Tips for reducing food shopping bill

[Anonyrodent]

The cost of our food shop has slowly crept up and we are spending between £150-175 a week for a family of four, no pets. This includes essential toiletries, cleaning stuff but no alcohol which I’ve not purchased at all this year to try and save money but need to get the bill down more. It includes lunches.

One of the family is vegetarian and we’ll usually eat vegetarian 3-4 times a week. The other days the rest of the family will eat meat or fish, try to go higher welfare. Children eat a lot of fruit.

Both adults work full time (and both of us work at least 50 hours a week so pretty full on jobs). Don’t have any ready meals and cook from scratch every day (husband loves cooking). Husband has massive aversion to frozen and then defrosted food so we never batch cook but not sure that would help.

We meal plan, have little waste. Online weekly order from Sainsburys (often their Aldi price match cheaper stuff). Don’t have time to shop around or go in and look for reduced stuff. Probably eat too many biscuits and treats.

I feel our food spending is really excessive, or is this just the cost of things now? Ideally I want to cut it by £50 a week but I’ve just done our weekly order and it seems higher than ever.

[TickleMyPickle]

Forgot to add the code
OLLY34649731

[FrugalFrancine]

Watching with interest as our shopping has also gone up quite a bit. Probably as our dcs are bigger now and eat more as well as price hikes

[AledsiPad]

I'm baffled, OP, tbh. What are you buying?! I shop at Sainsbury's (best balance of quality & price where we are, we've tried everywhere else, no Aldi was NOT cheaper, especially when the fresh produce doesn't last the week) and we spend £75-85 a week, possibly slightly more if I choose a more expensive joint for a Sunday roast. We are a family of 6!

What are you cooking/eating? Does this include lunches? Are you buying expensive toiletries that you could get cheaper elsewhere?

I don't buy toiletries on my weekly shop, I do a monthly trip to Home Bargains and spend around £30 on all bear yo-yo type snacks for the DC's lunches, washing powder, shower gel, shampoo etc. Loo roll we get on subscribe & save from Amazon. If we were to tot all of that up we probably spend £450 a month, maximum, but we have 2 more (adult sized!) people than the OP!

[Fedupsotired]

Do you have lots of food in your cupboard? I can easily spend that (we are also a family of four) but I like to have enough food in the cupboards to last! Don't know why but I know I could really cut my bill if I buy just what we eat.

[ShavingTheBadger]

I pay my council tax over 10 months so for the two months I don’t pay (I think Feb and March) I bulk buy cleaning/toiletries/tins/rice/pasta/loo roll. Helps me to keep to my weekly food budget a lot better. I’ve also stopped buying snacks/sweets and make a cake a week - stops me binging and is a lot cheaper.