Tips for reducing my weekly shopping costs?

Supermarkets have been doing this since they first began. You'll see that staple foods are seldom at eye height. That's where they hope your eye will look at a product (you don't need) and your brain says "But it."

Most contributors on AAM would already know this. So make out your shopping list of needs and stick to it.
 
As a BK my advice is to read the labels on the jars of honey. Most of the honey on supermarket shelves is sourced outside the EU and is sugar water.
 
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 !
 
Last edited:
As a singleton, in my case. buying a chicken does not equate into two dinners as the aroma and taste is too much to only eat half. The remainder is usually used for lunch the next day but not a dinner. Same with all meat really.
I make my own brown bread though but not sure not how cheaper that is. Usually brown buns by 4 which last 3 days (Day 1 with the smell and still hot sees 2 eaten). You just need Brown and some white flour, buttermilk, baking soda and salt. Cheaper for me cos I would throw half of a sliced pan out after a few days.
 
Silversurfer said:
As a BK my advice is to read the labels on the jars of honey. Most of the honey on supermarket shelves is sourced outside the EU and is sugar water.
Click to expand...
That's simply untrue and an attempt at spreading FUD.

Honey | Food Products - Animal Origin | Food Legislation | Legislation | The Food Safety Authority of Ireland

Welcome to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland website. Here you can get food industry information, find food legislation, check for FSAI latest news or make an online complaint.
www.fsai.ie
 
ArthurMcB said:
Approx €50 pw on takeaway
Click to expand...

Gordon Gekko said:
2 Adults, 2 Children…about €300 a week in SuperValu plus another circa €50 in specialist shops
Click to expand...
OP I'm not sure if you've come to the right place for economising advice

HouseBuyer10 said:
Hi all
Just curious how much your grocery shopping costs you every week.
Any tips on how to reduce this? Do you shop local, free range or organic?
Two pieces of organic chicken breast are about €9 in Dunnes. A bit too expensive.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Get to know the prices of particular products and shop selectively where they're cheapest.
"Organic" could be classified as greenwashing and is of debatable value.
Take a trip to Northern Ireland occasionally and do a bulk shop for non-perishables, OTC pharmaceuticals et al.
Try to get all nutrients from whole foods rather than expensive supplements (apart from vitamin D)
 
Labelling is one thing: accurately reflecting the contents is another.

The Toxic Impact of Honey Adulteration: A Review - PMC

Honey is characterized as a natural and raw foodstuff that can be consumed not only as a sweetener but also as medicine due to its therapeutic impact on human health. It is prone to adulterants caused by humans that manipulate the quality of honey. ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"The addition of sugar to honey is the common fraud in honey adulteration."

"Concerning the above information, CODEX and INTERGOVERNMENTAL [14] reported that 14% of honey from EU and non-EU was considered adulterated by sugar."

and finally

"Therefore, the detection of these adulterants have proved difficult, and scientists have to discover new methods to distinguish the differences between pure and adulterated honey [32]."

Given the above, I no longer buy Honey that is labelled as being 'blended'.
 
There is nothing in this legislation to contradict what I said. Identifying the components of honey does not identify the primary source for the bees. Nor does it identify chemicals used on the vegetation. FYI in August after the honey is taken from the hives (after August the only food available is ivy) most BK will feed their bees fondant so that they will have food for the winter. The bees will store this as honey.
 
That's probably a small chicken 1.2k, a 2k chicken will yield a lot more.

Soda bread/scones is a good tip, nó kneeding, prooving or starters. It's very cost effective, a small soda bread will get you three loafs from a 1k bag. Mix natural yogurt with milk if you don't have buttermilk or add vinegar to milk.
 
The blended honey that I've tasted from Lidl/Aldi tastes fine to me. I don't buy into the honey conspiracy theories.
 
Of course it tastes 'fine'.

If it was easy to detect by taste alone; it would be a relatively simple audit process to ensure correct labelling.

Buy and eat whatever you like, no one is stopping you.

But it's curious that you dismissed peer reviewed published research as "conspiracy theories".
 
I remember the story in Waterford Whispers - dozens injured in stampede as second queue opens in Lidl which was then reported as fact by Germany's focus magazine !
 
Sign up for the Lidl Plus app, there are weekly discounts plus scratcards for each visit to the store (this entitles you to a free Lidl product ) - can be anything incl chocolate, tissues, green tea, still water etc.
Boots can be good value for basic toiletries e.g. soap , toothpaste & shower gel. The Boots Advantage card gives a 4% return v the Dunnes/Tesco 1%.

I shop in Dunnes every other week and spend €150, so costs €120 with vouchers. I am in a loop with the vouchers and have been for some time.

I avoid Super Valu as I find it dearer than Tesco/Dunnes.

Like a previous poster said, stock up on staples when they are on special e.g cereals, tea bags etc.
Look at the online leaflets for Aldi/Lidl etc and plan what to buy.
 
I couldn't disagree more about the queues at Lidl. They are the most proactive of all the stores for opening additional tills when demand increases.

They also lash through the groceries very fast for you to fling into your trolley and get out of the way for the next shopper. There are some dim wit shoppers that try and pack into bags at the till but they are few and far between. They are usually the same ones that can't figure out that the trolley needs to be turned a certain way to fit at the end of the till.
 
Balderdash - I'm not imagining it. Dunnes etc don't have to open/close/open/ close checkouts because they're staffed adequately unlike Lidl.

Also very few/ no staff on the floor in Lidl to answer questions or point towards where stuff is. Poor experience. I can afford to shop in a nicer environment which isn't miserable and utilitarian and delighted to be in a position to do so.
 
For any dunnes shoppers, if you can avail of online delivery they automatically add & track the vouchers as you shop, I find this feature really handy as I can add in some non perishables to get me over the line !
 
I can afford to shop in a more expensive shop too. But I don't. I'm not really there for the experience. I've no need for interaction with staff other than at the tills. I don't have problems with finding things and don't ever have questions for employees. Do you frequently have questions?

I like the products and prices in Lidl. And most of all, I like their efficient tills which I find much better than those in Tesco/Dunnes/SuperValu.
 
I get my shopping delivered with Tesco. I only buy what I need. We go through a lot of fruit veg salad stuff. We don’t scrimp on anything. Cook from scratch. Always but what is on regular specials when they are on special. 2 adults 1 teenager and 2 kids - 6 about 800 a month. Includes wine/beer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register