Theres a good few euro to be saved by shopping around etc, thats very true, but the biggest savings you will make, will be in cooking more often, buying less processed food/ready to eat meals, and doing a little more, meal “planning”, not everything, but maybe plan for 4 or 5 meals a week. This results in way less waste, (a huge problem out there)as most items are bought, with a meal in mind.
One Example- buy a decent sized chicken, we get 2 dinners, and a lunch out of it, 1)roast chicken dinner, followed by 2)chicken curry dinner or a chicken stir fry, or a chicken salad, and we make chicken stock from remaining left overs/bones, and it makes an excellent soup, adding veg. Not only is the food way better, but it also works out way cheaper, and waste is minimised. Granted it also takes more time, we have two older teenagers, so we have that time. This will also mean less waste in your bins.
It all takes a bit more time, appreciate, some don’t have that, are too busy with smaller kids, but its good to tick the - better meals, and cheaper costs boxes, at the same time.
Our average 4 x weekly shops totals about €450, it varies over and under €115 per week, mainly due to non food & cleaning items that we buy monthly rather than weekly, but thats about the average, for 2 adults and two teenagers. We shop in multiple places as some shops are better than others for certain items, we shop in Dunnes, Supervalu& Lidl mainly, local fish shop & butchers also. Bread only bought in local bakery, ya its twice the price, but its 10 times better, than the average supermarket loaf.
We pick up a very small number of items outside of weekly shop, like bananas, bread, without a doubt, the more you visit supermarkets, the more you will spend.
One other thing we do, is stock up on the long shelflife items, we always buy, like Lavazza ground coffee, its on special a few times a year, about a third off, thats when we buy several packs at a time, we had a nespresso machine years ago, but got rid of it after tasting coffee from a Bialetti with Lavazza ground- its way better and less than half the cost per cup, stock up on pasta when on offer, but only the good stuff- like Barilla, De Cecco, Rummo, i find the own brand pasta, awful. When theres offers, we stock up on non food items.
we don’t skimp on basic ingredients like milk, never own brand milk for us- find it very watery, Avonmore supermilk only, way nicer & froths way better in coffee too ! , butter, veg. We don’t buy frozen chips, we chip our own, par boil, & into oven, again- way nicer when done right.
Final tip- never do your weekly shop without a detailed list. Which of course you will have made, after the meal planning !
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