[Closed] How much is your food bill?

We eat a LOT of fruit and veg and no being able to use the local sellers, just the super market is costing us a lot.

Are they not delivering or opening for one person at a time?

In our smallish town (pop. 4500ish) we have a greengrocer, 2 butchers, a fishmonger and a wholefood/fill your own containers store.

All of them have either been doing free delivery of set price boxes (£20 veg or £25 meat) or having reduced opening hours for one customer at a time.

Chatting to the GG bloke the other day and they've been doing a roaring trade.

Used to be about the same as you, family of 3. Since lockdown we’ve been a bit more organised (we rarely if ever have takeaways as we’ve got weird dietary demands !) and it’s about 600 a month plus booze which is, errr, anyway. On the booze front between Wine Soc, Fyne Ales and Bellfield we are well covered and all delivered to door which suits us. 1k sounds quite high, we don’t exactly eat cheap - decent meat mostly organic from butcher, fresh fish from fish van and veg box a week.

£1000 pound a week on food?
That's ridiculous.
2 of us here, at most we'd spend £60 a week. And we don't go short.
I would really struggle to spend £125 a week (pro-rata), I'd be 20 stone in no time.
Buy better, use cheaper shops, buy less.

A month, keep up

Two adults here, kids age 9 and 11 and we get through £450 a month. And that's during lockdown where I'm not away for work and eating on expenses.

I can't imagine spending double that. I'm not sure I could eat that much! Unless you are getting through shitloads of expensive wine or something.

I'd be interested to see a breakdown of £1k a month shop.

Must be an awful lot of expensive 'taste the difference' ready meals or meat and veg. Do you buy branded of everything, or own brand?
It's amazing the price difference between say Kellogg's cornflakes (something like £2-3?) and own brand Lidl cornflakes (under £1).

Adding in all the food and booze, and feeding 5 cats, and litter, then £800 to £1000 a month at the minute.

I'm the one doing the shopping, limiting just one of us to supermarket germs. I tend to shop for 3-4 days and batch cook where I can. I can't face doing a big shop working my way round the supermarket, so just do a 20 minute blitz.

I'm gobsmacked that a family spends £32 a day on food,what do you eat?!

family spends £32 a day on food

Only about £2.50 per person per meal family of four, easily done I think especially if you are doing convenience foods.
Edit: and doesn't avg family throw away a ton of food too?

I worked it out a year or two ago and we were spending £6/800 pcm at the supermarket. It’ll be more now as the kids are unfillable and are terrible for wasting food. Wouldn’t be surprised if our family of 4 is around £1000 but we are not really spending on anything else atm.

It’s amazing the price difference between say Kellogg’s cornflakes (something like £2-3?) and own brand Lidl cornflakes (under £1).

Whenever I look at this, I generally find that Kellogs has the lowest sugar, hence I stick with Kellogs Allbran as an example.

Whenever I look at this, I generally find that Kellogs has the lowest sugar, hence I stick with Kellogs Allbran as an example.

Weirdly I often find the opposite:

Kellogg's Cornflakes 8g of sugar per 100g (according to their website)

Lidl cornflakes 5.6g of sugar per 100g (according to the box in my larder)

Family of 5 (kids 14, 12 & 10). Weekly Tesco delivery is about £160. That includes wine, detergents, toiletries.

4 adults here, home 24/7

We spend an average of £1.25 per person for breakfast and a further £1.25 for lunch and then around £2.00 per person for a main meal. That’s £18 per day. That doesn’t include drinks (coffee, tea, milk) snacks, or toiletries. My wife gets through £20 a week in coffee, tea and coconut milk. Toilet roll, washing powder, cleaning stuff (house and personal) will be £15-£20. That’s just under £180 a week right there.

