Price of Tesco Noodles SKYROCKETED - is this our future?

[EileenAlanna]

Was in Tesco on Wednesday & as usual went to get a couple of packets of their 14p Curry/Chicken Noodles to add to my stockpile. They've gone up to 24p. 24p!!!!! Needless to say I didn't buy them. I'm already on the verge of being priced out of the Pound Shops, will there be anything still in my price range after Brexit?????

Ignore, Eileen, just ignore.

And have a lovely night, honey. Xx

On all seriousness, a NMW increase, and benefits uprating are long overdue when you consider how sustained food price inflation has been.

Not sure if that's something people are generally stocking up on @Hollyhobbi. My last purchase on that front was a few weeks back, a tub of 27 Bold pods which I haven't opened yet. I only use the washing machine once a fortnight so they'll last me a year, small stuff like underwear/tights I just rinse out by hand with soap in the sink.

No offence taken, @KarenBlackpool1997. You must have missed where I mentioned up thread that I do work. Like many many others I'm one of the working poor. And my feet are perfectly clean, but thank you for your concern.

@thecatfromjapan good advice promptly taken. You have a lovely evening too x.

@SinkGirl got it in one. I think we need this conversation being pushed more & at the coalface as it were, down to the nitty gritty detail of what it means in our everyday life as far as the cost of feeding our families is concerned & what we need to happen with regard to wages & how they can/will be increased etc going forward.

71% increase on something already so cheap is unbelievable.

The thing is, people who are better off but still have to budget and usually buy mid-range or more expensive items will have the wiggle room to adjust accordingly by moving down the scale.

To use your noodles as an example - a packet of branded Supernoodles is normally around 80p, if that followed the same 71% increase this would jump to £1.36. I couldn't afford £1.36 but would have the wiggle room in my budget to afford the 24p version. Someone who is already budgeting for the cheapest item available doesn't have that option.

I'm not well off, I do rely on Universal Credit to make ends meet but I fear for the future and how expensive just getting by is about to be.

@CatCave this is exactly the point. First wave is those on the lowest incomes being hit - be they unemployed or the working poor, then comes those who run out of that wiggle room in a fairly short space of time & so on up the rungs of the ladder. It's my opinion that those with the greatest financial resources have the least ability to adapt to those changing conditions. I reeled with shock, literally, at a couple on a programme a few years back who couldn't grasp that only eating the breast of the chicken they roasted & then threw the rest away was an appalling waste. Generational poverty is hardly a welcome existence but those who know it can adapt in a way that the usually affluent simply don't know how to. I get by on bugger all as it is but I could & will survive on even less. My food supply this week was supplemented by a bit of urban foraging for field mushrooms & I know where I can get highly nutritional Chicken of the Woods fungi growing wild nearby that I substitute for the meat I can't afford.

That's a very good point actually, something I hadn't thought about.

I've been worse off in the past (sitting with 50p in the meter and no lights/tv/heating on until after 6pm on a Friday as I knew my electricity wouldn't cut out over the weekend even if the balance on the meter dropped below 0) so I'm equipped to adjust to being that way again.

I suppose if you've never had to be resourceful before its something that is almost impossible to start doing out of the blue.

I can't believe there are people who throw half a chicken away?! I know people joke about the magic mumsnet chicken but throwing it away without even using all the meat is ridiculous!

@CatCave I invested in a lovely Hazel a couple of years ago to provide me with a good supplement of nuts/protein/fats but the bloody urban squirrels striped it before I could get even one. Air rifle coming out next year lol. I've a small garden but I can only grow enough potatoes & other veg/fruit as a small supplement, still do it though. And although the local fruit & veg market is cheap I can & do pick up discarded stuff for free after they've packed up & gone. I may need to be doing a lot more of that in the days to come. There are some fruit trees in the odd place here & if the worms haven't already got to them I can get a fair amount that way in addition to the ubiquitous blackberries. I see a lucrative business for me in the years ahead, between courses for the incompetent & teaching 101 common sense I could be raking it in lol.

I really want noodles now!!! (The cheaper the better IMO)

Agree with the above that it's not so much the price it's the percentage increase... that's a massive bloody jump. And if you don't care about your food increasing by almost double then good for you 🤷🏽‍♀️

In our house we swing from feast to famine, near payday we're flush and buy everything we want and by 2 weeks later we walk around the shop, calculators on phones making it to the penny of what's in the bank which sometimes means having to acquire things like salt and toilet roll from other places 😁🥳

Could we manage it better? Yes. Absolutely.

