Topic: Methods to cut food costs - page 8. (Read 1417 times)

THere are good points shared - The last one is very practical - one should work in a food industry to cut the cost of grocery items
Also I like the point of going to the wild - but this would not always give you fruits.

As much as I see the well-meaning nature of this post, especially nowadays coz everything is very expensive. I seriously discourage haggling yourself on food, or if it can't really be helped, you can look into cultivating your own food, it's way cheaper and much healthier in my opinion. You should never cut costs on anything that you put in your body, especially food, coz whatever you eat affects everything in your life for that day. Less nutrients mean less performance in whatever you do, and will make you just more depressed especially if you find yourself eating ramen packets for the third day in a row. Just focus on cutting costs on everything else, take the bus ride home instead of booking an uber, look for a roommate to bedspace with you and share the rent, all that stuff.

I've seen most of the responses but I'm thinking the OP is actually seeking for our independent indigenous solutions as to cut food cost practically here is my own solution that I've practiced with my family Viz;

Bulk buying from source : I adopted a pattern to buy basic food stuff at the wholesale point of distribution like seafood we choose a good weekend and buy them from direct fishermen when they're back from their fishing we cut, grind and store them doing this helps us to get it cheaper and natural  this can last for more than a month for grains we have contacts in the village that bring them to the city so we pre order beans,rice etc from the farmers.

Home grown food; We also plant basic vegetables in our yard and get to harvest them for some quick fresh food, I remember last Christmas I didn't buy any meat because I made a small cart and reared a few chicken and when it was the festive season I made a small profit buy selling a few and cooked the rest with my family by this I didn't only cut cost but I earned more.

Finding cheaper alternatives ; If the goal is to feed and stay healthy and not just spend money then instead of junk and packaged drinks which may have their disadvantages like excess sugar I buy bulk mixture of fruits and do fruit smoothie this is more healthier for me.... Safer and cheaper

We also have the exact same application in Greece. I've had some decent coupons in the past, but most of them don't actually interest me or are completely irrelevant. Couponing is extremely popular in the USA, but in Europe, I can't say that I've seen it in practice. There's a company here that distributes coupons, but they are limited to specific companies, and I've never bothered to investigate any further. Generally, it's not a popular practice in Europe, but I've seen videos going overboard in the USA (not sure if they're fake or not).

Coupons and promos usually mislead the consumers into thinking that they are buying cheaper. I will put an example: I know a country in which an something that has been at a certain price for 14 days and then discounted can be legally advertised as "discounted". Hence, many companies put stuff for sale at a ridiculous price for 14 days and then claim a 40% discount on the original price... which technically is true, but at the same time false.

The methods or strategies you shared above has it own bordered limits like geographical differences. As far as i know everyone in the world eat food. So where the amazon services are not provided. Where there is no river if there is river then there is no fish haha. And these coupons are no doubt save many bucks but the time in collecting them is in itself a big problem. On the other hand the discounts you shared. Many of the platforms are not available in my country if some are they do not treat well i don't know why but above scenario are not going to save anything  at all. If we see collectively.

Lets assume and try to understand with an example, for my country. We have given the time of around 3 weeks to do foreign trades as in our national central bank the many is not enough. Conditions are not that bad but if we look into stats than it freezes me. Like a 40kg of flour costs around 2,600 pkr previous year and now it costs around 4,500 to 5,000 pkr. You can convert pkr intoo usd if u want.

