25 grocery receipts in one month!

[pinkytoe]

I like to tally up our food expenses at the end of every month and was surprised to see that I had made 25 shopping trips in April. I am not wondering about the amount spent which was as usual but the time involved in so many trips. Seems terribly inefficient. Granted, one of the groceries I shop at is on the street I take home from work so is a quick jaunt in and out to buy fresh produce. And I am a spontaneous cook - not a planner obviously. I am curious though how many trips you make to purchase food every month? I am thinking twice a week should be more than adequate.

[treehugger]

I don't think this is really a "should" category. Lots of reasons/ways to grocery shop, so whatever works for you is the right way. Now, if it's not working, then yes, there might be room for improvement. Plenty of people espouse that the "right" way to shop is daily "like the Europeans do." Of course, that is a broad generalization that I don't really even believe is true, but I do see people say that frequently.

All of that said, for a variety of reasons (time, budget, gas, etc.), I prefer to shop no more than once every 2 weeks. We also get a CSA box delivered once every 2 weeks also. Those two things put together keep us in plenty of food and fresh produce. I keep a stocked pantry and freezer and cook from those regularly. When the produce comes, I prioritize what needs to be eaten right away (lettuce, strawberries) and what can wait a week or more (carrots, apples). On non-delivery weeks I supplement with grocery store produce (not my preference) or frozen vegetables if needed.

Best wishes finding the system for you.

Kara

[SimplyMama]

I do one big shopping a week and usually at least a second trip for produce or meat. I'm not a big fan of freezing meat and it never seems to keep as well at our home as it does in the store. There are weeks I visit even more frequently, but I'd say on average 2-3 trips per week so 8-12 a month. My dd works part time at the grocery though (she's in college) and I probably ask her to grab something once a week as well.

I agree with treehugger. Whatever works for you. If I lived within walking distance to a grocer, I'd probably go more often.

[KayLR]

Once a week grocery shopper here, too. Maybe one extra trip for milk or bananas or something unexpected. I like to keep the trips to a minimum, because inevitably I will buy something not on the list or that I didn't intend to buy when I walked in. Fewer trips mean fewer unplanned purchases = saved $.

[Dhiana]

There are as many ways to get food as there are ways to eat it :)

If you get a benefit by stopping that many times since it's on the way home anyway, why not?
That leads to the question of how much benefit do you get from it? Super fresh fruits and vegets? Does this allow you to take advantage of sales? Less waste because you buy only what you need for the next couple of days?

I live across the street from a grocery and am there everyday just to see what's on sale. They have a rack where they put out 'old' but perfectly good fruits & vegetables. I can get a red pepper from the rack for approx 80 cents instead of the usual $2.00. So it is very beneficial for my to stop by each day.

[Rosemary]

I always shop at multiple places because of sales and availability of products. Cooking is my primary hobby, so it works out well that we need to eat!

[ApatheticNoMore]

I wish I could shop regularly like I used to. It's a lot harder and takes a lot more planning to avoid waste when shopping once a week. I do the once a week schedule now because of a long commute that doesn't go by the store on the way home - it's conserving time and energy that's all.

[SteveinMN]

We usually do all of our shopping for a week at the coop. I have a menu plan, but I'm not above changing it if they're out of a key ingredient or there's a great sale on some fantastic-looking something in season. The coop is within a couple of miles of the house, I trust them, and I like the scale of the place (for me, warehouse stores anymore are just not pleasant places in which to shop).

But -- I'm sure that shopping at the coop almost exclusively pushes up our food bill, and not just because we're buying meat from a cow named Ethel that grazed contentedly on virgin grass somewhere in Minnesota and retired to a SelectComfort bed in her stall each night. ;) Even products one can buy at more ordinary markets typically are more expensive at the coop -- Greek yogurt, paper towels (yes, we use them), Triscuit-y crackers -- in part because there's more service and a smaller buying base at the coop. OTOH, I don't have to spend time at at least two markets to get our groceries for the week. The stuff the coop doesn't carry that we want (like Heinz ketchup) usually can wait until we have a few items of that type to pick up.

I think there's a balance between shopping at multiple markets or just one market (from the standpoints of one's time, the energy used to get there and back, and the choices you may not have in any particular store). I'm not saying any method is right or wrong; just that we all have to balance.

[pinkytoe]

just that we all have to balance
I think this is the issue for me; it just feels like procuring and cooking food has gotten complicated and very time consuming. I feel like hunter-gatherer is my second job but maybe it's supposed to be. We have so many wonderful choices within close proximity that it is easy to pop in and grab a few more ingredients when an urge strikes. And we no longer buy many processed foods so it is a matter of using what is fresh. Tonight will be beans and rice with corn tortillas and jicama salad but darned my cilantro has gone bad. That's the sort of thing that makes for the xtra trips!! In any case, I am going to be a little more strategic, ie use what we've got and a little less impulsive and see how that works.