Will we? No. I live for those weeks of opening my fridge / freezer/ cupboards to them being crammed that it's worth the other weeks shite.

I'd rather have 2 weeks ultra happy and 2 weeks misery than 4 weeks always more unhappy than not 🤷🏽‍♀️

That's a massive increase. Hopefully it will only be so extreme on one or two items. I find when this happens to something I buy very regularly I start worrying about everything going up quickly. It's causes anxiety at the best of times.

Wasting most of a chicken is rediculous financial management and damned insulting to the chicken! I know a person who literally cannot buy unbranded foods. It's like they simply don't see them on the shelf. Nowt as strange as folk.

Not poor at the moment but certainly have been so. And yes wasting most of a chicken never happens here. I used to get three meals out of it or more. Nowadays it’s less but more to feed, I’ve never lost the habit of roasting it, then picking it apart for some other chicken based meal and then boiling the carcass for chicken stock. Still do it now when we buy a whole chicken.

The mark up on those noodles is astronomical and I hope it’s a blip. In the meantime while I’m better off I will increase donations to our food bank. It’s appalling that they are needed but I am so glad they are there. I have helped patients access them in the past few years and they are a life saver.

I don’t know what the future holds but am hoping prices don’t suddenly rocket as a consequence of Brexit. All depends on how good the deal is that our PM has got...the same deal he resigned about before but is now suddenly saying is the best thing since sliced bread.

I have no faith in our politicians and they certainly don’t care about any of us. Still as long as their little tax loopholes are safe from the EU that’s all that matters.

My Asdas shop has gone from £120 to £170 every two weeks. I'm very rural Scotland so have to rely on home delivery as its more cost effective than driving into the nearest town and back. Believe me, I sat down with a calculator and worked it out!
I've started buying some things in bulk from Amazon Pantry. They recently had a deal for £10 off the shop so that helped. I do have a farm shop nearby but their prices are ridiculously high. I make my own bread and jam, grow my own salad vegetables and have a lovely crop of potatoes in the cellar.
I'm keeping a close eye on Brexit!

Both my ds's love noodles. Chicken or curry.
That price increase is shocking OP!

Tesco are expensive! Go to Aldi or Lidl save a fortune yes theres less choice but what you rather? More money in your pocket makes more sense at the end of the day fact!

Is it a regional thing? Hearty food noodles were 18p in our local tesco, and they've gone up to 22p. Not such a massive rise, but then they weren't as cheap in the first place.

It can be a regional thing *Mitebiteatnite.

Sometimes stuff is more expensive or cheaper elsewhere.

I also live in an area that people cant understand is not well served by the aldi/lidl style shop.

They are much smaller shops, so have less variety in things. Eg if i want carrots can only buy a massive bag (which being only 2 of us would end up wasted), rather than in tescos being able to buy 3 for a meal for a cheaper price.

I understand their meat is cheaper so a lot of the store seems to be focused to that but i dont eat meat. Their veg selection is limited for us. Equally partner is lactose intolerant but dont really buy much free from but our aldi seems to have none

Ours just seems to have a lot of biscuits crisps etc, meats, and premade foods like pies etc rather than ingredients?

Not sure if thats universal or not

Aldis vary depending on what sells locally. So do Morrisons and Asdas.

Ah that makes sense. Im allways very envious of people's aldi finds!

@GalactiCat that's an eye-watering jump in prices for you to have to cope with. Given your location you have so few options for the whole shop around tactics & are in a very vulnerable position. Would it be possible for you to set up a local kind of no-profit co-op for some bulk buying? Someone goes on a big meat/veg/fruit/whatever run to the cheaper shops & the only extra charge is the petrol costs, shared equally among you? If you're all fairy local to each other then it might be workable. I don't know if people still do this but it used to be a fairly common thing years ago before the big supermarkets popped up (nearly) everywhere.

@GalactiCat have you looked at the on-line short dare/Pound shops? I've a Pound shop nearby as well as a few small short date discount shops that are life savers but once or twice I've used the on line ones. This one is pretty good & delivery to some of Scotland is free for orders over £40 & £6 for Highlands kind of places. Might be the kind of thing a couple of you could order together & split the delivery charge.
www.starbargains.co.uk/dept/tins_cans_packets/9