Food budgeting with a large family?

[blahblah81]

How do you all do it if you have a large family or older children?
I've four children but three eat adult portions so basically five adults and one child.
I'm quite good at cooking from scratch and we never waste food, we use up leftovers and I know how to bulk food out with lentils etc.
My problem seems to be going to the supermarket too often and while I'm there thinking oh I'll just get a few other things.
It would be pretty impossible to buy a weeks shopping for us all as we'd need so much.
We all have breakfast/evening meals at home (even though it may be different times or if one of the older ones eat out dh will take their leftover meal for his lunch the next day so no waste)
Then I eat lunch at home while dh and older two take lunches from home and the youngest two get school dinners (costs a fortune but they prefer them to packed lunches)
Nearly all our disposable income goes to the supermarket and I feel like I'm really missing a trick somewhere.
How does everyone else do it? Smaller shops more often? Strict meal plan? We're lucky that we aren't on the breadline but seem to spend everything we have when we should be saving.
I'm not even sure what a reasonable amount would be to put away for the food shop and if I should plan it for a weekly budget or monthly budget.
Any tips would be appreciated.

• should have said using things you have already in your fridge, freezer and cupboards.

Buy your spices, rice, noodles and pasta in large bulk packs from wholesalers like Costco or international food shops. I buy my spices, frozen samosas, kebabs and rice from my local Indian food shop, so much cheaper. I also buy my meat from the local Turkish butchers, again better prices than a supermarket & cheaper cuts available.

Do you know how much you actually spend? If not, go through your receipts/credit card statements and see how much you've spent in the last months. When you know how much, set yourself a target, ie maybe 20% less than you spend now. After setting your budget, you need to set that mind reset that you're not going to go over whatever - when you're on say your last £10-15 the mind reset will certainly help you focus on what you really need for the next few days.

Look at cheaper options all round. As mentioned above, cheaper roast dinner options. Other things - cereals eg, Tescos sell malt wheat cereal for 83p, much cheaper than £2-3 for a branded cereal, a packet of biscuits (assuming you have 1/2) will give you more portions than a bought cake, if buying fruit, work out the cheaper option per portion and buy that. Stock up on offers you use. I'm not saying the family should starve, but encouraging them to be careful, so they do have 1 or 2 biscuits rather than 3, have something filling like toast if hungry. Definitely buy shops own brand. Once a week make a tomato sauce (in your case a couple of shops own brand cans of tomatoes and one onion - you can just flavour with garlic, herbs or chilli and mix in pasta and grated cheese on top - this will be under £2 for meal, but you can add peppers, sweetcorn, kidney beans, tuna to make it slightly different each time.

We are up to 8 adults now including 4 teens.

Live in France but we don't go to the supermarket more than once a week. Milk is UHT so fairly horrible but normal for us. Baguette is picked up by someone in the way back from work.

Shop in Lidl which is a fairly shite shopping experience but if you stay away from the aisles of lost promises you spend what you need.

I also use Amazon subscribe and save for shampoo, tampax etc, cat food, coffee, get 15% off.

Without knowing where your money is going in the supermarket who can say?
Don't shop in the expensive / processed food / fizzy juice/ alcohol aisles is all I can come up with!

Checking unit prices helped me. Then knowing what my normal items cost if I'm in another supermarket I'll scan the shelves and pick up my store cupboard stuff there.

Are you saying you can get sauce for 15 meals out of two cans of tomatoes? I'm going seriously wrong somewhere, I use two cans for chilli for 4!

It sounds like all the extra shopping trips and buying extras is the issue. There’s only 4 of us, but I do one online shopping order a week. It’s perfectly manageable. I plan everything out for lunches and dinners for the week and get enough of breakfast things for everyone to choose what they want. It does take an hour or two of time to meal plan and place the order. But then it all just comes to the door, no need to push it all around in a trolley or lug it all home.

I still buy a lot of eggs. We used to go through a few dozen a week.

I never threw out ends of loaves of bread - bread pudding with vanilla, eggs, sugar, frozen cherries and choc chips is a family favourite, and you can make savoury French toast with baked beans for a quick and filling supper, or a weekend savoury bread pudding for breakfast.

How I make meals with limited cans of tomatoes is to add more beans and other cheap fillers.

We never had a roast apart from very cheap cuts needing long, slow roasting, like a big shoulder of pork. I avoided roast chickens because of the waste (skin, bones, lots of back meat nobody wanted). I bought chicken neck bones to make stock and saved veggie water for veggie stock.

In case this helps anyone, I use a freezer quite a bit and sometimes shop with Iceland...they have an offer atm ICEAPRIL which is £10 off which i just used...they do free delivery over £35

Lol @ “are you claiming all your benefits?”!

@CarryonCovid I've turned my understairs cupboard into a kind of pantry, floor to ceiling shelves one side, small chest freezer the other and cheap butchers trolley from Ikea opposite door with microwave on and baskets for shopping underneath so room for big shop once a month. I'm fortunate that it opens into my kitchen but it holds far more in open shelving than you can get into a kitchen cupboard.