How do you grocery-shop?

ThreeMarks

I'm doing a college research project, and I'm interested in how people do their grocery shop. This is for a project that my teacher set us for a computing course and has asked us to create the basics of a shopping application.

How do you select your groceries? Do you plan before hand and stick to your list? Or do you impulse-buy?

If you plan meals, do you select specific meals? Are these recipe-based? And do you shop for those ingredients?

If my application could generate a set of recipes for a week (or a day) that was based on nutritional requirements for a person, do you think that would be a good idea?

Also, do you think this is a good idea (I have been asked to create a useful application ) - the application would generate a shopping list of ingredients, say for a week, based on nutrition and budget. I don't know, but I think in the current financial climate, people would find this useful. Though I'm not sure what my teacher would think.

FreeBee00

I have the standard things that I buy every time I go - bread, eggs, yogurt, turkey - but once I get to the store I will take my time and search for new things to add to my diet. I tend to stick to the same meals, so I try to pick up some new things every time that I am grocery shopping. I will switch up what produce I get, between squash, tomatoes, peppers, etc. I don't waste my time making a list because I know that I won't stick to it, remembering things while I am there or finding something new that I want to try. Still, I wouldn't say that I am an impulse shopper because it usually takes me an hour or so to pick things out for just me!

Malory

I shop with a list.

Before I leave, I check what I already have in stock - food for the week, cleaning supplies, kitchen towels, toilet roll, bin bags, etc. and then write down what I need.

If I run low on something during the week, I try to write it down as soon as possible so that I don't forget it when I'm doing the shopping list.

I don't plan each meal individually, but I have a basic idea of what meals I am going to cook overall - e.g. 1 dinner with red meat, 2 fish, 2 poultry, 2 vegetarian and how much vegetables, rice, fruit, etc. I need to be able to make these into complete balanced meals.

Once I have my list, I buy only what is on the list. I'm not extremely specific about it - e.g. a piece of fruit can be a mango, an apple, a plum or a passionfruit. But if fruit is on my list I'm not going to buy something else instead because it is on sale and fruit isn't.

I don't look for bargains. If I can find something that I need that is on sale, then I will buy it at the cheaper price, but I won't buy something that is on sale in the hope that I might use it - more likely, it will go in the bin.

I also won't buy what I consider to be a lower quality brand for the sake of saving money in the short term.

I also try to buy the smallest quantities possible of perishable items because I only live in a two person household and I don't want things to go to waste. I also don't have a lot of storage space.

I don't cook to recipes. I just have a basic idea of what I want and try to keep what I might need in the house, and then just throw things together. I don't have the time to make a special trip to the shop because I forgot to buy something that happens to be in someone else's recipe.

I also don't like the idea of someone else planning my meals for me. What if I'm just not in the mood for something. I'm not going to force myself to eat it. (And I'm not going to force my husband to eat something if he tells me that he really wants something else.) I like to be able to have a choice about what I am going to eat before I make it. Not "It's Wednesday, therefore we're having lasagne."

But other people might like your idea.

ThreeMarks

Malory wrote: »

I shop with a list.

I also don't like the idea of someone else planning my meals for me. What if I'm just not in the mood for something. I'm not going to force myself to eat it. (And I'm not going to force my husband to eat something if he tells me that he really wants something else.) I like to be able to have a choice about what I am going to eat before I make it. Not "It's Wednesday, therefore we're having lasagne."

But other people might like your idea.

Thanks for your reply, Malory. It's really helped me

Okay, so you wouldn't really want to have some-(thing)(one) planning your meals. That sound fair to me and hadn't thought of that myself.

You seem to suggest that you try and get a balanced meal each day. So, how about this - my app could give you say, three meal slots. In those slots you would drop in meals, which are recipe based so that you can track nutritional information. And the app lets you know what the overall nutritional balance of your meals are for that day, and week (maybe).

One more interesting thing I've been thinking about. You also mention you look for the cheaper foods. So if my app were to find the most appropriate ingredients, in terms if cost, for a meal. Again, for example, you're a family of four with a budget of £25 per day, my app could find the best products from a particular store. The best products being, value for money and item size, so as to minimise waste. I imagine something like this would be really useful in this economic climate for families who are struggling.

meandthree

I tend to buy the basics each week, and then as I have three kids, and a very tight budget I go to the local tesco a few times a week, and find the reduced food, and the special offer food, and then plan my meals round that.

I would quite like an app that I can scan the barcodes in or something like that and it gives me balanced meal ideas (that my kids would eat too!) with maybe options for suggestions of more foods to buy to make the meal, but it would be good if a budget could be set to spend on meals, as I am constantly evaluating my price per person per meal.

Hope that makes sense!

Middy

I live alone and I don't have a weekly shop. What I do is if I need any shopping, I do it after work (I work for a supermarket) and just buy as and when I need things or stock up as something is on special offer.

