Food shopping lifehacks?

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  • HarrietSabre
    HarrietSabre Posts: 186 Member
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    Oh yeah, and hit up Polish or Asian food shops for some stuff, they're surprisingly cheap.
  • sloseph
    sloseph Posts: 157 Member
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    the biggest tip i can give is get your meat from a local reputable butcher

    the quality is so much better and the price is most of the time a bit cheaper, the best thing is they are happy to bag it all up for you as you want

    so we go once a month and months worth of meat and freeze it in individual portions, so for example we get bags of mince in 200g bags, then every night we sit down and decide what to have for tea the next day then simply grab a bag out the freezer and hey presto we have food for tea

    i remember the first time we got some chicken breasts from the butchers i thought something might be off about that because they smelt funny to me, it turns out fresh chicken that isn't full of water actually smells of chicken, i can't stand to eat supermarket chicken now, it doesn't taste of anything
  • sloseph
    sloseph Posts: 157 Member
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    also if you have a local greengrocer near by get you're veg from there, we get a weeks worth of lovely veg for about £5, we could probably get a 4 pack of potatoes and a bag of carrots for that in tesco
  • Tuesday_Next
    Tuesday_Next Posts: 1
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    The best technique I've found for cutting grocery shopping costs is to keep a running tally of how much my shopping is costing me as I load up the trolly. A small £3 purchase here and a £5 purchase there soon adds up. It was a real eye opener, and led me to keeping a keen eye on what I actually buy, rather than just going "ooh, I fancy that this week".

    I also make a list before going shopping (having researched recipes & planned meals for the week) and stick to it, not adding anything to it unless absolutely necessary. Again, cuts down on the impulse purchases.

    Shopping at around 5/6pm allows you to snap up the end of day bargains, typically meat and bread products. A freezer is your friend here, chicken that's due to go out of date that day can be frozen for weeks and defrosted when needed. Similarly for bread rolls - freeze them individually, defrost as needed.

    If you can, doing your shopping at markets/butchers/greengrocers/bakers can be better. I find veg especially is cheaper, and you can get non-standard cuts of meat. they're not always cheaper though, depending on what you buy & where you go, but the quality is almost certainly a lot better, especially with meat.
  • Tea_Mistress
    Tea_Mistress Posts: 105 Member
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    Broccoli head at iceland - over a pound
    Broccoli head at tesco - 49p
    you are welcome ;)
    Tesco is just boss
  • Abstraktimus
    Abstraktimus Posts: 213 Member
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    Miss_Veigar wrote: »
    Broccoli head at iceland - over a pound
    Broccoli head at tesco - 49p
    you are welcome ;)
    Tesco is just boss

    Tesco is king.
  • cosmichvoyager
    cosmichvoyager Posts: 237 Member
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    Not buying packaged or heavily advertised foods saves you a TON of money (crisps, cookies, TV dinners, etc).
    Ethnic grocers have much cheaper prices on bulk items like beans and rice.
    I eat fresh, seasonal and local fruit and vegetables from farmers markets whenever I can.
    Avoid wasting food--if something looks like it will be going bad in the fridge, I cook it for later. Planning meals and cooking ahead is generally a money-saving practice because you won't give in to convenience foods, restaurants, take-out, etc. Cooking is almost always cheaper and better for you than restaurant food so if buying pre-chopped veggies and meats will help you to find time to cook, go for it.

    Sometimes spending less money can be false economy because you will get lower quality. IMO, good protein, meat, fish, cheese, eggs, milk are worth paying more for because they will be much tastier and better for the environment.
  • laineybz
    laineybz Posts: 704 Member
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    TavistockToad wrote: »
    Abstraktimus wrote: »
    Hey guys,
    I'm wanting to start making my food shopping go further and I was just curious, what tips and tricks do you have for saving money, getting bargains or making savings? I'm in the UK, so input from some people from the UK would be amazing! Like, how do you know where has the best values or the best prices for specific items. Is it a case of going from store to store?

    Cheers guys
    Dan

    we shop at morrisons, they now do a price match card which matches to tesco, sainsburys, asda, lidl and aldi... you get points if anything you buy is price matched cheaper somewhere else and £1 for every 1000 points. when you get 5000 points you get a £5 voucher to spend. we are getting a voucher every couple of weeks... much easier than going to 5 different shops and looking at the prices yourself!

    generally speaking, bulk buy, look for offers and go for meat and fish thats reduced to clear that can be thrown in the freezer!

    We shop at Morrisons too. Quite often they do 3 or 4 weeks where you spend so much and in the 5th week, get so much off. They're current;y doing a 6 weeks offer of saving £25 just before Christmas. We usually do 2 or 3 shops a week individually to get the offer a few times. I also have the new match and more card. You can change the settings as to when you receive the vouchers. At the moment, we've got £20 worth.
  • Foamroller
    Foamroller Posts: 1,041 Member
    edited November 2014
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    I'll add the following to a long list of excellent tips above :)

    - Buy fresh vegs and dry goods in ethnic shops. Sushi rice, nori etc are often half price. No reason to buy Blue Dragon rice vinegar when the same ingredient can be bought for 1/3 of that price somewhere else. 190g of pickled ginger in supermarket costs almost the same as 1kg (better tasting option) in asian market. Certain items like spring onion or lemon grass are half price. Lots of exotic spices and ingredients. I don't understand half of what the nametags are :D

    - If your local supermarket has a choice between the clean looking vegs in a tray or loose weight, the loose weight vegs are usually cheaper. Anything that has been washed and packaged usually cost more.

    - Avoid 2 for 3 deals if it's produce that go out of date fast. Foolishly I always think that I will eat 2 kg of chicken thighs, but I never do. Often I end up freezing the rest. I use a paint tape roll to easily tag details of what I froze.

    - Try to plan your meals in such a way that when you buy ingredients that isn't used up in the first meal, it'll be spent in the next few days on other dishes.

    - Try new things occasionally. Sometimes we can get very stuck on certain (expensive) food items or brands. I try different subs regularly or brand new things to me. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised of the cheaper sub and sometimes it clearly isn't going to work.

    - Make your own. Buying food items that you can make yourself is not only cheaper, you have full control over ingredients. F.ex. store bought vinaigrette salad dressing vs. homemade. Store bought often have sugars and additives.

    - Find a system that works for you. I think if you can be so organized to grocery shop once a week, you'll save more money. I'm more impulsive, so I buy stuff 2-3x a week.

    - Don't go shopping hungry. Those fresh baked bread and roasted chicken smells wafting around is there to entice you to shop more than you intended.

    - Make a budget. Or partition your food money onto a separate VISA account.

    - Lower the temperature in fridge as low as you can without leafy greens freezing. I have mine at 5 degrees celsius. The electricity bill goes up a bit, but the foods keep fresh longer. ....and they cost more than electricity.

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