Do you buy reduced food on sell by date?

[Friedchickenrocks]

We save an absolute fortune by going to the nearest big Sainsburys at 6pm. Mostly go Fridays and Sat. but reductions are there every day. Food is a quarter of the price but that day's date. No problem as we freeze some straight away and eat it over the weekend and anyway keeps 3 days. Ready meals, £3.29 to 82p. Chicken thighs, breasts. Cooked chicken breasts for the dog, good quality not the added water reformed stuff. Prawn cocktails sometimes. Pork pies, meat pies, sandwiches, different veg. Loads of asparagus last week. You name it. Have you heard of Charlie Bigham's ready meals? Dear at £9.35 but good at £2.35 and are like homemade. We find that Tesco never go as low as 75% off.

Waitrose often reduce their bread and stuff on sundays

Yes, I do. And either freeze or cook immediately, and then eat or re-freeze. Saves a fortune.

Some people are very odd about reductions. I have seen threads on here claiming you should be "leaving them for the poor people". Alternatively, people who are very paranoid about food safety and who think it's dangerous to buy stuff on the last day before the use by / best before date.

Absolutely this I find my local morrisons is also great after 4pm bread and rolls gets significantly reduced as do sliced meat for sandwiches and rolls and its massively discounted

Yes our Sainsbury's is good for bargains!

I'm veggie so I'm not sure what chances id take with meat but I don't bother much with food dates as generally whole fruit and veg also a lot of dairy (not milk or cream) are absolutely fine a good while longer. They often have crosta & mollica pizzas reduced to £1 something which get frozen.

The Tesco near us is excellent. DH WFH. Finishing between 8 and 9. Walks there to clear his head. Final reduction is 7:45ish.

We regularly pick up vegetables that are absolutely fine and bags of pre prepared vegetables. If we get lots we make soup for lunch.

Our best haul is gluten free bread. In fact all my family pick up reduced GF bread whenever they see it and freeze it for us. £4 to 80p normally.

If DH needs a haircut, he goes to the bigger Tesco by bus (it has a barber) before they close, and picks up loads of reduced stuff to freeze. Especially salmon.

Our food bills have massively slashed.

are you me? I do now have a third freezer, on a major "running it down"phase now but DH just came back from M&S with an armful of yellow stickers!

Yes they are. They think anything with a yellow sticker must be going bad. We never pay full price for beef or pork mince. We reject some though as it's brown so not fresh enough to freeze. Some won't eat anything past the date. We even know someone who won't eat anything the day before the use by date. If food's off, which it can be even a week before the date, we use or noses and eyes. You can usually tell when you open it. We had some cooked chicken from Iceland that was off 5 days before.

I do sometimes if I know I will use the item that day, or it can go in the freezer.

The Charlie Bigham ready meals are really good as you say!

Best deals I've had from Lidl - £2 for £15 joints of meat 30 mins before closing

Yes I've got a few Charlie Bigham meals especially the fish pie reduced. Either freeze it or have it for that night's tea.

Usually buy the M&S yellow sticker items. They start reducing early in the day and reduce a couple of times as the day progresses.
Once got some rotisserie chickens at just over £2 reduced from £6. It's also a good opportunity to try certain things. Once got a couple of ready meals in Marks reduced to £2 from £8. They were not nice so glad I hadn't tried them at full price.

It’s really good that you’re saving money but a lot of it sounds quite processed. Good if you’re on a really tight budget though. Gotta do what you can

Well, if you go for a bakery deal, then that's what you get. We don't eat it all in one sitting, it is frozen and used up in lunchboxes and weekend treats. It would be foolish to think this is all that people eat, rather than to supplement a varied diet. So, if I were to get pizza, I would have a pizza one day that week and freeze the rest.

Oh definitely. Especially rolls or fruit & veg. The sell-by dates on root vegetables are particularly daft, and they often last for ages after.

I got a whole cooked rotisserie chicken for 9p a couple of years ago.

Well we get lots of fresh veg and fresh fish. Cod, haddock, mackerel, salmon. We don't eat ready meals every day but better than paying 3 quid for one.

We buy bits and pieces not on reduction too.

I used to do that a lot but for the last couple of years the reductions are minimal. Like 10-30% and mostly rubbish items, never see any meat at less than 70% value....mostly items that are already looking horrible ,squashed, or fast food items ( breaded chicken, pizzas, herbs, salads and fruits that already look a bit questionable).

They do a great fish pie, 850g but wouldn't dream of paying £9.35 for it even though it serves two with 2 or 3 veg too.

Where I live the reductions aren't enough to warrant something going off quicker. Eg 30p reduction on something that costs a couple of quid. Would rather pay full price for a longer date.

Yes we have a varied diet. Sometimes big pizzas reduced but we'd only have one a week or even fortnight. Most stuff's frozen.

Agree, Sainsbury’s is good for this. Also the M&S Simply Food. We also have a Co-op at the end of the street and often wander down for a look to see what’s there. I accidentally bought an excessively large chest freezer in a panic when our upright one died, but am happy now!

Interested in the Charlie Bigham’s freezing trick. They say don’t freeze, which I would normally ignore judiciously, but was concerned that the word might splinter into fishbone-like fragment and kill us all.

And by “word” I mean “wood” obviously!!

I don't find that things that I want are reduced in this way. The last thing I bought reduced was some salmon in December. Otherwise, I saw a stickered chicken liver in Waitrose, but it was quite grey-ish and the reduction very small. I prefer things to be able to be kept comfortably a few days in the fridge.

I don't know the times that any of the stores near me make the reductions but do get quite a lot of items.

M&S are usually very good. Got 4 packs of 2 fillets of salmon that should have been £5.25 and were reduced to £2. Also quite often get bread, crumpets etc from M&S.

Co-op is very good for reductions and sometimes I strike very lucky getting things like fruit, veg, bread, fish.

We have a large fridge freezer, a tall freezer and an under counter freezer and they are often full to bursting with bargains

Food is never reduced where we live (not uk). I think anything end of date just gets donated and a homeless charity or similar collects.
As I have seen it to one side and taken out to a van I know is local charity , but never do they reduce by even 10cents to buy.

We aim to go at least once a week. We'd do more if it wasn't largely ready meals you could pick up. My freezer currently has some chicken breasts, liver and mash, a fish pie and a lamb hotpot.All under half price.