Most of it I have a list, which is flexible. So if I wanted sandwich fillings and see some ham in the reduced - that will do etc.

Malory

ThreeMarks wrote: »

Thanks for your reply, Malory. It's really helped me

Okay, so you wouldn't really want to have some-(thing)(one) planning your meals. That sound fair to me and hadn't thought of that myself.

You seem to suggest that you try and get a balanced meal each day. So, how about this - my app could give you say, three meal slots. In those slots you would drop in meals, which are recipe based so that you can track nutritional information. And the app lets you know what the overall nutritional balance of your meals are for that day, and week (maybe).

One more interesting thing I've been thinking about. You also mention you look for the cheaper foods. So if my app were to find the most appropriate ingredients, in terms if cost, for a meal. Again, for example, you're a family of four with a budget of £25 per day, my app could find the best products from a particular store. The best products being, value for money and item size, so as to minimise waste. I imagine something like this would be really useful in this economic climate for families who are struggling.

I'm not really interested in tracking nutritional information. I'm already healthy and in good physical shape, and I have a healthy, balanced diet. I'm not interested in counting calories or knowing the exact number of grams of fat, protein, carbs, etc.

But that might be useful for other people.

Regarding finding the best products from a particular store, similar items are going to be next to each other on the shelf anyway. I can just look at them when I am in the store.

jenniewb

I eat more or less the same stuff every day, fairly boring to most people but I have a long standing eating disorder and its kinda obessive, I have a few things I can vary on but will otherwise go without if what I want is not there/shop elsewhere. I tend to get two of things and store what is extra as more often then not the store is sold out the next time I shop and I need at least one being stored at home.

I have a set budget, set items to buy but occasionally have to get the next expensive version, an app to help with the budget could be useful: where to cut costs on other items/if and when I have exceeded my budget and any savings I make with offers I had not expected so I can splurge on other things (magazine for example) if I have enough to do so or maybe retain the savings so I can mount them up and then use them at the end of the week (I shop daily).

I would also find it useful to go shopping with an app where I could set the time I entered the shop and log what I found and needed but the store were sold out in. If it was a repeated problem: eg 'every monday night at 8pm x store has no frozen food' I would know to avoid that store on that day and shop elsewhere if I needed frozen food.

skyvicky123

Having learned a lot of tips from the old style board I now plan my meals for the week, work out what ingredients I need to buy, check the prices on mysupermarket.com, work out a rough cost and then go shopping. When I am there I try not to deviate from what's on the list!

An app that helped me create a meal plan, with access to recipes, and then the cost of ingredients and a shopping list would be VERY useful to me. I have been looking for something that works like that!

I guess your problem would be access to the databases to provide the information you need?

welshmike_2

You could make a much better "questionnaire" if you created it in a tabular form and a a multi choice one.

However in that spirit here are my answers.

How do you select your groceries?
Do you plan before hand and stick to your list? YES
Or do you impulse-buy? NO

If you plan meals, do you select specific meals? YES
Are these recipe-based? YES
And do you shop for those ingredients? YES

If my application could generate a set of recipes for a week (or a day) that was based on nutritional requirements for a person, do you think that would be a good idea? YES but people vary so much in their food preferences this would be a difficult challenge.

Also, do you think this is a good idea (I have been asked to create a useful application ) - the application would generate a shopping list of ingredients, say for a week, based on nutrition and budget. I don't know, but I think in the current financial climate, people would find this useful. Though I'm not sure what my teacher would think.
Be empowered with your own ideas and don't be suppressed by guessing what your teacher may think.

Wishing you the best of success.

ThreeMarks

welshmike wrote: »

You could make a much better "questionnaire" if you created it in a tabular form and a a multi choice one.

However in that spirit here are my answers.

I hadn't intended for readers to post questionairre type responses. Instead, I was going for responses with some discussion and expansion on simple yes/no answers . But thanks for replying - it means a lot.

welshmike wrote: »

How do you select your groceries?
Do you plan before hand and stick to your list? YES
Or do you impulse-buy? NO

If you plan meals, do you select specific meals? YES
Are these recipe-based? YES
And do you shop for those ingredients? YES

If my application could generate a set of recipes for a week (or a day) that was based on nutritional requirements for a person, do you think that would be a good idea? YES but people vary so much in their food preferences this would be a difficult challenge.

Also, do you think this is a good idea (I have been asked to create a useful application ) - the application would generate a shopping list of ingredients, say for a week, based on nutrition and budget. I don't know, but I think in the current financial climate, people would find this useful. Though I'm not sure what my teacher would think.
Be empowered with your own ideas and don't be suppressed by guessing what your teacher may think.

Wishing you the best of success.

Okay, so what I meant by asking "Do you think it's a good idea?" was in probably more like "Would you use something like that?". After all, just because I think it's a good idea, doesn't mean others will and therefore use it.

And I've got the technical side sorted

So thanks, to everyone who responded, I'll bear these issues in mind when creating the app.