Canny shopping.

We have a Sainsbury’s delivery once a week - £60 a year delivery charge (any day). I find I buy less if I don’t go in the shop and it’s good to have heavier items delivered. I top up with fresh fruit and veg during the week as needed - I don’t buy these from our market as I try to buy organic. As we’re vegetarian, I like the fruit and veg to be untreated and good quality. We grow some on our allotment too.

I do a Sainsbury's on line shop once a week and use the little market in the pub car park on Mondays. It started during lock down and has continued and, hopefully, stays and stays.

We have a fish van once a week, in a different pub car park, but he is very expensive so I only buy fish there occasionally.

We also have a co-op in the village as do lots of the villages around.

I use the butcher in the next village - he buys his meat locally and we get eggs from the egg farm when we are passing.

We have lots of farmshops around but we have to use the car to go to those.

Our nearby town has 2 Tescos, a Sainsburys, Lidl, 2 Aldis, Iceland, Morrisons and an M&S food Hall. There are also countless delis. And a nearby village has a small Waitrose.

I worry how many of those shops will survive.

You may well know this, V3ra, and perhaps you and your other half travel separately, but you can also get a Two Together railcard for £10 worth of vouchers, and that gets two of you the discounted travel, if you’re both making the same journey.

My Tesco Delivery Saver has just been renewed, I didn’t know that you could use the vouchers to pay for it, I must remember for the next time. Thank you V3ra

That's brilliant about the delivery saver.

Always pay for my delivery saver with Tesco vouchers, so doesn’t cost me anything. £12 of vouchers gives me the £36 for a year of mid week deliveries. I can live with the odd wrong item or strange substitution. It would take me 40 mins to drive there, so it is a bargain to have deliveries out here in the wilds of Scotland.

Kate1949 the Rewards vouchers give you triple the value of the ordinary vouchers and can be used for a wide variety of things: restaurants, days out, railcards as well as the Tesco delivery saver. Well worth a look!

V3ra Yes we do pay for delivery saver. No I didn't know you could do that. Thank you. I think my next vouchers will be due about the same time as my delivery saver is due for renewal. I will investigate. I knew you could double them up for rewards but I didn't know re the delivery saver.

Kate1949

We have a Tesco delivery every 10 days. They've just sent me my Clubcard vouchers so that's £11.50 off the next shop.

Kate1949 do you pay for a delivery saver account? Your £11.50 in ordinary Tesco vouchers would be worth £34.50 in Rewards vouchers and can be used to pay towards the delivery saver, as well as lots of other things with a wide variety of retailers. My daughter told me about this benefit ages ago, I hadn't realised.

Aldi is five minutes walk away from me so I'll walk there for bread and milk etc. I do a bigger shop on a Friday to do me most of the week. Once a month I get a tesco delivery and I include the stuff Aldi don't sell.

We have a Tesco delivery every 10 days. They've just sent me my Clubcard vouchers so that's £11.50 off the next shop.

Such an interesting thread and so many different ways of ? shopping!

I tend to do mine on my way home from somewhere/something/someone else so that I’m making best use of the car or there’s no point in having it is there?

I have Waitrose, Tesco, Asda, Iceland, Lidl and a brand new unvisited (as yet) Aldi within 10 miles for the big, stocking up shop and a delicious bakery, farmers market and local butcher are a 5 minute bus ride away.

We also use the local corner shop for newspapers and milk etc on weekends and could probably buy a week’s supply there if I needed to but my cupboards/fridges/freezers become as fretful as me when they’re down to only 75% full?!

It takes me all my time to compile an online Tesco order so I don't shop around I'm afraid. I also like organic produce on principle which costs more, but while I can afford it I will buy it and support those farmers.

I do make good use of the Clubcard vouchers though: recently we've bought two £30 annual Seniors Railcards by cashing in £20 worth of vouchers, so that'll save a third off the cost of the train fare to London for three trips this year.
We also cashed some in to pay the food order at Pizza Express last weekend, again every 50p of Tesco vouchers used gave us £1.50 off the bill.

My husband regularly does a top-up shop at Morrison's and comes home with "bargains" off the sale trolley which are not things we would normally buy and don't really need, but it keeps him happy ?

Look in Tesco's for bread when it is cheaper ! Surprise how much cheaper some are ... buy it & freeze it ... also apologies if you know ... but if you are over 60 at the Food Warehouse or Iceland ... have to show bus pass , driving licence or something with your age every Tuesday 10% off !