[Miss Cellane]

Once a week for me. If I don't have an ingredient, I wait until the next shopping trip, and just make something else. Sometimes I stretch it out to two weeks. But I dislike grocery shopping with a passion, so I tend to avoid it. The crowds, the constant doing math to see which item is cheaper, the waiting while someone blocks an entire category of food with their cart while they scan every single can and bottle on display, the rude manners many shoppers display, getting rammed by carts steered by small children--I would rather scrub toilets than food shop.

When I didn't have a car and walked home from work right past the only grocery store in the area, I'd stop in two or three times a week after work. But that was because I couldn't carry a full week's worth of food at one time. But when you can just pop in and out of the store, without having to go out of your way, and park a car and stuff, it's much simpler and easier to shop more often.

[SteveinMN]

I would rather scrub toilets than food shop.
Come on over, Miss C.! :welcome: I would much rather shop for food than scrub toilets.

[treehugger]

Come on over, Miss C.! :welcome: I would much rather shop for food than scrub toilets.

Agreed. Which is why living in a commune sometimes sounds appealing. Of course, it would be just my luck to get stuck with a bunch of other people who loved to cook and hated to clean. :P

Kara

[jp1]

For me grocery shopping is about the only shopping I actually enjoy. We live across the street from safeway, so one or the other of us will pop in there 3-4 times/week to pick up whatever we need for that night's dinner, or a jug of milk or whatever. I find that it has really cut down on waste because now we only buy what we're actually going to eat that day.

[clara24]

5 times only in a month cause i am planning it to save money and to pay my debt in Finland to an debt collector at http://sergel.fi/ ,well making a list of your grocery a week is a good way to reduce your grocery work and for sure it will lessen it to 10 times a month for you cause you said your not into planning but making a list might always be a good way.

[catherine]

I do a once a week main trip, but I usually have to do stop-ins for various reasons. I may want fresh produce, so I'll stop by the farm market frequently--almost daily. Or I'm going to be at a part of town on another errand that's near a store I like, like Trader Joe's, so I'll go and get a few of the products I like at that store.

During growing season my total receipts might also add up to close to 25 (I don't count them). During the winter, I'm guessing half of that or less. My quick-stops usually don't take a lot of time--living in the suburbs where the supermarket and farm market are only about a mile or two away.

[puglogic]

Gosh I know! I just wrote about this on my blog (http://green-hedonist.com/2013/09/food-stamp-challenge-was-i-addicted-to-food-shopping/), and I thought 12 trips in a month was bad....I'd like to get it down to 4 at maximum if I can. They just this season started a little farm market about a 5-minute walk from my house, and that's been helpful (well, until the flood put them under water)

I do like fresh produce - it's one of our only luxuries in the food bill, since we cook from scratch so much. And my husband still has his banana habit, which of course don't keep long for fresh eating.

[SteveinMN]

Again with a link to a "Finnish" money agency...

[jp1]

Steve, obviously clara is VERY worried about her Finnish debt...

[SteveinMN]

Steve, obviously clara is VERY worried about her Finnish debt...
Guess so. Perhaps if she participated more here, she'd get some good ideas for reducing it...

I'm sorry, it doesn't sound very nice of me. But I don't see clara post often and every post I can remember links outside. Looks bad. Or worse.

[SteveinMN]

Upon further reflection, I'm going to step back a bit from the comments I made in my previous post. It is possible that clara is referencing these financial organizations with all sincerity, so she deserves the benefit of the doubt.

I've just spent too long on the Internet and seen too many efforts to market goods and services that way. I know the moderators here at SLF have deleted posts from relatively-new (and now-banned) posters offering get-rich-quick schemes and counterfeit clothing. Putting outside URLs in so many posts, especially when they have only a minor relationship to the topic, looks like spam. So I think it's useful for posters like clara to understand that posts constructed that way make it look like everything they write is just an advertisement.

But I am prepared to offer clara an apology if I'm wrong.

[Gregg]

We don't hit 25 trips to the store in a month very often, but I bet we hit 15 every month. We plan about 1/2 our meals around sales, harvests, events, etc. and the other half are pure wing it ventures. That means there is usually one ingredient in what we decide to make that isn't in the pantry. No big deal, our store is only a mile away (3 blocks from DW's work). It is conveniently laid out. We know where things are. It has self-check out lanes which are super fast most of the time. It's not very practical. It's not frugal either. But we are having a blast being creative and cooking what we feel like on any given night after more than a few decades of regimented, budgeted menu planning when the kids were home. The other nice thing is that we don't feel pressured to eat at 7:00 like we did for family dining. We would make great New Yorkers since we both feel 8:30 or 9:00 is a very civilized time to dine!

[puglogic]

I hear you, Gregg. Sounds wonderful. I know one of the trips in our August marathon was to get Colorado sweet corn at 5/$1 before the sale ended.

I was thinking about that the other night when I finally was able to harvest OUR corn....what do two people do with two bushels of corn?

Blessings upon our chest freezer. I've even made up the corn paste for the fresh corn cornbread I started making (ridiculously good) and froze that.