Saving money on food deliveries

babs_103

I hope someone can help me because I cannot find a way out of my problem. I have to have food delivered as I live 2 bus journeys from the supermarkets and coming back on 2 buses with a load of shopping is never gonna happen. However, I usually have to add stuff I don't really need to make up the 40 or 50 pound basket amount. I have so much food in now that I could open my own shop, my freezer and fridge is full and I also have 2 old bookshelves full of tins and packets. I still need to buy things like bread, milk and fresh stuff but cannot justify getting 50 pounds worth a week, and storing things like milk and bread for a month is not doable. I really need to get my food bills down and just don't know what my plan of action should be. Thank you for reading.

Vitor

Make your own bread and keep milk in the freezer?

born_again

Visit local shops for  milk and bread. Till you have used up the supermarket stuff.

kimwp

You can freeze bread and milk and most fruit and veg come pre-frozen. Then you can do smaller shops for the other bits and bobs. You'll just need to use your freezer for food that you actually eat so you either don't need the space because you don't need to buy more or you have the space because you've eaten the contents. 

Frozen fruit and veg is more nutritious than fresh because the nutrients are locked in soon after harvest, whereas they have had time to decline in the fresh ones on their journey to you.

middlewife

Could you stretch to ordering every 10 days rather than weekly? If you buy birthday/Christmas presents for people, maybe choose a gift item each shop to bump up the cost? Sainsbury's do saver slots which are quite a bit cheaper if you have the flexibility to be at home for a 4 hour slot, I usually pick the 6 - 10pm slot....

itsthelittlethings

Yeah do you have a village shop or similar?

annieb64

We have a delivery about every 2- 3 weeks so have no problem going over £ 50 especially as I usually order a couple of bottles of wine. Could you freeze bread and order the Cravendale type milk which keeps longer?

babs_103

These answers are so logical but I just couldn't get my head round it, I can buy milk locally at the garage which is dearer than the supermarket but will still work out cheaper. I have a small fridge/freezer but it will hold about 10 days worth of food so there is no reason I would have to have a delivery once a week. As I said it's all so logical but I have been trying to think of a solution for so long and with RL getting in the way I feel such a fool now. Thank you all for your help.

josephine82

Do you have a milkman delivery in your area? 

There are a couple of companies that do this, modern milkman, milk and more for example. 

They do a lot more than milk, I used them during the pandemic and got my milk, bread, juice etc delivered once a week. The cost wasn’t much different to Tesco. 

Might be worth a search to see if anything exists like this! 

kimwp

babs_103 said:

These answers are so logical but I just couldn't get my head round it, I can buy milk locally at the garage which is dearer than the supermarket but will still work out cheaper. I have a small fridge/freezer but it will hold about 10 days worth of food so there is no reason I would have to have a delivery once a week. As I said it's all so logical but I have been trying to think of a solution for so long and with RL getting in the way I feel such a fool now. Thank you all for your help.

It's good that you asked, other people will be pondering the same thing or not even realise they have this problem and buying more and more without thinking to try to solve it.

lr1277

Are you within the catchment area for food delivery services like Just Eat or Deliveroo? On Just Eat, they deliver from many local supermarkets. In fact when I go to one of the local supermarkets that 'uses' Deliveroo and Just Eat, a number of staff seem to be packing stuff for delivery orders. More so than say a year ago.

The advantage of a food delivery service is the minimum spend is usually much less than the supermarket spend (at least in the case of my supermarket).

The downside is that not every item in the supermarket is available from the food delivery service. But getting essentials (except maybe bread) shouldn't be a problem. Edited to add: It is also possible the prices are higher than if you go to the supermarket and buy from the shop.

Only piece of advice is if the supermarket is further away, tipping generously helps get the order to you sooner. In the Just Eat setup, I can tip as part of the order. Obviously this raises the price of the shop, but might still be cheaper than the minimum shop set by the supermarket.

Edited to add: You need to weigh the total costs and convenience to see if it is worth it for you.