Everything is costly now but you what salaries are not increasing hahaha. So people here around found many ways to save cost on food. Like? Let me give you my example. Lets having 5 to 6 family members and everyone wake up on there own time and separate food is cooked for everyone like tea. So, finally this has come to an end and everyone wake up same time to eat which saves gas, and  wastage of
food.  Other than this, i could suggest tens of ways to save money that a person could do while in home and regardless of geographical positions and limits. So overall, i must say you should also add them like eating at same time. Buying stuff in bulk instead of buying again and again. Bargaining with seller. Get familiar with the market rates and report whoever is charging more. Do not waste on video games. Spend less time on scorlling videos instead be a producer not a consumer. There are many things that seems not to be linked but one thing is linked with other and overall this is gonna save u
Your food and money

I can't exactly remember where I saw or read this, but especially during the crisis now the package sizes of many products have been decreased while the price was kept stable (for a while). If people don't pay attention, they sometimes don't even notice it at first and that happened to me as well. So somewhere it was said that when producers decrease package sizes or increase the price, a law could be introduced that forces them to put a note onto the package that displays the price change relative to the older version of that product. If such a law ever comes into effect, I think it would be a great idea in terms of consumer protection and fair and efficient market competition.

But we all know that the lobby is powerful, and we all know what powerful can and will do, and we know that some politicians are too weak or not able to resist...

gone are the days when the food and beverages startups giving massive discount towards their customers for the sake of growing the user base. after the crisis, these startups are going under and so does their discounts, nowadays to cut the food costs we could just buy canned food but then again that's not healthy either since heavily processed food usually contains something that could cause cancer.
I guess that there's no way to cut food costs other than just waiting for discount even preparing the food ourselves still gonna be expensive anyway, many organic ingredients and vegetables are costly because they are organic which is quite ridiculous in the first place, your only way is to increase your income so that you could afford more food and wouldn't sweat over the fact that you should cut down your food costs which sometimes gonna costs you your health sometimes.

Although it may be different for the merchants, I think that this method is also implemented in many countries, like in my country where we can find so many discounts on food, especially on an online marketplace that serves food online. they give so many discounts.
but the fact in this area is that every time they give the discount, actually they have raised the price of the food at first and then they are giving any coupon or discount for the food. The result is actually it is almost the same.  But indeed, we sometimes also can find any food that really has a discount for special costumers such as students, people with certain card holders, and also special promos for certain events.

but on the other hand, if it is related to the method of cutting food costs for personal reference, this will depend on the individual. Sometimes, someone is hunting for foods that have a discount because they will be more interested in it. But sometimes, someone will not care about the promo and discount because what they want, they will buy and be eager to eat. But moreover,  some people may also be not able to reach the food with a discount because they are willing to buy any food.

This is true and this is why it isnt really that applicable or possible for anyone to acquire and really be able to cherish out these discounts yet even they are on the same company but ending up on having different franchisers or whatever that correlates into this then it would really be situational which means its neither be available or not on a particular place.If it is, then you are in good luck but if not then
there's nothing you can do.

When it comes to savings then i do agree that preparing your own food is much more cheaper rather than on going into those restaurants outside and this is why it would really be that
sensible on doing that if you do really want to save up.

Since this year, this isn't allowed in the Netherlands anymore. The discount has to be calculated from the lowest price in the last 30 days.
At least in theory. In reality I expect most shops can still get away with this.

The German LIDL is known for drowning you in these coupons and they're not that great. I have an app in my phone that gives me all these coupons every week and I sometimes wonder i I really want to waste 10 minutes of my time going through them to find that one thing that I could buy 10% cheaper.

Stores are also known for bringing prices up to later cut them down with these coupons. They sell a bottle of beer for 1.6 EUR, then bring it up to 2 EUR for a week or two and down to 1.5 with big 25% discount label, but really it's just 5%.

I sometimes use the 2 for 1 discounts they can be a bargain at times, but they usually do that to products that are about to expire.

Besides one thing you will notice is that the food that you are being sold is heavily overpriced, people do not seem to understand that in their desire to save time they pay extra for someone to make their food for them, however if you are the one that makes the food, not only you can make a healthier version of what you are being sold but it will be way cheaper and over the long term this will save you time and money, as you can then use that money to invest in bitcoin or any other asset you may like and make more money that way.

