How to become a savvier supermarket shopper and beat that surging grocery price inflation

The busiest grocery shopping period of the year is almost upon us, with Christmas Day just four weeks away. But with the surging cost of food taking a huge bite out of household budgets, Christmas 2022 may not feel like the most wonderful time of the year for many consumers.

Indeed, grocery inflation hit a fresh record of 13.4pc in the 12 weeks to October 30, figures from Kantar showed earlier this month. This means that if you didn’t make any changes to what groceries you buy and how you shop, you’d fork out almost €1,000 extra on groceries a year.

“As food and drink prices continue to climb alongside a rise in household bills, the impact on shoppers’ budgets is unavoidable for many Irish consumers,” says Emer Healy, a senior retail analyst at Kantar.

The average shopper is now spending €7,019 a year on groceries, so it makes sense to get savvier about how you shop. Here are 12 tips and tricks to help you beat grocery inflation:

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1 Plan your meals for every week

Look up family meal plans online – many of which come with a detailed grocery list you can download on your phone – and shop with those recipes in mind

“These recipes should preferably be for meals you can make in bulk to last a day or two, like pies and pasta dishes,” Carol Brick, who runs personal finance company CWM Wealth Management.

If you don’t plan your meals in advance, you’re more likely to waste food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables. Research published earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency showed that the average Irish household wastes €700 a year on buying food they don’t use, with 55pc of people binning food due to expired best-before dates.

“Throwing food away is literally throwing your money away,” Brick says.

2 Write a shopping list

Check what food you already have in your cupboards, fridge and freezer and then write a shopping list based on any extra ingredients you’ll need to turn what you have in stock into meals for the week ahead. When you get to the supermarket, stick to the list.

3 Make a note of advertised discounts

Look out for special sales advertised not just in store but online, in the newspapers, and in other media.

“It may be worth your while buying a month’s supply of an item you would normally buy if you can avail of a huge discount,” says John Lowe from financial advisory firm Moneydoctors.ie.

4 Don't go shopping when you’re hungry

If you’re going to the supermarket straight after work and you haven’t eaten since lunch, have a healthy snack like a banana beforehand – studies show that you’re more likely to buy food that can be eaten faster or to purchase unnecessary non-food items if your tummy is rumbling.

“Being hungry hinders the decision-making process and you may leave the supermarket with more than you intended and with more snacks than essential food items,” Brick says.

5 Leave the kids at home (if you can)

“Shopping with kids can add a lot to your weekly grocery bill, and boy do supermarkets know this,” Brick says. “This is why sweets are at checkouts and why snack food is at their eye level. Leave them at home, and avoid the pester power and over-spending.”

6 Don’t forget your ‘bags for life’

Keep them in the boot of your car if you drive to the supermarket. If you don’t bring your own carrier bags, you’ll pay dearly at the checkout if you have a full trolley. Most grocery chains have phased out the 22-cent plastic bags and instead sell reusable, recyclable or paper bags. Dunnes Stores charges 70 cent for every reusable bag, while Aldi charges anything from 55 cents to 99 cents, depending on the material used. 

7 Look out for the yellow or red stickers

If you’ve noticed shoppers hanging around a certain aisle at the same time every day, it’s likely they’re waiting for a store assistant to come round with the yellow stickered bargains (or red sticker in the case of Aldi).

Foods with a yellow sticker come with huge discounts because of their declining shelf life. You’ll also find yellow sticker bargains at the end of a bank holiday or big event like Christmas.

Find out what day of the week or time of day your local supermarket puts out their yellow-sticker food and go shopping at those times -- you can often make entire meals around what’s been discounted. But be mindful, though, that you may have competition from other shoppers at the same game, so get there ahead of time. 

8 Have a “no-spend day” 

Brick says: “At least two days a week, leave your wallet at home, and try your best not to spend anything. Use up the food in your freezer or larder for handy meals that save a fortune and leave you smugly satisfied.”

9 Be a discount-chain regular

The discount supermarkets can usually offer cheaper prices because their stores are typically smaller than those at other chains, which keeps running costs down. Because they often just sell one label for food items rather than a range of brands and own labels, this further keeps a lid on costs by creating greater economies of scale.

10 Ditch the ready meals

You pay a huge premium just for the convenience of pre-prepared meals. For example, SuperValu sells two fresh ready meals for €12 (it was €10 earlier this year). By cooking from scratch, you could make enough dinners for at least three days for €12.

11 Don’t be a brand snob

If you’re old enough to remember the yellow pack generic brand sold by Quinnsworth, you might remember the stigma that came with bags-full of yellow-pack shopping.  These days, consumers are proud to bag a bargain in the form of own-brand products -- own label now accounts for almost half of the Irish grocery market.  And rightly so, given many of these products are manufactured by the same company that makes the branded versions.

 “The cheaper supermarket own brands are often very similar in taste and quality, and can come off the exact same production line and simply be packaged different l y,” Brick says.

12 Buy less meat

You don’t have to go vegan or become a vegetarian , but eating less meat is not just good for the planet – it’s good for your wallet. Instead of  chicken fillets (which have soared in price), use more eggs and seasonal produce.  

“Follow recipes in free supermarket magazines, as  most of the ingredients are seasonal and available in the  store,” Brick   says. 

13 Loyalty cards 

If you’re feeling the pinch from your weekly grocery shop, it’s worth downloading the app for your supermarket’s loyalty programme and checking it before entering the store to see what money-off vouchers or coupons are available that could reduce your shopping bill.

There are a couple of caveats you should bear in mind before using a loyalty card. Firstly, supermarkets are not just rewarding you with discounts for the sake of it – they want the data they can glean from your personal spending patterns.

But if you’re regularly sharing personal information on social media, a supermarket chain collecting data on your shopping habits is unlikely to bother you.

Typically, most loyalty programmes, such as Tesco’s Clubcard, give you one point that’s worth 1 cent for every euro you spend, meaning you would have to spend €100 in store just to earn €1.

These points are more valuable, however, when you spend them with Tesco’s reward partners like Hotels.com, Milano, and Stena Line. SuperValu this year moved away from the points model to offer coupons and vouchers instead. Dunnes Stores’s ValueCard sends out vouchers a couple of times a year once you’ve earned 200 points, but the most popular among regular discount shoppers is its “shop and save” offer of €10 off your next shop when you spend €50. But be wary of chasing voucher limits in case you overspend.

“Try to buy around the €50 mark ONLY,” says personal finance adviser Carol Brick. “The supermarkets rely on you spending more to make back their margin.”