How to Save Money at Food Lion

My family went to Food Lion religiously as a kid.  This was way before Wal-Mart became a grocery store and before Aldi ventured into South Carolina, or the United States. They had much lower prices than their competition and the store was super convenient to our home.

While Food Lion cannot compete with the deep discount store, that does not mean you cannot use them to save money on your grocery bill.

If you have Food Lion available in your local area then this guide will be a big help you take advantage of how Food Lion can save you money.

The Food Lion Weekly Ad

Like most grocery stores, Food Lion puts out a weekly ad with promotions they are running for the week. Food Lion typically works on a six week schedule for what items go on sale.

This means that every section of the store will go on sale every six weeks.  So when you stock up on an item, get six weeks worth, because a similar item will go on sale around that time. If you are worried about not having enough get enough for eight weeks to be safe.

To take advantage of any of the weekly ad deals you must have a Food Lion MVP card.  This works to your advantage because they will actually send you coupons that are customized for your purchasing habits.

On major thing to remember with the Food Lion weekly ad is that buy one get one free items are actually 50% off.  So you can purchase one and use a coupon with it if you don’t need more than one.

Coupon Policies

Food Lion is not the most generous grocery store out there when it comes to manufacturer’s coupons, but they do give you many ways to save that make shopping there advantageous.

They accept all manufacturer’s coupons, but do not double or triple them. What they do is accept a ton of different kinds of coupons. These non-traditional coupons include:

• MVP Kiosk – inside your Food Lion store is a kiosk where you can swipe your MVP card, enter your phone number, and get custom coupons just for you.
• MVP Savings Hub – You can load coupons directly to your MVP card. It’s as easy as logging in and clicking on the coupons you want.
• eCoupons – Food Lion syncs with Ibotta, SavingStar, and Upromise. You can also use coupon apps where you can take a picture and get credit for shopping like Checkout 51 and Ibotta.
• Rebates -There are random rebates around the Food Lion store.  They most frequently hang out near the alcohol aisle, even though they usually have nothing to do with an alcohol purchase. As far as I know this location only presents a problem for my Baptist friends.
• On the Shelf Coupons – You have probably seen these through any traditional grocery store.  You can pull these coupons from small machines that spit them out when you pull one. If you are new to couponing these are most frequently called blinkies.
• Catalina Coupons – You can find Catalina printers at the grocery check out. They will print extra coupons when you check out as you qualify for new coupons.

There are few more quirks in how Food Lion accepts coupons, but they are pretty straightforward in the Food Lion coupon policy.

Competitor Coupons

This is not a Food Lion wide policy but some stores will accept any competitor coupons that are not from a loyalty rewards program or competitor digital coupons.

What is cool about this Food Lion couponing policy is that they will let you use competitor coupons for store brand items on Food Lion store brand items. That is a big divergence from most grocery store policies.

If your store does accept competitor coupons it should be clearly posted and you will then know that the coupons gods have smiled upon you.

Matchup the Deals with the Coupons

Now that you have the ad and you have access to all these coupons, all you have to do is to do a matchup of these deals.

This can be highly time consuming so I recommend using websites like CouponMom.com to get the coupons matched up for you.

Other Ways to Save Money at Food Lion

For most people this may be enough to get you going at Food Lion, but for a true Saving Freak, there’s always more.  Here are some other days to get even more deals at Food Lion:

E-Mail

Food Lion sends out a weekly e-mail that includes their weekly ad. Where this e-mail is helpful is that it will send you extra deals that are customized just for you.

Food Lion App

The Food Lion mobile app allows you to receive deals directly to your phone. Once again, they can specialize these deals.

Social Media

Food Lion is pretty active on social media.  Their Facebook page will release extra store coupons and insider promotions that are not available in the weekly ad or in the Savings Hub.

Close Outs

Food Lion does a great job of offering close out items, but you have to be perusing the aisles to find them. When you do find them you will have to be ready to get coupons to match up and run up the score on your awesome find.

Store Brands

Food Lion has a good quality set of store brand products. They top billed brands are My Essentials, Home 360 and Nature’s Place.

Each meets a different niche and compete favorably with Wal-Mart store brands. You will also find Food Lion branded items throughout the aisles.

Rain Checks

If you see any sale item that is out of stock you can go to the front and get a rain check.

When you return to get the rain check item you can still use your coupons under the standard Food Lion coupon policy. I searched their site and found no official rain check policy, but I wouldn’t push it past six months.

Go Shop!

That’s it! You are ready to get rolling on your Food Lion shopping spree.  Using these tactics you should be able to save more 30% off the price of items that are just on sale.

If you come across any other ways to maximize your Food Lion shopping, leave it in the comments so we can all benefit from your savvy shopping knowledge.