Budgeting essentials: the weekly food shop

With red peppers resembling the gnarled, wrinkled face of an aged ex-Tory MP, cheeseburgers drier than the Sahara desert, and spring onions appearing as though they have filled the shelves since, well, spring, you may think that this malformed food would be cheap. This suspicion will strengthen when you learn that it is sold in an outlet proclaiming themselves ‘Costcutter’. How stupid you must feel then the first time you get to the seldom manned till and find that airfreighting your enchiladas from Mexico was probably a cheaper option.

While the knowledge that Costcutter is about as far from what its name suggests is widespread, the extent to which this campus monopoly tries to plunge the purses of innocent freshers has yet to be quantified, until now. Using our very own, highly scientific methodology we can now put some numbers to a Warwick student’s weekly shop.

We have put together a basket of the ‘typical’ students food shop and worked out the total prices for Costcutter, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Tesco and Ocado. All of the prices calculated are done using the full price with no deals being taken into account, and wherever possible comparable branded goods are used.

For our shopping basket of 32 goods, which includes all the staples: bread, pasta, chicken, pasta sauce, ready meals, pizza, fruit & vegetables as well as beer and wine, the total prices vary by almost £20. Tesco comes in first with a total price of £70.15 followed closely in second by Sainsbury’s at £71.12. In a (for me at least) surprising third, is Asda at £75.22 and in effectively joint bottom are Costcutter (£88.14) and Ocado (£88.25).

So what does this tell us? Most outrageous is the fact that Costcutter is a full 25% more expensive than Tesco. Does this call into question what is proclaimed by Warwick Retail on the official Costcutters website? They state: ‘Costcutter is the [sic] your local supermarket located in the heart of the campus, offering great value for money alongside good quality’. At least they didn’t have the audacity to end that sentence with the word ‘food’.

To anyone reading this that still does their weekly shop there, you could make yourself literally hundreds of pounds richer over the year by either walking to Tesco or ordering online. A delivered weekly shop is certainly a luxury, but no matter where you shop online the result will certainly not be the most expensive option. Indeed, given the flexible timetables of most students, you can quite easily take advantage of the cheapest rates. For Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s this is typically £3.00 while an Ocado shop can normally be delivered for 99p or £2.00 depending on how much you spend.

Whilst getting your weekly shop from Ocado (which delivers Waitrose products alongside its own branded goods) might seem like the stuff of middle class dreams, it is actually very affordable. There are numerous vouchers available which can give you £15 off your first shop over £75, so if you club together with some friends the previously £88 shop is suddenly only £73 making it cheaper than Asda. They also offer money off vouchers for inviting friends, so rotating who buys each week amongst your housemates can mean continual savings and never having to pay full price.

The other caveat in our study is the various deals offered by supermarkets. The ability to locate the deals you want and how to save as much money as you can is another of the advantages of shopping online. I’m willing to put my neck on the line and say that by shopping online, even taking the delivery charge into account, you will save yourself money simply due to the fact that it is much easier to both control your spending and find the best deals.

At this stage I will admit that I am a bit of a food snob and do my shopping on Ocado. However, whilst I do order from their website, I simply click on the tab headed ‘deals’, venturing away only when absolutely essential. The result is that I rarely pay full price for anything and often get up to 30% off the full price. I would imagine that similar results are possible in the other three supermarkets tested.

With many supermarkets offering big discounts and cheap delivery (especially if you group together), you can save hundreds by looking elsewhere.