out towards the end of the week. And because all flyers change at once, Thursday is the single best day for a cross-chain comparison.

Raclette and fondue season: the window that matters most

With cheese, the season makes the difference. Around 65 percent of all fondue sales in Switzerland happen between September and December, and roughly one in two households buys fondue at all (source: MySwitzerland.com). Raclette cheese, at a good 17,000 tonnes, is the country's most-produced semi-hard cheese (source: Switzerland Cheese Marketing). As soon as the days get shorter, demand and advertising pressure rise together: from autumn onwards, retailers from Denner to Coop run dedicated fondue and raclette theme worlds.

For deal hunting this means two things. First: from about September to February the choice of raclette and fondue offers is at its widest, because these are exactly the products chains use to pull shoppers into stores. Second: peak season is when comparing pays off most, because when several chains advertise raclette at the same time, the gap between the cheapest and the priciest offer per kilo can be substantial. In summer the offer thins out but does not disappear: raclette and fondue have long been year-round shelf products, only the advertising push is missing (source: Südostschweiz).

AOP classics vs own brands: two promo logics

Gruyère AOP, Emmentaler AOP or Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP follow a different price logic than own brands. For Le Gruyère AOP, the interprofession of milk producers, cheese dairies and refiners negotiates quantities and reference prices, and production is quantity-managed (source: foodaktuell.ch). The shelf price therefore moves slowly, and a promotion is usually a time-limited retailer discount on that stable base price. If you want a specific AOP cheese, the best move is to wait until it comes around in the rotation rather than hoping for a permanently lower price.

Budget own brands such as M-Budget or Prix Garantie work the other way round: they are designed as permanently low-price lines and rarely appear in the weekly promotions. That suggests a simple double check: first see what the own brand permanently costs, then check whether a branded classic on promotion drops below it. That happens, but it is never guaranteed, and that is exactly what a neutral comparison is for.

The per-100g check before every purchase

Cheese comes in countless formats: block, slices, grated, portioned, counter or pre-packed. Switzerland's Price Indication Ordinance therefore requires pre-packed measurable goods to show the unit price alongside the retail price, for example per 100 g or per kilo (source: SECO). That unit price is what you should compare, not the pack price. A promotion on a small pack can still be more expensive per 100 g than the regular price of a larger piece.

• Slices and grated cheese: pre-cut or grated cheese often costs more per 100 g than a piece off the block, because you pay for the processing.
• Fondue mixes: whether a ready-made pouch or a self-mixed blend works out cheaper is best checked via the per-100g price. You will find a worked example on the fondue night cost page.
• Read the promo conditions: some discounts only apply to multipacks or with a loyalty card, which changes the effective per-100g price.

To know what a normal cheese price even looks like, start with the overview of cheese prices in Switzerland, complemented by milk and cheese prices. And for what a whole evening costs, see the raclette night cost breakdown.

This week's cheese deals, live in Rappn

This guide explains when cheese gets cheap, but deliberately names no specific weekly prices, because they change every Thursday. The current cheese deals from Migros, Coop, Aldi, Lidl, Denner, Aligro and Otto's are in the Rappn app, updated daily, searchable by product and filterable by category, price and canton. Over 10,000 offers, over 3,000 supermarkets, 100% free. For the full weekly rhythm of every chain, see the Swiss promotion calendar.