How To Cut The Costs On Your Weekly Food Shop

The weekly food shop can be expensive. Especially if you’re jumping on the trend of transforming your meals into more nutritious and healthy options. With the rising cost of food products, keeping the costs as low as you would like is becoming even more difficult. Despite this, not everybody is willing to make sacrifices in their weekly food shops or their budgets in order to coordinate with inflation or rising prices. Therefore, here are some tips on how you can cut your costs in regards to your weekly shop.

Compare The Supermarkets

There is a constant battle between supermarkets competing for the lowest food prices. In fact, larger shops have started price matching with some of the budget supermarkets like Aldi in order to reduce the price of their products in order to attract more customers. A summary of multiple monthly studies from 2021 suggests that Aldi is the lowest priced supermarket in the UK. The budget food shop was closely followed by Lidl, their main competitor, and Asda. Where you shop and what you’re purchasing massively impacts your overall total. You can purchase the same kind of product from two shops at different price scales and your overall total will be completely different. So, before visiting your local shop, why not have a look online at where your cheapest one might be.

Create A Plan

Taking a moment with the family to sit and plan your meals for the week can save you a fortune. Even though it sounds like a simple and easy task, many families don’t actually plan what they are going to purchase. This means they’re entering the supermarkets open-minded and ready to purchase whatever they fancy, which can lead to overspending or wasted food. Creating a plan allows you to manage your shopping per day. It means that you are only purchasing exactly what you need and nothing else. As a result, you can keep the costs within your budget, and possibly even below it, if you plan inexpensive meals. After all, nobody wants to overspend within the budget as one small accident could have big consequences. If you’ve gone over budget at any point, don’t worry as there are plenty of options available. These may include payday loans, using savings or even borrowing from those around you.

Buy Frozen Over Fresh

If you’ve been shopping for yourself or for your family for a while, you will have already learnt that fresh food goes out of date faster than we think. Unless you’re planning your meals, you’ll always have that one product that you forget about, and by the time you get round to eating it, it’s gone past its use-by-date. Therefore, to avoid this problem, we suggest purchasing frozen food if possible. This way, you’re not wasting any food as you can just unfreeze the food when necessary.

Purchase Wonky Produce

Many shops have started selling vegetables that may not look as visually appealing but are still perfectly edible and just as nice.  Typically, wonky vegetables and fruits may be smaller or larger in size and weight or they may be the incorrect colour. Despite only being small and minor changes to the usual fruits sold in the supermarkets, the wonky produce is much cheaper than the rest. Therefore helping you save money and also helping the planet.

Switch To Own Brands

Every supermarket carries their own products and their own brand of foods, even the places you wouldn’t expect. These ranges are always cheaper than the other branded items that you’ll find on the shelves. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re any less tasty. Some brands like Tesco even offer multiple different own-brand ranges, for example, premium and value. This way, you’re able to gain control over your weekly shop whilst having plenty of options to choose from.