Food shop price

[Chickencuddle]

Im trying to keep food shop down. There's 5 of us. 3 kids age 13. 11 and 7. They eat alot. I cook 90% from scratch and dont buy alcohol or many snacks and I cannot get our food shop below around £120 a week. This does include cat food and bits like toothpaste etc. But still.
How can I get it cheaper and is this a nirmal amount? What am I doing wrong.

Anyone

Which store do you shop in?

We’re a family of 5 too, (3
kids and 2 adults) and it’s really hard.

We do meat free Monday and another couple of days doing omelette and pasta/rice/frittata type of things

We get too good to go bags & using the community grocer is also helpful

when you break it down tho that’s £17.14 per day / £3.42 per person which is good really but £120 just sounds a lot I agree

How many meals and how many days? Is it just breakfasts and evening meal or lunches as well?

Family of 5 here too and we spend £120 on online shop but then have milkman and visit butcher in addition to this. Probably closer to £200 a week which is madness as this doesn't include alcohol either.

3 meals a day, try to cook all from scratch with some treats but not excessive.

Thats everything. Breakfast packed lunches dinner etc. Although eldest gets school dinners so thats added expense. Sometimes through the week we need to get bread/milk/fruit etc so often we actually spend more.

I think that sounds like you are economising well.

Our shopping for family of 4 and a dog averages £250/week

Lidl are good but cheap and have a very good loyalty scheme, I’ve saved money shopping there. If you spend £250 in a month, you get 10% off the next shop for up to a £200 (£20 off) spend. Also lots of other freebies. Would also recommend food banks, lots of people use them nowadays and it saves food waste.

I switch between asda and sainsburys. Sainsburys more expensive but husband likes the vegan food there.
Ill have to try lidl thanks for the recommendation. Shop normally between 120-150 a week so fed up of spending that much on food. I find it crazy the amount it costs.

Take a look at the Too Good To Go app if you are able to go to collect things. Lidl do cheap boxes of fruit/veg for £2, usually first thing in the morning.

What are you buying?

I think the supermarkets are ripping us off so much but most people are as time poor as they are cash poor so it's easier just to get everything from the one place.

If you could shop at home bargains for example you could pick up so many items that Tesco and the like are so expensive.

Cleaning products, toilet paper, kitchen roll, etc . Perhaps a monthly shop at home bargains or similar could save more money over the month.

I too think you are doing really well, we spend about 75 £per week as just two adults, if we added the dog in it'd be more, it's hard, I suppose it comes down to shopping once a week and sticking to it, batch cooking and not eating snacky crap.

Is there a community fridge or similar near you? Unlike food banks you don’t need to be referred by a GP etc, and there’s no limit to the number of times you can go in a year. There’s one near me and it’s great, you pay £2 and ‘shop’ for whatever you need that they have. They get donations from places like the Felix Project, so fresh food, which food banks don’t have. A lot of it is aimed at refusing food waste rather than helping people to save money as such.

Any Olio food heroes in your area? I sometimes get free food that’s short date. Also, I shop in non supermarket shops to get lentils, rice, pulses, oil in big quantities but for low prices. Going meat-free is harder work in the kitchen but cheaper. I love vegrecipesofIndia for meal ideas.

I hate to say it.. but I think you’re doing pretty well too.
Family of 5 here too (11,6&3). Our online weekly shop is approx £160 a week with Tesco. I then top up with Aldi snacks maybe twice a month. Plus extra milk and fruit weekly too. We must spend £200 a week all in plus £17.50 a week on school dinners too (6 year old gets free lunch still).
I double up recipes and freeze where I can (Curry/Pasta sauce etc).
I read on a thread once to meal plan and shop for 6 dinners for the week, the 7th dinner is a raid your cupboards and get creative/eat left overs meal. I thought that was good advice (but hard to do with 3 kids and mine are fussy!)
Tough times at the moment.

Do you or anyone you know have access to a work loyalty thing. My workplace has one and includes 10% off gift vouchers for plenty of places including all the supermarkets. That's 10% off my food shopping with very little effort, I bought some for my Dad as a thank you recently. Also max out places like vouchercodes (esp VIP), quidco, topcashback.

I also think that £120 is good going. We are 4 (me & DS 18, 16, 11) plus cats. I spend more than you and I’m not extravagant. Unfortunately, things are going to get even more expensive as fuel is going up. I get toilet roll, cleaning products and shampoo from places like home bargains or farm foods once a month. Food is either Lidl, Aldi or Morrisons. Aldi and Lidl are cheaper but not by the same margin as 10 or so years ago.

It depends what you are buying - you mentioned vegan food so I’m guessing that’s processed food/ready meals which are expensive. I spent £42 last week (Lidl app makes keeping track of costs easy) but that was for 2 adults admittedly included one bottle of wine and washing tablets, getting below £100 for 5 people won’t be easy unless you cut out all snacks, restrict treat foods more generally and use a lot of pulses eg dal and rice comes in at under £1 a head including toppings, a cottage pie using puy lentils and chopped mushrooms instead of mince around the same, chicken drumstick casserole is a £1 a head meat dish, spaghetti bolagnaise is too.

for sandwiches if you want meat sandwiches I’d opt for cooking a large portion shoulder on Sundays and the remaining meat is good for sandwiches or making a stir fry. I could definitely feed 5 people for under £100 at first but spices etc will need topping up, and come the summer the foods we fancy are more expensive - could you grow salad items?

I recently shopped a few times in Sainsbury’s rather than Lidl (my usual) and it was MASSIVELY more expensive for the same stuff. It was a very “WTF” moment at the till.

I know there’s not the wide variety at Lidl/Aldi but might be worth getting the regular stuff there and Sainsburys for the vegan/special bits? I think you’d definitely save money doing this.

edited for SPAG

I’ve just worked ours out we spend around £90 on average. This month will be more factoring in some extra Easter food and Easter chocolate etc.

Only 4 of us though, we shop Lidl, a bit of Aldi, sains, Tesco and the occasional Ocado/waitrose when a voucher makes it a good deal. I find Asda the most expensive by far for what we buy.

Which supermarket is cheapest for you will depend what you usually buy. I would put your shop into all the different online baskets and see what it works out as. For us, Tesco was cheapest and Lidl was a chunk more, I think that is because we don't buy many brands or all that much meat.

Honestly it isnt possible. You may be able to stock up on stuff from home bargains etc but your weekly shop will still be around this when you factor in holiday times and special occasions. It's awful isnt it. But then again other countries are worse. Agree with going to sainsburys for specific things its much more expensive than asda

120 a week isn't a lot in my book...I spend about 800 a month on a family of 6

Well the first step is obviously to switch to Aldi or Lidl. Sainsbury’s has always been astronomical. I’d say for 5 people though, £120 is decent. We’re a family of 7, do most of the shop at Aldi with some snacks from Farmfoods then a few branded things from Tesco and it’s generally about £200 a week.