Grocery Shopping 101

Before I got married I had a system for buying groceries. It was basic, but it worked for me.

I would decide on my menus for about a week. I kept my menus simple and became accustomed to eating mostly one thing per meal because of serving sizes. I liked to keep from throwing leftovers out. I would go to a single grocery store, compare prices, and buy the cheapest.

Now that I’m married–I’ve been married for nearly ten years now–I’ve combined this with my wife’s skills to create a system. I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned about grocery shopping.

I’ve read a few things about grocery shopping, some of which have worked out and some, well, not so much. So here are the things that work for us.

1. Use more than one store. Each store will advertise the most attractive things about their particular operation. But even the cheapest store is not always going to have the lowest prices on everything, and the most expensive one can have good prices on some items. My wife and I use three stores, Winn-Dixie, Publix, and Walmart, but which stores are best will depend on where you are.

2. Consider time and travel, but do it realistically. I’ve found that when I’m looking for time to do a task I don’t really like, I tend to exaggerate the value of my time. The same thing goes for transportation. The cost of going from point A to point B can vary in your mind depending on whether you want to go or not! My wife and I normally only shop at two stores in a given week, unless there are very good deals that make the extra time and travel particularly worthwhile.

3. Do be conscious of quality. Much of the advice I have read about saving money while shopping makes the assumption that everything is the same quality. Especially in produce and meat, that is not the case. If you have to throw out more of your produce because of low quality, your savings will disappear quickly.

4. Don’t equate brand names with quality. There are cases where quality is higher and/or more consistent for a particular brand in a particular area. For example, jams and jellies can be quite specific in terms of taste. On the other hand, I’ve found that a particular generic brand of cottage cheese is more to my taste than any of the brand name products.

5. Always calculate price per unit. I have read lots of advice on pricing that says that one form of pricing or another is deceptive. The fact is that pricing is generally deceptive. It’s designed to get you to buy what the store wants to sell. Buy one-get one is not necessarily a good deal, but it may well be, and the way to find out is to calculate the price per unit (ounce, pint, quart, anything you can use to compare).

6. Watch for tricky ideas in pricing. Normally x for $y sales, for example, will allow you to buy any number. One of our local stores really likes 10 for $10 sales. It’s easy to get the idea you’re getting a deal but watch – a generic brand nearby is priced at $0.79! Or when the 10 for $10 price is actually a good price, the intention may be to tempt you to buy more. You don’t have to.

7. Catch the fine print when it’s there. On the other hand there are sales that require you to buy a certain number or that require you to buy one and then use a coupon to get another. I’ve been caught by these, but only temporarily. Because my wife calculates the expected total and I watch the screen as the prices scroll by, I know when some sale item didn’t go through as expected. Once it was a free gallon of milk when I had bought two boxes of cereal. It turned out that I had to buy the gallon of milk on a second visit, or, as it turned out, a second purchase. I returned the milk, went back through the line, and bought it again–or rather got it free.

8. Plan your list and follow it. The general rule is don’t go grocery shopping when hungry. That doesn’t always work out. What works for me is always having a list and following it.

9. Grocery shelves are not arranged for your convenience. When I first started shopping for a family, rather than for one, I also noticed how often grocery shopping took me on inconvenient routes. I also notice this when I shop at an unfamiliar store. The stuff is not necessarily logically arranged.

   I recall one grocery shopping trip that nearly drove me crazy. My list said “popcorn” and the price. It was a buy one-get one, and it was a good deal. I searched the store. I found various much more expensive options. In fact, I found popcorn in four different places in the store. Some were on sale, but the wrong type. Finally, in the section for “healthy” snacks, I found the desired item. There was no reason for it to be in that section. It was just very unlikely that someone would find it there. I considered buying some other type of popcorn, but it was so much more expensive than what I was looking for that I persevered.

10. Use the internet. Every week my wife looks over the sales flyers that can be found on the internet. This lets her find the sale items. Often at Publix or Winn-Dixie I buy nothing that is not on sale. When the sale items don’t turn out to be such a great savings, we can skip a particular store.

By following these ideas, we’ve managed to keep the grocery budget under control–and still eat well.