How to save $65/mo. on grocery bill?

Botond Kopacz 🔥

Follow

Published in

Grocery Guru

4 min readOct 5, 2020

--

Tips to save on average $65 — $156 monthly on grocery spends.

The average cost of food and groceries each month for one person ranges between $200 – $325 according to the latest monthly report of U.S. Department of Agriculture, which publishes monthly reports about cost of food. For average American families of 4 this could mean spends between $850 and $1300 monthly. With the coronavirus pandemic, the spending and costs

According to the latest monthly reports, average American families of 4 can spend between $560 and $900 on food and groceries. With the hit of coronavirus pandemic – the costs increased ~ 4% compared to last year. And not only the cost increased but spent shifted from spending dollars on food away from home (e.g. restaurant) to groceries.

According to online surveys taken by Food Marketing Institute — which represents food retailers and wholesalers — households with kids spent typically $616 in groceries each month, however this number shifted to an average $925 per month after COVID-19 hit.

How to lower grocery spending and cut on costs?

There are several ways to decrease the grocery bill. For example, planning the shopping in advance with predefined shopping list over ad-hoc grocery visits with impulsive purchases, choosing wisely which stores to visit, and reducing food waste landing in trash or buying products with long shelf-life, bulk ordering online with free shipping can all lead to less dollars spent on grocery.

Which grocery chains offer the best value?

Supermarket chains like Costco, Walmart, Target or Safeway have their own pros and cons.

In the upcoming comparison of the supermarket chains, we picked 10 random products that represents an average basket, and we compared the prices using data from Grate price comparison index for Walmart, Target and Safeway.

Costco — Costco Wholesale Corporation based in Issaquah, Washington comes with yearly membership prices but offers many great deals and can feel like a magical treasure hunt. However, the great deals come in bulk size and packaging, which means adequate space is required to store the bulk items as well. Overstocking, overspending products especially with shorter shelf-life can easily land in throwing dollars in trash.

Walmart — the Bentonville, Arkansas-based mass retailer has the overall best food-priced according to CBS News and often beats local discount stores like Grocery Outlet, Dollar General or Family Dollar. However according to our shopping basket — slightly lost the competition against Target.

Target — Minneapolis-based company emerged as the leader in best price for our basket in both total basket price and per item average price. With an average of 7% lower prices than Walmart based on the past 11 weeks data, highlights that while Walmart and discount stores are great deal for many products — it is not necessarily true for every case.

Safeway — Pleasanton, California-based supermarket chain showed on average 12% higher prices for our basket on the past 11 weeks.

Average Dollar Prices

Winner: Target. Using average weekly prices for all products in our basket from Target, Walmart and Safeway from Grate comparison site.

Total Basket Dollar Price

Winner: Target. By summarizing the total value of our basket on weekly basis per stores.

Conclusion

Where to do our groceries for the lowest price depends on many aspects, as lifestyle, environment, nearby stores as well as weekly promotions and offers. The chart above sheds some light on where to buy groceries is not black and white. Regularly checking and comparing grocery prices as well as looking for weekly offers, promotions before the trip to the grocery store can help cutting grocery prices from 5% — 12% based on our comparison which boiling down to dollars and cents can easily mean up to $65 — $156 monthly saving calculating with $850 and $1300 monthly spend.

Our basket contained the following items: