Knowing how supermarkets operate can help you save hundreds of pounds over the course of a year.
We’ve rounded up our favourite grocery shopping hacks to help you save time and money at the supermarket.
1. Decode pre-packaged fruit and veg
The big supermarket chains have removed ‘best before’ dates from many of their pre-packaged fresh fruit and vegetables to try to reduce food waste - so if you’re after a pack of tomatoes or a punnet of grapes with a long shelf life, you may need to decipher the code on the packaging.
At Asda and Tesco, look for a letter followed by a number - ‘A’ is January, ‘B’ is February, ‘C’ is March and so on, while the number is the day of the month. For example, the best-before date of an item with the code ‘I27’ is 27 September.
Sainsbury’s codes begin with ‘J’ and end with ‘S’, standing for J Sainsbury, and contain the date in the middle. So the best-before date of an item with the code ‘J0910S’ is 9 October.
Morrisons simply uses the first letter and day of the month, so a product with the code ‘S27’ has a best-before date of 27 September.
Bear in mind that food is usually perfectly edible after its best-before or sell-by date - it should be fine to eat if it looks and smells OK. However, food with a use-by date, such as pre-cut fruit, must be eaten by midnight of its expiry date or it could be unsafe.
Find out more:2. Compare the prices of pre-packaged and loose produce
Don’t assume pre-packaged fruit and vegetables are cheaper than loose items - it’s worth checking the unit prices (price per gram or item) or doing the sums.
When we checked, a bag of three mixed bell peppers cost £2.10 and a loose red pepper was 65p at our local Tesco Express, so we could have bought three loose peppers for £1.95 - 15p less than the three-pack (and we wouldn’t be stuck with a bitter green pepper).
At our nearest Asda, a pack of parsnips cost 75p (£1.50 per kg), while loose parsnips cost £1.40 per kg.
You’ll be helping the environment as well as saving money if the supermarket offers paper bags or you take your own for loose produce.
Find out more:3. Check how long Clubcard and Nectar offers will be valid for
When we spot a tempting promotion, our impulse is to snap it up in case the offer ends soon. But it’s easy to check exactly when Tesco Clubcard Prices will finish: the date an offer ends is written backwards in smallprint on the shelf label. If it says ‘241001’, that offer will end on 1 October.
Shelf labels for Sainsbury’s Nectar Prices have the date the promotion started in smallprint, which gives a clue to how long it will be valid for - offers usually run for a fortnight and end on Tuesdays.
Even if an offer is ending soon, Which? research has found that a lot of products regularly go back on offer again and again, so it's best to only buy the item if you were already planning to do so. Loyalty prices are often the same as items' regular selling prices at other stores, too.
Find out more:4. Shop in the world foods aisle
Spices, lentils, rice and coconut milk are just a few of the items that tend to be cheaper in supermarkets’ world foods aisles.
When we checked, the cheapest paprika in Morrisons’ spices aisle was an own-label jar costing £1 for 45g (£2.23 per 100g). But you could buy more than double that amount for the same price in the world foods aisle - a 100g bag for just 99p.
You can also make substantial savings if you’re able to buy in bulk. A 1kg bag of Tilda Basmati rice cost £4.40 in Asda’s rice aisle, while a 5kg bag cost £12 in the world foods aisle - just £2.40 per kg.
Find out more:5. Look up and down the shelves
Supermarkets use other tactics to encourage us to spend more, too, such as stocking essential items like milk and eggs at the back of the store and far away from each other. Then they stop us in our tracks with brightly coloured signs, end-of-aisle displays and eye-catching special and seasonal offers. Avoid being sucked in by writing a shopping list and sticking to it.
Find out more:6. Buy a surprise bag of surplus groceries
Along with bakeries, cafes, convenience stores and restaurants, Asda, Aldi, Co-op, Morrisons, M&S and Waitrose are all on Too Good to Go - an app that allows stores to sell unsold food in ‘surprise bags’ to help minimise food waste. You pay via the app and collect it from the store at a specified time.
When we checked, our local Asda was offering a Too Good to Go bag worth £9 for £3.30 for collection between 9.30pm and 10pm that day, while a nearby Morrisons was offering a surprise bag worth £10 for £3.29 for collection between 7pm and 9.40pm that day.
Bear in mind you can’t choose what you get and the food will probably need eating sooner rather than later.
Find out more:7. Bag a bargain fruit and veg box
All Lidl stores offer ‘Waste Not’ boxes containing 5kg of fruit and vegetables at the end of their shelf life. Your best chance of bagging one is an hour or two after the store opens - the boxes are usually lined up by the checkouts.
Sainsbury’s sells £2 ‘Taste Me, Don’t Waste Me’ boxes with an assortment of surplus fresh produce in over 230 stores. The boxes are made up at the end of the day, so you’re most likely to nab one in the early evening.
Find out more:All prices gathered 24-25 September 2024.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/shop-smarter-and-save-money-top-7-supermarket-hacks-a8xQ51Q89zBs