Meat-free Mondays, a jump in online sales and an ever-expanding range of home brand products helped push Coles’ profits to $1.1 billion as Australians cut down on dining out to eat at home in the cost-of-living crush.

“Customers continue to eat more at home, cut back on treats, eat less red meat and reduce their alcohol consumption,” Coles chief executive Leah Weckert told reporters on Tuesday morning.

Revenues rose 3.2 per cent to nearly $43.6 billion in the year to June 30 and net profits lifted 2.1 per cent as shoppers increasingly gravitated towards Coles’ lower-priced private label items, which sold at double the rate of its supplier brands.

Home brand sales rose 8.6 per cent to $13.5 billion, driven particularly by its premium range, Coles Finest, which grew its sales by 20.4 per cent. Over the year, the supermarket chain expanded its range by more than 1100 Coles-label items.

“Do we think we’ve got a ceiling on this? If we do, we certainly haven’t seen it yet,” Weckert said. “So we will continue to invest and look to bring new value products into that range.”

Food sales at the company’s supermarkets rose 4.3 per cent to $39 billion, while liquor sales were largely flat at $3.7 billion.

In good news for shoppers, price growth in Coles’ supermarket aisles has started to cool down over the year, with inflation for products excluding tobacco slowing to 1.5 per cent in the six months through June from 2.9 per cent in the December half. The figure was 2.2 per cent for the year.

Meat and bread prices came down, as did prices for avocados and apples, but the cost of some fresh produce such as bananas and tomatoes has risen recently.

In that context, Weckert warned that the price of chocolate is set to ramp up. “There are some inflationary headwinds that are coming, and probably the most significant one that I would call out there is cocoa,” she said.