To ask you about your brand swaps?

[LiteraryDevil1]

Single mum here looking to save money on my food and household shop. What big brands have you successfully swapped for store own ones?

(We are veggie and shop at Tesco for the main shop and the local Asda for bits inbetween or good offers. I don't drive so shop with someone else so I can get a lift and they shop at Tesco. I buy a lot of Tesco own brand stuff already. )

Aldi for almost everything. Cheaper and better quality most of the time

Can't stand Aldi and can't get there.

So you’re specifically looking for Tesco own brand recommendations?

It's very subjective. My dsis and I were discussing this at the weekend. She buys own brand kitchen roll from wherever she shops from week to week and I can't stand the stuff. Likewise I rave about own brand toiletries and they bring her out in a rash. Try making a swap each week and see if you like it.

Tesco value fruit and veg is great . I use a lot of Tesco own brand or their value range I think you need to try it and if it's works for you then use it, if not use Tesco own brand.
Compare prices as Asda and Tesco each week online to make further savings .
Sometimes branded stuff is on offer and will work out a better buy than the shops own.

Aldi is amazing so it’s a shame you’re so down on it. I save at least £20 a week on food shopping since I switched to Aldi.

I find Asda own brand cheaper than Tescos on most things except shampoo.

Another Aldi fan here!

I think another benefit of Aldi, apart from the prices, is that there is less stuff / choice, so you come out with less stuff you don’t actually need. This reduces my weekly shop a LOT!

Agree. I only go to Tesco for formula, pet and cleaning things now. Actually prefer the meat and vegetables from there too. Lidl is pretty good. A shop at Tesco costs me well over £100 and it's £70 at Aldi or Lidl.

Another vote here for Aldi. I think that if you want to save money you might have to go into shops you don't want to be seen in.

Tesco toilet paper is as good as Andrex I think. Tesco crisps are good. Tesco cereals.

Pretty much anything apart from beans, I always buy Heinz beans

Value pasta and spaghetti is the same as expensive ones. Rice is ok too.

You just have to see what you like. We don't buy branded anything unless its on a good offer - sometimes its cheaper to buy branded than own brand. But I personally found Tesco crap for vegetarians on a recent visit as their food labelling is so bad. I mostly shop at Waitrose and the Co op, as these are closest and more ethical (although to be fair, its best of a bad bunch when you are talking about supermarkets.)

Farm Foods do really nice loo roll, of all the strange things to single out from a frozen food shop!
Their other stuff is a bit hit and miss, but big net bags of onions (5kg I think and about £1.50), generally good multibuys on frozen veg and you can mix and match. The half crispy duck with pancakes and hoisin sauce are good too and often in 3 for £10 offer.
I don't go often but make the occasional trip when the money off leaflet comes through the door.

We buy Asda passata, pasta and tomato puree.

Asda toilet roll is perfectly acceptable.

We buy own brand rice most of the time (particularly boil in the bag, but Asda frozen microwave rice is also brilliant)

To be honest, I don't think we buy that much branded stuff. DH doesn't see the point in it a lot of the time. Fresh meat and veg are obviously store own, and that makes up the bulk of our shopping.

We spend around £50 a week for the two of us.

Also if you are shopping at Tesco and Asda then its probably worth you looking at some cash back apps as you quite often pick up free stuff. Not necessarily stuff you want as its all fairly random, mostly new products but not always.

I just get whats on special offer but look at the delivery options. You can get a months free trial. I get midweek tue/wed/thur and I used my club card vouchers to pay for it so the monthly charge is 32p. The minimum spend for a shop is £40 so i get a delivery a week and try to organise it so I'm barely over £40. For example nappies are on offer every couple pf months so I stock up one week and the week after I'll stock up on washing powder when thats on offer and so on. If I'm under £40 I'll just get tins to stick in the cupboard.
Much easier to budget when you have the total in front of you.

Sorry, probably should have been clearer....
I only shop at Tesco or Asda so would be swapping from branded to either Tesco or Asda own brand. Aldi doesn't sell a lot of the things we eat unfortunately. Plus I like Tesco as I save the clubcard vouchers for train tickets or entry to attractions in the holidays so I can take the children on trips to different places.

You say you already buy a lot of Tesco brand stuff and can only shop there or Asda so I'm unsure what you are expecting from this thread? Just buy the Tesco or Asda versions of everything and try them surely? That's what I did. If it helps this is what I discovered.

Both own brands are similar imo. I usually buy the value/ super cheap version if available or the normal Asda/Tesco Version. Only exception I can think of is toilet roll and cheese, here I buy own brand rather than value.

Other exceptions are: beans, Rice Krispies, chocolate, Dr Pepper, curry sauce and crisps where I buy brands. I wait for these things to come on offer and stock up when they are. Between the two stores it's rare I have to wait long for an offer on these.

Fair enough if you can't get there, but what exactly is it about Aldi that you 'can't stand'?

We don't buy any branded goods at all, unless there's no own brand alternative available. I get groceries delivered from Asda; it's all Asda and Smartprice goods.

I can only shop at Tesco and Asda as I'm half an hour away from Aldi/Lidl/farmfoods/Iceland etc.

I generally so a small shop at each, each week so just look for what's cheapest in each, and know for example, that shreddies go half price every 2 months and stock up then.
Non brands are orange juice, kitchen roll, squash, pasta, ketchup, oats, museli, rice, flour, tinned fruit, tea bags, butter, frozen veg, frozen chips.

Branded but always an offer somewhere- shreddies, shredded wheat, weetabix, loo rolls, washing powder, washing up liquid, coffee, soup, beans, mayo, tissues.

Aldi doesn't sell many of the things we eat

another benefit of Aldi, apart from the prices, is that there is less stuff / choice, so you come out with less stuff you don’t actually need

One thing about Aldi is that they don't spend what the other supermarkets do on in-store marketing, tell you how to cook things or educate shoppers about different cuts of meat. They expect people to know what is good quality food and get on with it.

How long is it since you've been to Aldi (or Lidl for that matter, can you get there)? They've both vastly expanded their range in the last couple of years, so the 'cannot gets' are much smaller than they used to be.

Tesco have just made their Clubcard scheme for days out less attractive, so its even less incentive than it was. Overall, Asda is probably cheaper than Tesco, unless you can find a good offer in Tesco. Otherwise, they're much of a muchness really.

But if Tesco or Asda are the only supermarkets your able/willing to use (no Morrisons?) your only option is to put up or shut up unfortunately, although you could save by buying toiletries, cleaning products, and other non foods like pet food in Home Bargains or Wilkinsons possibly.