To food shop twice a week in the hope it works out cheaper?

[Sunshineismyfriend]

Has anyone tried this? I’m thinking with everything getting more expensive it may be cheaper in the hope there’s less waste. Just buying what’s needed for a few days rather than thinking about the whole week. Be interested if anyone has found this successful.

I shop online, no temptation, can keep the budget really strict, meal plan and shop every eight days so the last day is use up anything that's left. When the shopping arrives I look at use by dates and swap meals around to reduce waste. We don't throw food away. When I moved from 7 to 8 days I challenged myself to keep to the same budget which has helped.

It's obviously worth a try if you find you waste things shopping weekly. I don't know how people with families fit a week's worth of veg and salad in a normal fridge anyway so surely most people must shop more often anyway?

But we've never done a regular shop or stuck to any particular supermarket so I find all these people asking for 'permission' to do something different to the norm of 'buy the same things from the same supermarket once a week' as quite odd anyway. If you're flexible about what you buy, when you buy it and where from, it's usually loads cheaper.

Bless, I’m not asking permission, I’m asking if anyone else does it and has noticed it makes the food shop cheaper.

This

I can get quiet creative with stuff at the back of the fridge 🤣

We shop several times a week which works out cheapest for us for a few reasons:

• We go to a range of supermarkets through the week and have a fairly good idea of which ones are cheaper for the things we buy a lot of (it does vary quite a bit - Sainsbury's is great for some stuff, very expensive for others, for example)
• we pick up more yellow label stuff that way, as going more times simply maximises your odds of seeing it (and I do try and go at the best times for bargains when I can).

-we fit it in with other journeys we are having to make anyway, rather than paying for fuel for a special shopping trip.

We don't meal plan as such but we are creative with left-overs so very little is wasted (at worst, the dog has it, but that is very very rare!)

Different things work for different families, but definitely worth considering whether you just do it a certain way out of habit.....

I am giving this a go op.
Ive done it for the last 3 weeks.
It is working out more expensive, so I’m going back to strict meal planning.

What my lot are struggling with is eating like they have done always so for example, one pack of ham making 2 sandwiches which is 2 days lunches.
I can’t get it through to them to try and make it last 3-4 days. We just can’t afford to eat like that anymore.

Im scraping left over things into pots and freezing them so not to waste anything. (Rice yesterday, cheese sauce the day before to make a Mac. & cheese one night)

Im batch cooking huge pots of soup out of fridge bottom veggies when about to go off, freezing 8 pots for lunches.

Still can’t cut food costs down.

I've started meal planning but do it for the whole week and can honestly say that there's a lot less waste!!

I do two shops a week, always on Monday and Friday. I meal plan for Mon to Thur and aim to spend £60 and then Friday to Sun £40. We’re a family of 5. Fine it works for me, I have a pay monthly delivery saver so doesn’t cost any extra for the deliveries and I just go through my basket and delete things until I’m at my budget. Definitely wouldn’t work if I went to an actual shop! I find this way, always have fresh bread, fruit, veg, milk etc.

Works for me!

We waste very little, if anything. I meal plan to the minute detail (even down to how many eggs I buy or how many bread rolls) and do a strict list based on the meal plan.
I shop once a week, twice would cost me more I reckon.

I think it depends how much you are wasting and why. I know some people will have bought say chicken breasts and stir fry veg to do a stir fry and then 'not fancy it' by its sell by and just let it go to waste and cook something else. I just can't do that, if it needs eating and can't be frozen we're having it!
That said we are a really busy family and plans are changing the whole time which could lead to waste. I.e unexpected invites, working late and just make toasties when we get in, eating out, just not fancying a big meal one night. To get round that I only plan 6 nights out of 7 to allow for changes of plan. If we need the seventh night we always have things in the store cupboard or freezer that we can make a meal from.

I shop twice weekly usually. Once for five or six days of the week, fully meal planned and once for the end of the week to take account of changes of plans , use of left overs, spontaneous takeaways etc. There is less waste than when I planned the whole week.

Yes I can see this being a good way actually.

I live quite a distance from a supermarket so have to factor in petrol. It wouldn't be financially beneficial to shop more often than once a week.

I'm finding it harder and harder to shop a full week - can't ever get use-by dates to stretch that far. Mostly Tesco, not sure about other places.

It could, but people tend to spend more if they are at the shops more, which might offset any savings on waste.

I meal plan up sunday - Thursday and just wing it for the rest of the week. - this usually means eating out of the freezer on Friday, potluck lunch on Saturday - leftover veg soup, sandwiches from last slices of bread etc. we either eat out or get a takeaway on a Saturday or get a top up shop, or make something from cupboard stuff/ frozen veg.

Sometimes top up on fresh fruit as required but there are always apples and longer lasting fruit towards the end of the week that needs finishing.

Do the first shop and see if you need much in the second.

We do this and it does save us money. It means I can control what we eat at weekends and it prevents too much additional shopping. Do two online deliveries - we use delivery saver.

I tend to do a big shop to stock up the cupboard staples of dried goods, cans, baking stuff everyone 3-4 weeks so we always have a well stocked pantry.

Then for fresh ingredients I do a weekly food shop and a mid week yellow sticker run.

We eat mostly vegan (allergies and dd2 is vegetarian). So lots of beans, pulses, lentils. Most of our meals are potato or rice based as I have to eat gluten free aswell!

Lunches are often leftovers, or dds have sandwiches/couscous etc.

I dont buy prepackaged snacks for lunches, cheap big packs of biscuits or we make cakes/flapjacks.

I use frozen vegetables, cheaper than fresh usually.

I'm lucky we can access a community kitchen where you pay £4 a week and get a small food shop (a few tins, whatever fruit/veg/bread has been donated etc) I use olio for bread and some veg etc.

Cleaning stuff I use concentrate and dilute it which saves alot. I use wash powder which lasts ages. I bulk buy toilet roll and cat food on amazon.

Basically the biggest money saver is use everything before going food shopping. We have leftover soup about once a week, where any sad looking veg gets chucked in the slow cooker with some lentils which we have for lunches. If I use something like coconut milk, I will make sure there's another recipe to use up the rest so it doesn't get wasted. Manky bananas get made into banana bread, I cook slightly sad looking apples/pears to have on porridge or rice pudding.