£1 breakfast . Ceral , Toast , Tea , Milk , spread, Jam

£2 Lunch . Ham Sarnie , Bagel , plum toms, 3 x fruits, mini cheddars , choco biccy

£3 dinner . Low carb so meat / veg mostly , Yoghurt biccy , tea

I try to keep below £40 a week in Tesco, low alcohol cost obvs, ditto cleaning suff .
Things like better tea bags , coffee beans , dishwash tabs bump it up but these are once amonth things Saving loads by buying in th bulk aisle at Tesco. 5ltr washing machine detergent and 5tr fabric conditioner are cheaper and dont go off.

£750 a month for a family of four including toiletries, booze, batteries etc

During lockdown I've been more able to see how much we spend because I've been limiting myself to a once weekly shop (Morrisons or Lidl plus a local zero waste shop delivery every other week)

2 adults and 2 kids (7 & 9 but eat as much as us!)

Spent a bit more on booze over lockdown, £22 a bottle of Penderyn Legend at Morrisons was a highlight.

Blimey I'm impressed that some people have their expenditure broken down by meal!

I’m gobsmacked that a family spends £32 a day on food,what do you eat?!

Ready meals, especially branded ones. Easily 4 quid a pop, or more, so there's 16 quid for dinner.

Food or groceries?

After years of being a bit crap with money I took Martin Lewis's advice and set up a monthly budget. I now religiously track actual spend against budget for every transaction, from direct debits to a few quid at the co-op on contact-less. A bit sad perhaps, but it makes me face what we're actually spending and whether we're getting value for money/ need it.

I suspect some people professing to spend thruppence ha'ppeny a month on food may be surprised if they actually totalled up a month. Like, really added it up, not guesstimated 😉

Anyway, for our family of 2 + an elderly cat, the grocery shopping including food, wine (we drink a fair amount), veterinarian cat food, toiletries etc comes in around £650 per month pre-lockdown. Post lockdown has been higher.

Back to the OP - I'd look at your food spend in proportion to other outgoings. Are you happy with how much you spend on food as a proportion of much income you have coming in? If you are, crack on.

Lock down has meant we don't just pop to the shops on the way home , we don't just pop to the shop at work lunch because lazy, we don't pick up something fancy for Friday night.

There isn't alot of totting up to be done now - and it's certainly one aspect of lock down we are going to try and keep to. The shopping once every 2 weeks just seems to free up so much more time.

What we do do is 2 shops a month of the 200quid region...... It's been up at 225 and as low as 160.

That covers everything barring my pizza flour. That's alcohol , washing supplies dishwasher tablets , toilet paper and kitchen roll etc.

Other than that we have gone to village for milk and toaster bread.

We do our best to make most meals from scratch so we know what's in it for jnr but we do keep some baby food pouches(mostly the yogurt with rice) and frozen breaded fish/fish fingers and frozen veg.

Doing the cooking of meals over ready meals was instrumental in getting bills down..... Yes it costs more than a ready meal but we split the remains and freeze it /blend it and freeze it in icecubes. Splitting the costs over the many meals like that makes it much cheaper than decent quality ready meals.

Anyway, for our family of 2 + an elderly cat, the grocery shopping including food, wine (we drink a fair amount), veterinarian cat food, toiletries etc comes in around £650 per month pre-lockdown. Post lockdown has been higher.

I'm surprised if you're truly totting up all the costs that the total bill has gone up - our "supermarket" shopping bill has gone up, but my poncy edinburgh coffee bill is now zero, my daily lunch is from the supermarket bill, we've had less than 1/2 the takeaways we normally would and we've obviously not eaten out at all. I believe that puts me better off than before - and thats without accounting for no trips to the pub (even if offset against more home drinking).

I’m surprised if you’re truly totting up all the costs that the total bill has gone up – our “supermarket” shopping bill has gone up, but my poncy edinburgh coffee bill is now zero, my daily lunch is from the supermarket bill, we’ve had less than 1/2 the takeaways we normally would and we’ve obviously not eaten out at all.

He was careful to specify 'groceries'. Perhaps poncy coffee / work canteen costs weren't included before, but coffee etc now has to come from the groceries bill?