Friday, September 16, 2011

Food You Like on Sale? Buy in Bulk to Maximize Savings

I love the shopping maxim, "If you find a pair of shoes you like, buy two."

The same idea can be tailored to food, especially during these times of escalating costs when everyone is looking to shave expenses:

"If you see food you buy all the time on sale, buy 10."

Three times this month I've followed that advice, bought food that keeps frozen or at room temperature and saved some money in the process.

First, on September 2, Whole Foods had a one-day sale on grass-fed ground beef, offering it for $5 per pound. I usually pay about $8 per pound (at Whole Foods or farmers' markets), so the 10 pounds I bought (and froze) saved me $30.

Whole Foods also always runs two-week sales of selected products, and there is a patterned rotation of organic and green items.
Included in the last fortnight of sales were Smjör butter ($2.50 vs. $3.39) and Green & Black's 85% dark chocolate ($2.50 vs. $3.19 at Fairway). Considering these are two staples of my diet, the 10 of each I bought were not frivolous purchases and the $16 I saved was not frowned upon.

Does anyone else have any money-saving food shopping strategies?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

About yearly, I buy 1/2 of an organic lamb which comes to me frozen, and which consists of one leg, various types of chops, stew meat, lamb bratwurst, ground lamb. Usually I have the shank as ground, but sometimes just buy extra shanks to make a meal for several people. This is one year's worth of lamb for my husband and me. If I recall correctly, it comes down to about $5.00 per pound. I could buy a whole as well, but would have to give up beef in order to consume that much lamb in a year. IF I would buy the same amount of lamb piecemeal from the same farmer, it would cost much more, as the ground would be $ 8.00 and the chops up to $16 per pound. Unfortunately this fall I missed the reservation deadline and all the fall lambs were sold out. Now I have to wait until June.