I’ve started to do a big online shop about once a fortnight and stock up on any other fresh requirements in between. I can walk to local shops in either direction ie Sainsbury’s,Co op,Aldi as well as 2 local butchers I use as well as a couple of nice deli shops. Also about 10 minutes drive we have a retail park with Morrison’s,M&S,Iceland etc, I’m very lucky really to have a good choice.

Out in country areas, where local shops have closed, we have no choice but to either get the car out and go to the nearest town, or to get a weekly delivery.
You are incredibly lucky Urmstongran.
I can't work out which is more sensible, car or delivery. The big problem with deliveries is when a product is unavailable on the day of delivery when it's too late to alter it. We've either got to go without it, or if its essential, jump into the car and go into town, which defeats the whole object.

I'm also lucky enough to have the time and opportunity to shop round, and it makes a massive difference to the grocery bills. I once mentioned on GN that I shopped at the local market, and was immediately pounced upon as being a farmers' market/Waitrose kind of gal, and sneered at thereafter for the whole thread (that'll teach me to dare post a comment in News and Politics). In the real world, Waitrose wouldn't look at this area twice and our local markets are the sort that Kate1949 describes - big bag of most things for £1, and the quality matches anything at the nearby supermarkets.

If I feel like a bit of proper bargain hunting I get on a bus and go to Leeds Kirkgate Market, where you can get great fish and meat and the like of 20 peaches or 12 mangoes for £1 at the end of the day, conveniently next to the bus station for the hour long ride home (I take a good book). For other things, I make sure I use any vouchers the supermarkets send me, and they do send them frequently if you don't use their services for a few weeks.

I've no loyalty to a particular supermarket (though I do of course have all the loyalty cards ). Yesterday I walked the couple of miles into town to Sainsburys and got £9 off a £60 shop, which is well worth having. Though I then needed a lift home, so I'm very happy when I get sent Ocado vouchers I can use online, and then I pick the free delivery slots. I've no brand loyalty either, so buy what's on offer. I'm always delighted to find a real bargain.

We have nothing here within walking distance except a rather grubby Coop which I don’t use. So it is either a 16 mile round trip toTesco or delivery. I go for the latter usually and have managed to keep the cost pretty stable ( so far)

We’ve moved from a rural area where we had to get in the car for everything to a temporary home in the city. We’re able to shop every day now, if we want to, and indeed the size of the kitchen in our one bed flat means there’s no room for storage for anything much anyway. Our closest shop is a new Lidl and there are large and small Sainbury’s, M&S, Coop and Home Bargains within a 15mins walk. It’s been a revelation, tbh.

I am also working my way though a mound of tins and jars which I kept as emergency rations in our remote home. I concocted a dinner made entirely of tins & packages the other day - pasta with a sauce made from tinned tomatoes, chick peas and jarred red peppers. Pudding was some tinned rhubarb.

And yes, as someone else said, Smart Price products for basics. They're just as good.

I'm without a car now, so do the once big shop in several smaller installments. Bread and butter are the same price in Sainsbury's, which is a 2 minute walk from my house. Milk and many other staples are the same between Asda & Aldi, so I do an online Asda shop. Fruit and cat litter are cheaper at Aldi.

I also check all receipts. Aldi over charged me by 46p today.

I think shopping around is essential now, with rising prices.

I have stopped doing big grocery shops, I just get what I need or fancy now. I’m also trying Gusto & Odd Box so my main meal is sorted. I did notice frozen raspberries in my local Coop have gone up from £2 to £3 a bag, a 50% increase practically overnight! I put them back when I saw how much they had gone up by. I expect the price increases will only get worse with the price of fuel rocketing but I really don’t understand how they can warrant an increase of 50% like that. Makes you think the shops are taking full advantage of the crisis & cranking up the prices as much as they can.

Yes, good point ChocolateLG.

We get groceries delivered, mostly Tesco, sometimes Asda or Iceland.
I’m not ordering out of habit anymore, exploring Tesco’s value range I’ve found excellent baked beans, 22p a tin, much cheaper biscuits, and mozzarella cheese for a start. Their perfectly imperfect carrots are 44p for 1.5kg, cheaper than the farm shop which involves a drive.
Buying cheaper cuts of meat from our local butcher and taking advantage of their daily offers.
Sadly no local market any more, the nearest is a farmers market monthly in Winchester, not reasonably priced at all.

I'm a very savvy shopper, with time and energy to spend, and, like Urmstongran, to do this without spending money on petrol.
It's a bit of a worry for those who can't do this, though.