What are families honestly spending on their weekly food shop?

[Catty21]

cost of weekly food shop - Our food shop cost is crippling me. Our weekly food shop is £300 for 2 adults , 14 year old and a cat. My husband thinks that’s normal and is just the cost of living when I know my friends are paying half that. His response is well they are not being honest and they are actually paying more.

I can’t continue paying £300 a week, it’s insane I know . I’ve tried talking to him that it’s too much and he’s blaming me stressing over it on “ time of the month” as usual.

My question is , honestly what are families spending on their food shop weekly.

I know mine’s not more as I buy a £250 gift card on Blue Light for Morrisons and that’s what I use when I shop whether weekend or (the extremely rare) weekday. I buy them every 4 weeks.

A week?

We pay a lot less, family of 5, 2 adults and 3 children aged 2-8. I spend about £110 on weekly shopping and then probably £20/week top up. We eat well but I'm mindful of budget when ordering.

Wow that is high. I pay £80 a week for me and a cat. It would be lower if I didn't have special dietary requirements which are more expensive.

Can you show us an example of your shopping list? That seems really high. Family of 3 here soon to be 4, (with a cat) we spend around £120 a week in the supermarket and roughly £60 in a local butchers every other week.

£300 for 3? Is that Waitrose or m&S? You must be getting fully branded goods and premium everything. Lots of meat and seafood? Massive portions and loads of booze? That’s the only explanation for £300 per week.

£75 a week, 2 adults, 1 teen and an 18 month old. £30 a month separate on cats stuff

Thats really high! 2 adults, 1 late teen, 9 yo and 5 yo. £70 asda online delivery and around £30 aldi shop each week, including toiletries and cleaning products. Breakfasts are hit and miss for adult/teen other than a Sunday where its a family breakfast. Everyone has a packed lunch Monday- Friday, evening meal every day. We do have 1/2 takeaways each month however thats on top of the spend above. The key is meal planning. Breakfasts i have a range of yoghurts, breakfast bars, bread, cereal. So that rolls over into each week somethings wont be finished. Bread/ yoghurts come in for packed lunches, usually have wraps etc, alongside salads (for older ones), cold pasta salads, i also have things such as frozen sauage rolls in the freezer pasties to break it up abit. Then evening meals are planned a mix of cheap like jacket spuds, chicken traybake etc and nicer bits to make it budget friendly.

But if you spend £30 in a top up shop, thats £30 worth of food you have available to eat in the coming days, so less food needed to buy later.

Despite what MN thinks, £300 grocery shopping a week is way above average and will contain quite a lot of extras/luxuries, hence there will be scope to cut down and still have a healthy varied diet.

The OP says they can't afford £300 pw, so the obvious answer is to look at what is making it so expensive and to make some substitutions whether its buying in bulk, using offers, going to a cheaper supermarket, eating less meat/fish, cheaper cuts or varieties, buying seasonal fruit and veg, whatever.

Id say we are about £200 a week in sainsbury's. I have a house of fussy eaters. 2 adults, 3 children and 2 cats. We buy all household items and alcohol in that as well

£300 a week is insane! For 2 adults we spend about £125 per week, which includes an organic fruit & veg box, meat from an excellent local butchers and a weekly Asda delivery.

This can't be accurate. A veg box alone must cost £30...good quality butcher meat another £30. That would leave about £60 for everything else which gets bugger all these days.

I'm 47. DS1 is 20, DD is 17 and DS2 is 13. I pay about £180 a week. My DS's are never full, and my DD eats like a bird.

£150 per week for two adults and a toddler, including all laundry/cleaning products, all nappies/wipes, odd bottle of wine, top up shops.

We allocate £160 per week (£700 a month) for 2 adults, 2 kids, 2 cats and a dog. Kids have school lunches. Includes toiletries and cleaning products but not takeaways.

We're 2 adults, a baby and small dog and spend £150 a week on a groceries delivery and that roughly includes: veg, fruit, few portions of meat and fish, rice / pasta, some formula, dog food, few toiletries and cleaning supplies and 1 night's worth of nice, easy but more expensive ready meals.

We also do a top-up shop of things which were sold out, fresh bread, things that are cheaper from lidl/ Aldi though so I think we easily spend £200 a week.

That seemed insanely high to me as we're literally just buying ingredients and not even nice ready cooked stuff. But a big % of it is the dog food and formula. Are there any particular costs that are bumping up your bill?

We’re two adults and a teen too but no pets. We spend about £130 a week main shop and maybe £30-£50 extra per week. A lot of fruit and veg and some treats plus washing powder and toilet rolls and all usual household stuff like that. I am aware I spend a lot! So yours is incredibly high!

About £150 for two adults, two young children, and a dog. We eat some meat, lots of berries (why are they so expensive when kids go through them in minutes??) cook a lot from scratch, but do buy some prepackaged kids snacks.

Two adults and two cats...inc litter and their food Aprox £100-£110.

I agree. Shopping online has helped me massively to cut cost as I can see the total amount before check out and adjust accordingly if too expensive. Also less impulse purchase of snacks as we don’t see them on the shelves now 🤣 And I can now just walk to my pantry and check what I have whilst ordering which means I don’t overshop.

Obviously that's insane. What are you eating?
We spend around 150
2 adults a 2 Yr old and a 4 Yr old

About £100/week for 2 adults

It’s hard to compare like with like. Some people are including all meals, other people have lunch at school/work or eat out and have takeaways, some people include all shopping not just food, some include pet food…so it’s hard to make a proper comparison. Your bill seems high to me. We spend a lot on food - organic meat and dairy - and mostly cook from scratch. We are 3 adults and don’t spend much on takeaways or meals outside the home and our costs are around £200 a week all from Ocado, we do 2 shops a week. I could definitely reduce this if I had to. If you don’t already meal plan I find this reduces food wastage significantly.

It's definitely accurate. The fruit & veg box is £23.95 a week. The butchers averages £30 per delivery and we get a delivery roughly 3 out of 4 weeks, so works out about £23 per week averaged over the month. That leaves almost £80 for everything else, which is plenty.

Maybe £200 a week for four adults, a 16 year old & two cats.

Any man dismissing my concern as “my time of the month” would be an ex husband by the way. I hope you don’t have daughters.