I absolutely killed it at the grocery store yesterday. I was so impressed with my haul that I called my good friend Joe Sangl to brag about the amazing amount of food that can be purchased if you are willing to couple the sales with coupons. My wife and I are going to be hosting 5 teenagers at my home for the weekend for an event through our church so a good bit was snack food, but it also included dog food and yogurt which are items that we go through like crazy in my house.
The most interesting thing about this shopping trip was that I accomplished it at Bloom. For those who are not familiar Bloom is an upperend grocery store. Their main selling point is convenience. The store is laid out logically, the carts have maps of the store on them so you can find items quickly, and they even have touch screen monitors where you can look up a recipe and, once found, a little printer prints it out for you with where all the items are located in the store. Overall Bloom is one of the best shopping experiences around. The trade off is you pay a little more for every day items if you do not shop the discounts. So, of course, I shop the discounts and boy did it pay off this week. Here are the numbers:
Regular price for all groceries after taxes - $67.18
Weekly promotional disounts - $29.02
Manufacturers Coupons- $10.05
Store Coupon - $10.00
Grand total - $18.11
That's right $67.18 worth of groceries for $18.11. That is a 73% savings off the regular price. The key to this whole equation is the $10.00 store coupon. You see Bloom has a rewards program called the Breeze Card. They are still working on how the program works, but by signing up you are immediately put on the mailing list to receive $10 off coupons ( you have to spend $35 to get $10 off). You get these coupons in groups of four and can use one each week over the course of a month. If Bloom is doing this I will bet other grocery stores will follow or are already using similar promotions. Check with your favorite chain to see if they do any special promotions for people on the mailing list and you could save a ton!
3 Responses to “Cost of Food Going Down” Leave a reply ›
So, when you go to a store like Bloom (which I would kill to have here in Asheboro), do you kind of find your deals when you enter the store (looking for sale items that match your list, etc) or do you do research through sales circulars before hand? And on the same subject, what do you think of hitting the discount retailer (where you might throw in non-grocery items) versus the actual grocery store (whose overall prices are higher than Walmart)? What can ultimately save more money?
The studies I have seen show that if you shop at Wal-Mart or Aldi day in and day out and do not use coupons you will save 30% over the regular grocery store if you do the same. If you shop the bargains you will come out better at the grocery stores since Wal-Mart doesn't really do specials like the grocery stores do.
In order to find these deals I use couponmom.com and grocerygame.com. The first is free so start with that one and see if it meets your needs. I do not have a lot of the stores that are listed on that site near me so I had to pay for the grocerygame. They are both great and I highly recommend them. I actually did a series on cutting the cost of food. You can check out the first post here
I found your site through a friend and LOVE it. My husband and I started our own travel worship ministry about 2 years ago and are always looking for ways to stretch what God has given us. I'm really excited to keep up with you on your blog=)