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 think eating style must have quite a lot to do with it. We usually only eat expensive fresh meat/fish based dinners twice a week. Then we might have one more dinner that is based on cheaper meat (eg mince for chilli, sausages, a small amount of chicken breast or handful of frozen prawns in a stir fry, ). Other dinners are vegetarian-ish eg simple veggie based pasta, a vegetatarian risotto, roast veg and cous cous, a lentil based curry, a veggie chilli. Just because that is the way I prefer to eat and the way I have always eaten. But I think it is a lot cheaper than fresh fish or high quality meat every night.

Why are you buying bottled water daily??

2 adults here but often feeding other family members, adults and children. With top up shops about 100 a week. Pet food is separate and about another 70. This includes all toiletries and household stuff, mainly Aldi , once a month Tesco. Rarely buy alcohol, and spend very little outside the home. We eat well, generally cook from scratch.

Some thing for the OP to comsider:

You said the weekly food shop is crippling YOU, which implies he isn’t doing it or paying for it.

First point: if it’s only crippling YOU and not HIM, then you need to look again at how finances are worked out.

Second point: if food shopping is, and remains, your responsibility and you are happy with that - just economise, don’t ask his opinion. You don’t need to spend £300 a week for your family, there are plenty of ways to cut down from there.

That’s about what we spend for 2 adults and 3 kids, we are very busy as both work full time and try to eat reasonably well (both health wise and interestingly if that makes sense) and do buy wine also. Fussy kids do not make it easy to save! I can happily eat veggie but they are very plain lean protein orientated.

So this week I spent £138 in Lidl, this is for 2 adults, 5yo, 8yo and 2 teenagers.
7 meals this week
-peri peri chicken, rice, veg
-spag bol
-chicken wraps, wedges
-lamb chops, new potatoes, veg
-pizzas, chips
-fajitas, wedges
-chicken and rice one pot

lunches - sandwich stuff ham cheese chicken, salads, crisps
snacks for kids - yoghurts olives pepperamis ect, chocolates ice lolly’s.

breakfast - toast, cereal, waffles

also dog food and a few toiletries.

i also shop in Sainsbury’s some weeks carefully checking what is on nectar deals and this would cost maybe £180 so struggle to see how you spend £300!

do you plan meals or go with a list or is it a free for all in the shop?

£100-120ish, two adults and two children (and I honestly think that is a lot!) We only buy what we need, rarely need to top up on anything and usually have an empty fridge by the end of the week with not much food wastage at all.

We are two adults and we don't really do a traditional weekly food shop. We get a weekly veg box delivery, buy most of our "dry" groceries from the refill shop, and get a delivery for heavy things like oat milk, drinks and tins from a supermarket every other month, plus top up from local shops during the week. Our total food bill over the last 12 months averages £490 a month, or £113 a week. If we include takeaways/coffees and meals out it's £132 a week. I don't think this is too bad given that we prioritise local/fair trade/organic/plastic free over price. We eat plant based at home (my partner eats an omnivore diet if we eat out).

Between £150-£200 for 2 adults, 2 teens and 2 children

£300 per month two adults everything including cleaning and personal care from Lidl and small amount from Asda. We eat healthly as I am diabetic so no junk or processed.

Lol no it isn't, it's £1300

I think this is very important. I would have probably said about £150-200 per week max but if I look at the spending summary on my bank account app it’s working out as £250-£300 per week on all supermarket shopping. I wonder how many people posting have remembered all the top up shops and the shops done by the partner who isn’t usually the main food shopper.

Yeah exactly! What is this shop including ? Is that for all meals? Just dinners or breakfasts too?

I’ve been keeping a record of absolutely everything I spend this year (which is terrifying but I need to know where it’s all going). For three adults (me and two adult dc) all supermarket and top-up shopping is between £700 and £800 a month. That includes cleaning products, some alcohol, cat food and dry dog food but not wet dog food. We’re all vegetarian and I do a weekly meal plan. I could probably get the cost down if I switched from a Sainsbury’s delivery to Lidl but that would take more time/fuel so that won’t happen unless I drop some hours at work.

