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.

When we still lived in London though, dh often went to m and s near his office around 7-8pm and picked up a load of bakery pastries for pennies on a Friday evening. They were great Saturday mornings just warmed through in oven

Depends on the reduction. I’m not going to buy something with today’s date just to save 10%, it’s not worth the bother to save pennies. But if it’s 75% off I’ll buy it. A few weeks ago I got Xmas frozen salmon from Asda, was £18 and I paid 70p. Unfortunately my closest supermarket is Morrisons and their reductions are rubbish, they’d rather bin food than let it go cheap.

You definitely shouldn't eat fresh food (particularly things like meat and ready meals) 3 days past it's date. Yes you can get some good deals but you have to shop nearly every day.

Yes, loads. Sell by date is generous. You can keep at home for another few days before you consume it anyway.
My local Tesco did away with their fish and meat counter, which has meant no bargains at the end of the day. I used to get a lot of chicken etc for my dog.

Shhhh don't tell everybody or there'll be nothing left for you. That's what happened basically, the supermarkets now realise that they can offer minimum reductions with a yellow sticker on and people will buy it because everybody knows about the secret money tree.
One thing I do find bizarre is when people take things off the reduced shelf with 10% off, walk around the store for 3 hours with the goods in their trolley and then return at final reduction time to give the contents of their trolley to an assistant who then knocks another 80% off.
Happens every day at my local Morrisons and I've just done my first Sunday shop on that basis.
About £300 quids worth of food cost me £25.47, cheers Morrisons, didn't tell you where or when though. Good hunting.

During lockdown it was a source of entertainment.. walk around the local Co-op, Tesco express etc and see what we could pickup yellow stickered to have the next day for lunch at home - made meal planning a bit lighter and got us out the house.

Still love a bargain

I used to think reduced items should be left for people who can't afford to pay full price, but when I met my husband he persuaded me otherwise.

We find Morrisons is the best place for late afternoon reductions and we've had some great bargains like the leg of lamb currently in our freezer which we paid £11 for.

Nah, yellow ticket stuff is there to be sold so it is not binned and wasted. It is not for low income people. It is literally first come, first serve.

We used to do this weekly and saved a lot, but stopped once we switched to grocery deliveries a few years ago. We rarely shop for groceries in person now, a weekly delivery is far easier than bringing a toddler to the supermarket and pushing a buggy home full of groceries. Maybe when dcs are older I'll get back to it.

Yes,
I buy lots of yellow sticker
I buy Too Good To Go food waste bags
I use Olio

I live close to a Morrisons. They sometimes sell off a whole 4 litres of cream in a large milk carton for 9p. I buy 1 or 2 of these cartons and make a lot of butter. I make about 12 packs wrap in greaseproof paper and put one in the fridge and freezer the rest. It lasts for ages. I give my son a couple of packs each time I make it. Best bargain.

I work at a naice supermarket (not sure if I can name) and get to take yellow sticker food home for free at the end of the day. It's amazing! Freeze anything like meat/ ready meals and eat the sandwiches/ salads over the next few days. Stuff is always fine a few days after its use by date. It does make me sick how much is thrown away in the store though especially when so many people are going hungry.

No, not really. Firstly I don't find sainsburys very good for reducing stuff - normally a nominal amount off. I don't have a very big freezer, so no room for freezing loads. Plus I want to shop at the times convenient for me and not when the reductions are. And I mostly want fresh stuff to last till later in the week. So it would only really be if the thing I was shopping for on the day I wanted to eat it was reduced. I don't have any desire for a random diet of whatever is reduced

I went to Asda yesterday for chicken to make a Chinese fakeaway for Chinese New Year. I came home, thanks to the yellow sticker cabinet, with a pack of 8 chicken breasts (I used 2 last night and the other 6 were frozen individually), a pack of chicken thighs which I cooked with chorizo I had in the fridge and made a couple of meal of pulled chicken with chorizo, some turkey mince which I froze half of and made 2 meals of chilli with the rest, and 6 salmon fillets which went straight in the freezer.

Our Asda used to do good reductions - the sort where there would be a scrum - but I think that they must have changed manager. They used to reduce during the afternoon and then knock off a good percentage at 6pm. Now they knock off a small percentage early in the day and the amateurs fall for it.

Does anybody else's supermarket always have loads of 'plant based' stuff left?

The wood is fine after freezing.