Food shopping is something we all have to do whether we like it or not.  It can also be a big drain on finances; with tantalising products available for us in the supermarkets that were not around even ten years ago, there’s more choice and temptation when we shop for food.  There’s also a strong market now for convenience products: green beans that have been topped and tailed, packaged lettuce leaves and diced chicken for which we pay considerably more than the effort it would take us to prepare them ourselves. However, just because they are available doesn’t mean we can afford them.

• Quick tips
• Step one: shop online
• Step two: shop early in the morning or late at night
• Step three: shop at the local market or greengrocer
• Step four: shop at a wholesale supermarket
• Step five: avoid pre-packed and pre-prepared food
• Step six: don’t waste food

Quick tips

There are simple rules to reduce your food shopping bills.  For example, avoid buying things you don’t need and things you simply can’t afford just because you want them. We thought we’d investigate other ways to cut down on your food shopping that will let you buy pretty much the same products, just at a lower cost. Here are some quick tips to get you started:

•Don’t visit the supermarket. The only way you can really avoid the real evils of the supermarket layout is by shopping online. This is all cleverly arranged to make you walk back and forward to get a good look at all those things you really don’t need! Thanks to the wonder of comparison websites it’s all been made very easy. Simply log on to MySupermarket.com, make your shopping list and they’ll tell you which supermarket can give you the best price. They’ll then send your shopping basket over to the right store’s website and they can take it from there!

• Budget your spending. No, we don’t mean buying every no-frills item you can see! What we mean is; do you honestly and truthfully need to buy premium brands every time? Of course not. Half the time, the only difference is the packaging. Challenge yourself to take a step down in brands on some staple products, i.e. if you normally buy Andrex Softie toilet tissue, switch it for Tesco‘s own brand and save yourself a bundle. Only those with particularly sensitive bottoms should be able to really tell the difference.

• Eat before you shop. The first thing you smell when you walk through the supermarket doors is the bakery – this is no coincidence! The big supermarket bosses know that hungry people buy more food. Prepare yourself and eat before you get there.

• Avoid impulse buys. Chocolate and magazines are strategically placed at the till for some last-minute attention grabbing, leading to the inevitable impulse buy. Exercise some self control and ignore the treats the next time you’re queuing!

• Look high and low. Another sneaky marketing trick is that supermarkets place their most expensive items in your (and your children’s!) line of sight on the shelves. As you’ve probably guessed, this doesn’t always necessarily mean the best quality.

• Buy in bulk. Don’t do this from your regular supermarket, but at the cheaper stores like Aldi, Lidl or Netto. They do often have some good deals on items like crisps, frozen foods and meat so they’re perfect if you’re planning a party. Also, for products like rice, flour, eggs, salt etc you can buy in bulk and save an awful lot. Only do this if you can store the items somewhere or you know they’ll be used soon.

• Use a loyalty card. By using a loyalty card it doesn’t mean you pay any more, but simply earn ‘points’ for every pound you spend in the store. You can later redeem these for free stuff or money off your shopping trips so there’s no harm in signing up. We all love free stuff! The Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury’s Nectar Card are the most popular.

Step one: shop online

Our first solution to the food shopping money drain is simple: do not go shopping at all.  Of course, we don’t mean starving yourself, just be as lazy as possible and do all of your shopping on the internet.  All of the major supermarkets now have online shopping services where you can browse through their products, make up a list and then get it all delivered to your house at your convenience. To make the best savings, visit MySupermarket.com where you can create your shopping list and the lovely people will tell you which of the major supermarkets can get your groceries to you for the cheapest price. Yes, there is a charge for delivery for each supermarket (normally between £4-6), but there are a number of reasons why it’s cheaper than shopping in the supermarket building:

• You can’t be tempted by offers that you see whilst walking around that you wouldn’t otherwise notice.  If you don’t need fruit, then you won’t even look in the fruits section online, so you won’t come home with starfruit or a prickly pear just because it’s buy one get one free.
• You can keep an eye on the cost of your shopping all the time, so you can accurately plan exactly how much you are spending and not just rock up to the checkout praying that all the food you’ve chosen is going to come in under your budget.
• Once you’ve shopped online once, you can save your list and then buy the same things each week, with just a few adjustments.  This means that you only have to look for a few products to add to the list each week, depending on what you want to eat, and so there is much less temptation to spend.

Hopefully, using online shopping will help you make fewer impulse purchases and budget carefully so you make savings even when the delivery charge is taken into account.  Mid-week delivery charges are often less than the weekends and because online you have the leisure of shopping whenever you want, try to avoid weekends at all costs as there will be more choice during the week.

Step two: shop early in the morning or late at night

If you really don’t want to pay the delivery charges or you just don’t have the time to wait around for your groceries to arrive, early morning and late-night shopping can help you get some great bargains.  We all know that supermarkets reduce their perishable products in the evenings to get rid of them before they go off and have to throw them away.  You might have qualms about buying reduced products, however supermarket sell by dates are often far off the date when the food will actually go off, so you can buy many products without worrying.

Getting food that has been reduced means that you can’t be too fussy about what you want to eat.  Reductions often depend on how close to its sell by date the product is and what kind of product it is; the best reductions are mostly on higher range products, meat and pre-packaged foods. Reductions on bread and vegetables will be smaller, but then so are the original prices. The amount of reduced products varies from day to day and so there won’t necessarily be too much choice. However, it will get you eating things that you might not have tried before.  A good way of approaching reduced items is to buy those luxuries you love but can’t really afford.  Often more expensive foods like steak and king prawns end up in the reduced section and can be bought for bargain prices.  Both can also be popped in the freezer for a later date if you don’t want to eat them that night.

