I was down to my last pack of ground beef. I told Sunshine we needed to keep an eye out for any sales or clearance packages of hamburger or ground beef. While at the store, the meat dept. guy marked down two 5 pound chubs of ground beef to $7.60 each. We got 10 pounds of ground beef for $15.20, so that is $1.52 per pound. YEA!! I’ll break it down into 1 pound packages and freeze it.
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This is a really interesting thread. I wish I had the energy to track my weekly or monthly spend, but I don’t.
I really enjoy food shopping, especially at farmers’ markets and farmstands. In the summer and into early fall, when I’m here in PA, my weekly stops include:
Fridays: main shopping day of the week. A major farmers market trip in the morning before work (local and highly seasonal veg and fruit, local cheese, raw milk, farm eggs, many many lemons, fresh fish, certain meats only available at this market.) This market is all the way across town. During peach season (which is just ending) I also visit a second farmer’s market every Friday for peaches from a specific grower.
Saturday: 2 or 3 farmstands (more farm-grown fresh fruit and veg, fresh flowers) and my regular “country butcher” for all the meat for the coming week (I buy zero meat at the grocery store) and a special treat of red-beet eggs. If it’s berry season, I go picking on Saturdays. I often visit a specific local dairy on the weekends if I need cream or half+half for ice cream.
Once/week: grocery store (staples like yogurt, olive oil and cottage cheese.)
Twice/month: wholesale club (I get my soda there, as well as large packages of baking items like flour, butter and sugar. Mom gets some household items plus processed foods she enjoys.)
Once/month: natural foods store (coconut water, bulk raisins and nuts, herbs and spices, vanilla beans, specialty ingredients.)
When I’m in NYC, my meat comes from a single upstate farmer who runs a grassfed/pastured meat CSA that delivers frozen meat monthly to Brooklyn. A single farmer’s market trip on Saturdays (but this is not a bargain experience like it is in PA.) Grocery shops multiple times per week (because no car, woo hoo) at my local food co-op, and overall more regular eating out/purchased food into the rotation.
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You might be able to broadly track the spending if you use a “food/cash” envelope that you refill and write on the outside the refill date and amount. And if you use a credit card, it’s even easier to simply go thru the monthly bill and checkmark the vendor names / dates for the transactions that likely were food; I keep printed receipts to match up against the card statement so something like a Costco run can be split food /non-food.
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I am trying to do one big shopping haul a week.
Today, I stocked up. $257 Cdn at my local indie grocery store (including a fair amount of meat, poultry and canned tuna), and $57 Cdn at the chain grocery store.
I also cleaned out my pantry to donate groceries I haven’t been using to the food bank. I think I donated 2 dozen cans of sardines, which we haven’t been getting through quickly, at all.
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I’m surprised how cheap the honey is, too. Here’s the receipt:
I found it on Tesco’s Ireland website, the bottle is 340 g (about 12 oz.). The very cheapest at Walmart USA is $3.94 (€3.72) for the same amount of generic brand. Must’ve been on sale?
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Someone needs to alert the bee union.
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Picked up a whole chicken this morning. They were on sale for 89 cents a pound, but there was only one left – a 6.5 pound bird. I’ll slow cook it tomorrow, then figure out what to make this week.
Sunshine has already requested some of the dark meat for chicken salad (for lunch).
I’ll make a couple of meals out it – maybe a chicken and pasta or chicken and rice dish.
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I now do 80 percent of my shopping at smaller -sized stores, a butcher shop and at some bakeries.
I mostly visit a big national chain grocery store when I need goods that aren’t sold at the other places where I shop. I stock up on some of these goods, so I notice when those staples are on sale or when the prices have jumped.
Last night, I went to get these 2 staples at Sobeys, one of the big 3 grocery store chains in Canada, the other 2 being Metro and Loblaws.
Quaker Minute Oats are now $5.19 CAD a bag.
Fibre 1 Cereal was on sale for $6.49 CAD/box, but the regular price has jumped to $8.49 CAD/box.
Clementines and imported American plums are costing $4.99 CAD/lb at Sobeys and Farm Boy. Larger lemons are $1.29 each, or I can buy a bag of 8 smaller lemons for around $6.
I buy most of my produce at Farm Boy, which is like a Trader Joe’s knock-off. It isn’t independent. It’s owned by Sobeys.
Farm Boy currently sells 1.5 litre baskets of imported Spanish plums running $5.99 CAD.
Fresh pineapple, cored or not cored, varies from $3.99 to $4.99 CAD at FarmBoy. It usually costs $5.99 or $6.99 CAD at Loblaws. I don’t understand why pineapple continues to be so cheap relative to all the other imported fruit.