Yes, it's indeed true! Even if we have those named stores in our countries, the prices will still vary, so does the discounts and coupons that they are offering in United States.

In our country, we are not that reliant about these coupons even if supermarkets and specific food chains will offer it to us because aside from it's still expensive for the most people, the food are not that fresh, or we really don't know if it's still fresh. It's still wise to cook your own food if your aim is to cut the food costs, it's really much cheaper that way and especially, you can ensure that what you're cooking is fresher and nutritious.

while learning to hunt and fish can seem simple to take up by people who live in areas blessed with abundance of forest, wildlife and water, It is not as easy as before.
Firstly, in some areas where there is forest and wildlife, you may find out that there are certain laws that do not permit hunting so as to be able to preserve the wildlife there, and also because of noise and human encroachments, you will find more empty forest where animals have migrated very far deep into the heart of the forest where there is less noise and sign of humans, so hunting will not be easy.

Secondly for the water bodies where fishing normally can take place, in some area like around me where we have a lot of water bodies but little fishing activity because the fishes in the water have either been killed by pollution or have be driven far far into the ocean also because of noise.

So learning to hunt and fish may not be so effective.

apart from being a very romantic way to impress your date, having a cooking skill is also a good way to economically live in this present hard economic reality. If you understand the cooking skill then you can satisfy yourself at home with lesser money spent on preparing it rather than always eating off home to hotels or eateries. It is more economical to cook at home than eating outside and that is the reason women prefer having their kitchen apart from having the advantage of preparing the right kind of food they want for their homes.

True. Kinda sad that I don't stumble upon these quite often in here, not surprised anyway considering it is US. Here in my country, people do have the options to still save money even from food delivery services by having some voucher within the app like FoodPanda or even UberEats (although mentioned already in the OP). It might not be straightforward unlike the ones described in the OP, but it is still worth noting anyway.

Buying cheaper food? Gotta relate to that sometimes that I tend to buy those cheap meal/s from convenience store/s like 7-11. It kinda sucks that it is ran through a microwave since it is already ready-to-eat box, but hey it works for me sometimes. I just avoid eating that same cheap meal over and over again though since it is kind of unhealthy due to preservatives.

Well nothing could be "300%" discount, it doesn't work that way lol, you get 100% discount as free, which means that by the same calculation if you had 1.66 per drumstick at KFC and 90 pence for homemade, that would be basically 60% or so discount, not 300%, but still an amazing idea. I am doing something similar this month and probably next few months as well. I had to start from zero again, so I live a better life right now but I will need to stack up my investments again and in order to do that I have two methods.

First of all, I sell things that I no longer need, it just doesn't make sense to keep useless stuff around the house, and secondly I start eating "healthy", as in at home, and not just kfc drumsticks or anything, I mean salads, veggies, potatoes, cheap stuff.

As a Turkish person we do have some food price surges, but also not have it at the same time, its a bit of a different and kind of weird situation to be in. Buying certain foods is still quite cheap, I guess because we like it? Like wheat oriented stuff, or cabbage, or whatever, these are still quite normal prices that doesn't hurt us, chicken for example is still not that expensive, quite good. However, when it comes to some other foods, mainly meat for example, its incredibly expensive, most people can't even afford it, and some other stuff, like in any other country sometimes its the reverse, so I guess its both about what your nation is capable of farming, some nations can farm things better, and we farm certain things better and those are cheaper. So we just gotta keep eating those, and it will be all cheap.

We who live in different countries can meet different situations and if the prices of basic needs rise, we must adjust our expenses so that our monthly income is sufficient to meet the needs of our lives. It was initially rather difficult to adjust but for us, we can be done well.

Even out there, I think there are still many people who do not get income in one month but income per day and they also make adjustments, even though they are somewhat different, to find discount coupons to buy basic needs. And if so, parents will reduce their rats for their children and maybe a form of sacrifice of parents to their children when prices of basic needs rise.