The procedure of reducing food prices in the main supermarkets is top secret and depends on where the supermarket is, what the opening hours are and how much stock they have.  Saying this, all of the supermarkets do reduce food, it’s just a question of being there at the right time. To get the best bargains you’ve really got to get to know your local supermarket.  Take notice of when those reduced sections are piled high and when there’s slim pickings and then change when you shop accordingly.

Step three: shop at the local market or greengrocer

Yes, we say it time and time again, but the veggies and fresh produce you are getting at the supermarket are not as good quality or as cheap as what’s on offer at your local market.  We’re not talking organic, farmers’ market kind of produce (although these can work out very good value for seasonal fruit and veg). In fact, your local market or greengrocers can actually be up to 30% cheaper than the supermarket.

There’s also the chance for bargains at the market, usually on products you haven’t planned to buy, so do excercise some self restraint.  It’s also great to go towards the end of the market.  You’ll have less to choose from, but because the vendors don’t want to take anything away with them, they often sell off produce cheap towards the end of the day.

People are often concerned when shopping at the local market because the amount of time the fresh produce lasts for may be less than how long the fresh produce bought at the supermarket last for.  This isn’t always the case, but it makes sense only to buy as much as you need.  When it comes to buying meat and fish, you can always freeze whatever you can’t use and with vegetables, just buy fewer.  The advantage of the market is that everything is loose, so if you only want one specific vegetable, you’ll never be obliged to buy a three pack.

Step four: shop at a wholesale supermarket

Exclusive wholesale warehouse supermarkets are shrouded with mystery and, to all that don’t belong to one, seem to be secret places where people go to buy enormous tubs of penny sweets, huge ketchup dispensers and mammoth boxes of frozen pizzas for very little money.  What is clear is that you can save a lot of money, not just on food, but on electrical items, clothing, pharmaceuticals and toiletries.  Although they proclaim to be rigidly exclusive, joining one is much easier than you might think.

All you need to join Costco is:

• An original copy of a current utility bill (i.e. gas, electricity, telephone) from a business address or business bank statement and a VAT registration.
• OR – An original copy of a current utility bill from a business address or a bank statement and two pieces of business ID (i.e. business cheque, letterhead, invoice to your business address).

If you do run your own business, you will have all of these things and so if you aren’t a member of one of these wholesale supermarkets, you should get membership now.  If you don’t have your own business, but you are self-employed or a freelancer, you can legitimately apply for a membership using the ID that doesn’t include a VAT number, as you should have a bank statement or utility bill for your place of work (i.e. your home) and you should have invoices.  If you don’t have invoices, you can just get creative on your computer and make yourself some company stationery and this should suffice.

For Makro, the rules are a bit stricter, but if you are self-employed, you are legitimately allowed to apply.

If you have your own business you need:

• VAT certificate of incorporation from Companies House or copy of business bank account statement, two recent purchase invoices over the value of £50 each and personal photographic ID of the cardholder.

Or for the self employed:

• Recent correspondence from HMRC (Inland Revenue) or photographic Inland Revenue registration card or a copy of a recent business tax assessment, two recent purchase invoices over the value of £50 each and personal photographic ID of the cardholder.

Although not everyone can get a membership there are many who can, even if it means bending the rules slightly.  Check out the websites of Makro and Costco for more information and remember to check if there is a supermarket near enough to you to make it worth your while.

Step five: avoid pre-packed and pre-prepared food

Today all people in the food business capitalise on our general lethargy.  If we all had endless supplies of energy then after a hard day at work, we would never come home and order a takeaway because we can’t be bothered to cook; instead we’d cook glorious fresh meals each night.  However, we know that sometimes, we are all lazy.  And the supermarkets know this too.  It is for this reason that they sell pre-packed and pre-prepared food; to make more money from our laziness.

So basically, to save money on your shopping, do not buy pre-packed or pre-prepared food.  We’re not talking ready meals here (although if you can cook you’ve got no excuses for buying these), but the beans that have been trimmed, broccoli and carrots that have been chopped up or chicken that has been cut into strips.  This kind of food preparation is a basic skill which anyone can do, but if you buy it already done, you will really pay through the roof.  For example:

• Tesco loose broccoli costs £1.97/kg, the packaged head of broccoli costs £2.90/kg and broccoli florets chopped up and sold in a bag cost £5/kg – that’s more than twice the price of the loose broccoli.
• Loose carrots at Sainsbury’s are currently £0.80/kg and ready to cook carrot batons are £2.50/kg – more than three times the price.
• At Asda, loose red onions are 86p/kg, packaged red onions are 90p/kg and sliced onion is £2.22/kg – again, significantly more expensive (and when it’s all chopped up it won’t nearly last as long as an onion in its skin will).

It’s clear that we’re not talking about a couple of pennies, so fight your laziness and try to buy loose produce in the supermarket.  It should be cheaper and will be just as good quality.

Step six: don’t waste food

According to the website Lovefoodhatewaste we throw away £10 billion worth of food every year, and a third of it is unopened! So make sure that you cut down on food wastage by:

• Shopping with a shopping list. Plan meals for the week and only buy what you need according to your list.
• Not being tempted by buy one get one free offers. If it’s something you would buy anyway then go for it but put one of them in the freezer if possible.
• Using the freezer a lot more. Milk, bread and cheese can be frozen and fruit and vegetables can be cooked and frozen too.
• Using your fridge more. Fruit and veg lasts much longer if you chill it.
• Finding creative ways to use up leftovers. Lovefoodhatewaste has some great ideas and you can find more recipes in our food blog.

Useful links

• MySupermarket
• Tesco
• Sainsbury’s
• Asda