5 adults in the household and the cost of food shopping

[GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat]

How much do you spend on your food shop per week?

We are about £120 at Aldi and a £40 Sainsbury's top up but are getting bored. I'd like to do it all at Sainsbury's but fear it would be closer to £300 / week.

Would be interesting to see what other all adult households spend?

If you directed £300 towards a monthly butcher shop you’d have so many options

What’s your local area

Such as? What can you get from your butcher that you can't get from Aldi/Sainsbury's?

Or maybe she's trying to clear debts? Or maybe you can eat good meals for less than you think?
People buy things like diced chicken breast and pay extra for the convenience etc

Maybe she's just doing it to demonstrate to those people who haven't got much money?

Another problem I have with Aldi is they frequently rotate out their nice, good or interesting stuff, so you can only get it a few weeks of the year 😭 whereas in other supermarkets they bring in seasonal additions as just that, additions.

Have a look at Atomic Shrimp and Weary Wolf Adventures on YouTube.

They both set themselves food challenges that might give you some ideas.

We shop at Sainsbury's. Two adults and 2 children - two vegetarians, two meat eaters. We have a 3 weekly rota for meals. So tend to eat the same things without much shake up. We buy own brand where possible and value for some stuff as it's nice and far cheaper. For example the value spaghetti is really nice so why pay more!! Anyway we budget £110 p/w for food. We get a little top up bread and milk mid week on top of that. Sometimes we host family so spend a bit more, some weeks we go over but mostly we do it.

I find Sainsbury's with a nectar is surprisingly cheap. Nectar prices personalised to what you buy normally and price match to Lidl or Aldi can't remember which and overall the value stuff and own brands are reasonable and good quality. The main money saver for us is doing an online shop, it helps you focus on what you actually need and you don't get caught out with random offers and purchases you notice in the shop.

Edit to add we don't usually buy fresh meat unless hosting. We use frozen 5% fat mince for example and I can use as little or as much as I need as it's just for me and my 3 year old. Also chicken pieces frozen. Not to everyone's taste but it suits us with no waste.

I shop a couple of times a week, I vary between Lidl, Tesco online and Sainsbury’s. I also buy certain protein products in Iceland when I’m passing by one. I occasionally buy bread and a few bits from M&S and Waitrose.
I can’t get on with Aldi.

Feeding five people a day, every day, year in year out is boring.

I have an idea. There are four other adults in the house. How about if you hand over the cooking reins to someone else for a week (better still, a month), and let them come up with ideas instead. Give them a strict budget and let them be inventive.

We do Tesco, I use to do aldi and Tesco/sainsbury top up but got sick of the faff. I tried Asda delivery but too many substitutions!! So
now get Tesco delivery, I like using club card vouchers on outings. We are 4 adults 1 child and it’s around £150 with coop/tesco top ups in week (bread/milk etc) of around £20 so £170 in total

@GeorgieTheGorgeousGoat
What do you eat all week?

4 adults. Aldi weekly shop circa £90. Hello fresh box every week to change up our meals. The adult children pick the hello fresh meals and cook for us.

If you make the right choices Sainsbury's needn't be more expensive than Aldi.
Online shopping is a good way to stick to budget.

Who does the actual cooking isn't the issue though, its a lack of choice/inspiration in the budget end of the supermarkets. And if we shop in the better ones, more choice but much higher cost.

I can't afford to send them all out buying ingredients that are needed for just their one recipe, that's really wasteful.

Just looked back over our last couple of months of Sainsburys deliveries. Family of 4, me DH and 16 / 18 year old boys, who eat more than we do.

We buy pretty much everything on our weekly Sainsburys delivery and we don’t deliberately skimp etc, we eat v well and have pretty much whatever we want. Weekly cost is between £160 for a week when we’re not buying many extras (cupboard basics, washing powder etc) to £250 for the “stocking up everything and having guests and a bbq”. It’s only ever £300 at Xmas or buying loads of booze for a big party.

We don’t eat meat every day, but have lots of fresh fruit and veggies. Probably meat about 3 days / week, fish a couple of days and maybe eggs, pasta etc the others. Just because that’s what we prefer to eat.

So yesterday we did a home made Chinese takeaway. From scratch made sweet and sour chicken with rice, spring rolls, prawn toast etc. Cost the same as getting a takeaway but was fun!

Today we are having steak chips and coleslaw.

Rest of the week will be maybe cottage pie, pasta bake, gammon joint. We shop on Wednesdays.

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Three adults. £300 a week.

Check out ChatGPT for some weekly recipes - give it a max budget. I’ve done this to try and up my protein intake during to menopause and there are done good ideas.

You could try having a couple of vegetarian meals such as green lentil chilli with plenty of beans, or a dal curry. Healthier for you and cheaper.

I don’t know but could not believe that a 1kg of vac packed 5% minces beef in Asda was £9.72 yesterday.

I used this to make a Keema curry so cheaper than takeaway and there is enough left for lunch today but food prices are no match for a lentil Bolognese and the legendary MN magic chicken!

We have been comfortable in affording to eat out but we are now noticing how expensive food is and it’s mediocre so we’ve re adjusted budgets in that sense.

Swap beef mince for pork or turkey if you want to reduce the cost.

OP you could try Mob kitchen. It is aimed at students but the original premise was that a meal for 4 cost no more than £10 from a convenience store with no hard to obtain ingredients.

Or do you have a store cupboard? If you keep basic spices,pasta, rice, canned pulses etc in, also buy your meat in bulk and freeze in meal size portions the need to shop for any particular meal is much reduced.

Sainsburys online shop for 6 people (2 adults, 1 teenager, 2 kids and 1 baby) £160 per week (no alcohol).

You spend less than I do for two adults and a cat!

Well you must eat very expensive meals then, not everyone can afford that.