£250 per week on shopping. Is this nuts, or reasonable?

[Twobigsapphires]

The jury seems to be out amongst people I’ve spoken to (not many, basically my family). We are essentially now spending around £250 a week on the food shop (one main shop a week and one top up). Household consists of my and Dh, ds20, dd18 and ds16. Often ds1 gf will stay for dinner on a Sunday and one or two nights in the week. We have 2 dogs but Dh pays for their food separately.

shop covers park lunches for Dh and I plus ds1 and ds2. Dd I give an allowance too and she pays for lunch out of that. Also covers a couple of bottles a wine a week and household cleaning products and most essential toiletries (shower gel etc).

Dh thinks this is excessive, I think at £50 pp per week this is what it is. My dm said I should be aiming for £150 per week! Dsis says she spends around £150 per week on her food shop for her, Dh and two small dc (doesn’t include dinner money and her Dh buys lunch out each day).

what does the mums net verdict think?

I think that's fine, if you can afford it, I spend around £120 per week for me, DP & DS & we buy toiletries etc separately & we usually eat out at least once a week.

3 adults here for breakfast/lunch/dinner (&regularly feed 1 or 2 more adults a couple of times per week). my shop today cost £148 and there is hardly any meat, £10 was a big bag of dishwasher tabs though which will last 3 months. Shopping used to cost us around £80 per week.
I think your DM is slightly out of touch.

Same number of people and very similar aged teens here.
We spend probably £140 per week but get less packed lunches out of it than you do. I still think yours is excessive.

We spend £130 for two adults. That's lunches, dinners and snacks and cleaning products.
You aren't being excessive at all

What do people cook? What snacks? Where do you shop? It seems a lot but prices have gone up.

Initially £250 sounds a lot but for what is basically five adults, plus visiting girlfriend it's not excessive.

£250 sounds fairly high IMO, but you haven't posted enough to judge properly.

What are you eating and how much are you willing to change are the important questions.

There will surely be ways to cut back from that total, if you want to.

Very reasonable. I'm surprised you can fit so much in on £250!

I spend £50 pp pw too but there’s only two of us. That includes loads of fresh fruit and veg, fish, meat and something nice for sandwiches for lunch.

We take lunch from home every day, I literally don’t spend anything during the week on food unless we are going out for dinner (a couple of times a month).

It doesn’t include pet food, coffee beans or cleaning products. No toiletries or wine in that either.

That's a lot! I spend about £70 - £89 a week on 2 adults and 2 young children. This includes household stuff like loo roll, cleaning products etc.
I don't think I could spend that much in a week even if I tried - there'd be so much waste!

Family of 4 here 2 dc preteens. Spend about the same. Used to be £150 a few short years ago. Ours includes all toiletries, more than 2 bottles of wine, and all packed lunches and we still have to do top up shops for milk and bread. What has saved us money is having people over. I've just stopped as it was adding £60 to £80 to get in nicer food than we normally have.

If you can afford it and get good stuff why not.
We were just 2 and easily spent 150 on food and drinks + cleaning products and toiletries.
Admittedly we like meat inluding lamb, seafood and hella lots of fresh veg and fruit.

Does all the food get eaten?
that's a lot of food, but if you aren't wasting any then it's clearly the right amount.

We have a similar aged family and can rarely keep ours below £300 but it does include everything except dog food and one teen’s lunch money. We spend too much on alcohol probably and things like toiletries and cleaning products cost a fortune. I think we could eat less meat and spend maybe £50 less per week if we were better cooks overall!

What are you eating and how much are you willing to change are the important questions.

Exactly. Looking at OP's figures my mind immediately goes to meals centred around meat and a shopping trolley full of packaged snack food, drinks other than water/tea/coffee, brand name cleaning/toiletry products.

You could do a LOT cheaper if you all wanted to - but do you?

We do about 100 a week. Family of 5 no pets, some packed lunches. Not much pre packaged food and less meat than we used to. Rarely bring drinks either

This is Mumsnet. There’ll be plenty of people telling you it’s excessive, and that they feed a family of 16 on £8.29 and a sock they found down the back of the sofa.

But if you are buying in a ‘mainstream’ supermarket, buy mostly fresh food, get decent quality meat and have a few treats, I can’t see that £50 per person is unreasonable at all.

For comparison, we spend £250-300 total a week on 2 adults, 2 teens, a greedy Labradors and a fussy cat. Teens get school lunch provided but I still provide a meal most evenings. This includes cleaning stuff and most toiletries. I get our main shop (milk, cheese, yoghurt, veg, frozen, tins) delivered from Sainsbury’s or Tesco, but all our meat comes from the farm shop and we top up on fresh bread, fruit, fish from the fishmonger etc. during the week, plus buy a few ‘treat’ items we can only get at a local food hall or Waitrose. We order wine separately when the supermarkets have their 25% off deal, or from a local wine merchant for special stuff (and fill the car up if we are driving across the channel.)

We have recently switched our main shop from Waitrose. This was because we had a couple of bad experiences with food delivered on short dates and lots of substitutions, which is a new issue for them. But we are saving about £40 a week buying the same fresh foods at Tesco, which is nice.

But you’re comparing apples and oranges. 2 adults plus 2 young children vs 5 sometimes 6 adults is very different in terms of needs.

Including mindful chef box for 3 meals for two adults we would spend about £200 a week for two adults two children. I would definitely be spending £250 with that many adults. BUT it depends on your household income and budget. We can afford it but if we had a lower income I’d cut back.

Higher spend doesn't have to mean higher amount of food overall.

I spend the same: We don’t drink but 3/4 of us eat proper man sized portions and everything is cooked from scratch. Lots of fruit n veg.

I still end up foraging on the reduced shelf at the end of the month.

7 here. 2 adults 5 children plus the dog we spend £180 max. Nothing is named brands which makes a massive difference.

Likewise. £50 a week per adult whilst also sometimes covering a 6th is pretty impressive for £250 these days.

It may sound a lot to some posters but when broken down it's pretty reasonable. I'd be asking your DH to plan the weekly shop for a few weeks personally. He will soon change his turn that £150 is enough.

Maybe not but I spend £100ish and that's 5/6 bags of food so I can't imagine £250 comes in under 10 bags of food. It's a lot!

This is a normal budget. You and I could get out budget lower but that means more miserable meals with poor quality ingredients, products that may not be best for skin and hair or not that great at cleaning. Sometimes only brands will do. For your own health you need to eat things that are expensive like protein and fresh vegetables and fruits. Everything got more expensive.
15 years ago we could do £30 pp/pw being careful and cooking from scratch and no alcohol.
There's the 4 of us, smaller children than yours eating school lunch and we spend £300+ a week. We don't eat fancy food or ready meals much.
Sort of meals we have is average stuff like Chicken ramen, prawn stir fry, curries, roast chicken on a Sunday, pasta dishes. We have sensitive skin so skin, hair products and laundry cost a bit more.