As others have said it’s the extras .
As stated further up thread mine is £200 a week .
This week was £95 in Tesco
£50 in M&S then a top up of salad stuff mid week was £20.
Cleaning stuff mainly comes from B&M or Homebargains £35 .
Our cat food is a special gastro food at £20 a week so that’s separate also cat litter is a separate monthly order .
Alcohol we buy ourselves from personal funds .
I honestly don’t know how families manage .
We both take lunches and drinks from home too - I know colleagues who say their food bill is £100 a week but they spend £4 a day on iced coffee and a pret at lunchtime that’s another £5 quid easily .Over a week that adds up considerably .

I also end up OVER spending because I cook from scratch. A cheap jar of bolognaise sauce in Tesco is 69p but it costs me a lot more than that. Same with making snacks for children; a 12 pack of mini cakes costs 1.20 but the butter, sugar, flour, vanilla etc all costs a lot more. I prefer the taste of home made so am happy to do it but I do find it interesting when people say cooking from scratch costs less as mine never does. Another example; a ready made family chicken pie cost £4 but by the time I’d bought the chicken, stock, veg and pastry mine was more than double. I’m definitely doing cooking from scratch wrong as it costs so much more than just grabbing jars and ready made stuff

But you need to compare like with like. A home made pasta sauce will be much nicer and healthier than a cheap ready made one. But it's still not the reason why some people are spending £300 pw on groceries and 'don't know how to do it cheaper'. You could eat all home made including pasta sauce, baking and chicken pies for way less than £300 pw, likely more like £150-200.

Wow thats a lot. I would assume there had been a mistake if that was the total at the till. I spend £80-£130 a week on food for 3 adults and 2 children with healthy appetites. We are in the south west of England.

I do meal plan then do my shopping list and we drink very little alcohol and I choose non-branded versions. We mostly cook from scratch but have a couple of meals that are quicker and easier. Take mostly leftovers or sandwiches for lunches.

Who does the shopping? Are you sure you know what it all goes on? Is there an addiction here that you aren’t aware of?

For us, it’s eating out that adds a chunk. We like to go out for a meal at the weekends which can cost between 60 - 90 depending on where we go. I do a big shop for about 120, then a top up in the week for more fruit, milk, bread, sandwich bits. A coffee out, some popcorn at the cinema, lunch at school etc. easily adds up.

Wowzer.. what are you buying and where?

We are 2 adults, 2 teenagers, massive dog and a guinea pig.
We spend less than £200 a week including booze, toiletries etc.

Two adults, one toddler and a cat. Also pregnant so no alcohol (which always makes a difference). We spend £65 on meal kits from a place called Grubby that does five of our evening meals for the week and then we probably spend £150 for a big shop / top ups as well to buy lunches for us all, meals for the weekend and snacks, toiletries, cleaning products etc. We both work from home and toddler is at a pre-school so we provide lunch. I am always shocked how much we spend considering we barely have any 'meals' with the meal kits so 100% can imagine spending £300 if we had a teen as well. I'm very money conscious so try to buy offers / own brand where possible but equally we're not struggling so we do probably put in a few luxuries that we don't need and also follow a vegan diet so I'm very conscious about buying healthy things to boost nutrition which also adds up.

We’ve been buying as we go, just simple things & snacks, fruit & veg. Even a bag or two is costing a fortune… Haven’t dine a proper shop in weeks, due to the hot weather as well, and school finishing. Just don’t have the money for meat & fish right now…

Portion sizes will account for a fair amount I presume. Cereal, for example, is ‘supposed to be’ 35g or 40g portion per serving. That is the amount I eat but my husband eats double that (which I suspect most people do). Therefore, we need to buy my cereal only once compared to his twice. When we occasionally have oven chips, the serving size is 100g, that’s around 10 chips. That’s what I eat, but again, he has double that. If we open a packet of biscuits, I will only eat one, maybe two, a day whereas he could happily eat half a pack. If both adults in the house, and possibly a teenager or two, are eating double or more the amount I do then they’re going to be paying twice or more the amount I would each. It soon adds up.

Tht’s what we used to be, before we started budgeting. We now budget a flat £1000 each month to spend on all things groceries. We’re 2 adults, 2kids (8,12) and a dog. We have reduced it to approx £200 a week, but some weeks it creeps up to £250. We shop Aldi and home bargains. We could spend less but my husband doesn’t want to.

We aim to keep it at £600 a month for 3 adults and a cat. This is for food and extra household things like loo roll.
We eat healthily and make 90percent of our food from scratch.
We are prone to having additional family over at the weekends (maybe once a month) and then we can spend an extra £200-£300 on hosting that.