Exactly what I do. Prices are up in both, but since I make small, frequent trips I suspect I don’t notice as much. Friends of mine who snowbird just returned to one residence, and told me they’d spent over $300 in the chain grocery store just to restock. They don’t cook much, either. And they were headed out to another chain grocery to finish up shopping.
I don’t think I have ever spent $300 in any grocery in one trip.
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Sadly, with the food costs up here in Canada, and our taste for specific cuts or produce, I usually spend $400 Cdn a week for 3 adults, shipping twice most weeks.
I also drop around $60 Cdn at a nice bakery on Sundays. 
I often spend $250 Cdn on Fridays when I buy fish ($22- $39/ lb), lamb ($15- $28 Cdn/lb) and ribeye steak ($25 Cdn/ lb)
My big shopping trip before Christmas has sometimes been $350 Cdn. I don’t remember spending more than $400 Cdn!
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My local cheesemonger offers three varieties of Pecorino Romano, at different price points. The lowest priced one is just fine, and it was $16/lb until recently when it went up to $22. I’m going to have to switch back to Trader Joe’s, at $12/lb.
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Holy cow, $22/lb for general, lower cost Romano is crazy. I need to see what they’re charging locally and stock up. Same for parmesan and asiago…
Wow.
My local Safeway had boneless, skinless chicken breasts on sale for $.99/pound. I asked the butcher for one large breast. Last night, I unwrapped it to use it. In addition to it being nicely trimmed of fat, I could not believe how large this thing was. So I cut it into 4 portions vs. 2, and thought I’ll make two meals out of it.
I made Coconut Lime chicken over rice with chopped broccoli, I served two portions and froze two portions, not bad for a $1.65 piece of chicken.
Not much on sale this week, so I’ll poke around in the freezer.
Peanut butter is on sale, so I’ll pick up a jar and make this Peanut Butter Chili Noodle dish. I’ll substitute thick spaghetti for the udon noodles, though.
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The Locatelli brand Romano is up to $28/lb. I honestly can’t tell the difference from the $22 generic version. There is a difference from the $12/lb TJs, but not ten dollars worth of difference.
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I just looked and sheesh . . . I paid close to $38\lb for parm from the local cheese shop. Glad I use it sparingly–a 6 or 7 oz block can last me a two months.
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Related:
"Samuel Rines, an investment strategist at Corbu, says that PepsiCo, Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble and many other consumer food and packaged goods companies exploited the rise in input costs stemming from supply-chain disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to dramatically raise their prices — and increase their profits — in 2021 and 2022.
A contributing factor was that millions of Americans enjoyed solid wage gains and received stimulus checks and other government aid, making it easier for them to pay the higher prices.
Still, some decried the phenomenon as “greedflation.” And in a March 2023 research paper, the economist Isabella Weber at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, referred to it as “seller’s inflation.”"
…
"As an example, Rines points to Unilever, which makes, among other items, Hellman’s mayonnaise, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Dove soaps. Unilever jacked up its prices 13.3% on average across its brands in 2022. Its sales volume fell 3.6% that year. In response, it raised prices just 2.8% last year; sales rose 1.8%.
“We’re beginning to see the consumer no longer willing to take the higher pricing,” Rines said. “So companies were beginning to get a little bit more skeptical of their ability to just have price be the driver of their revenues. They had to have those volumes come back, and the consumer wasn’t reacting in a way that they were pleased with.”"
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Interesting, but I’m skeptical.
Noting the emotionally-loaded, anti-corporate phrasing in the article, no academic qualifications of the “investment strategist” Samuel Rines. “exploited” “greedflation”, “seller’s inflation”, “jacked up” - And the example of a 13.3 % increase causing falling sales volume (yet did their profits increase, per 1st paragraph??) but a 2.8% increase (on top of that 13.3 the previous year) resulting in a RISE of sales volume. No mathematical correlation with just 2 reference points.
Edited to note I’ve now done a quick lookup of Samuel Rines , and he’s got the cred - a degree in 2009, Masters Degree in 2010 and a string of 1-3 year per company job-hopping with increasingly impressive titles.
Most recent 3 -month tracking (Nov 2023 thru Jan 2024) - $131/week, $3.11 per person per meal.
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I’ll reserve my usual comments, but I do have to add . . . .
having sat right next to Mahogany Row, I have seen “top CEO’s / execs” - with all those famous “creds” - make some of the dumbest decisions imaginable.
and yes, none of it ended well . . .
sometimes they were held accountable, others simply skated on to their next disastrous “idea”
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