Grocery Shopping 201
Follow ChangeJarSavings.com on Twitter.
Yesterday I talked about the working for a grocery distributor. While working for them, I discovered a few secrets to shopping habits that people over look. In Grocery Shopping 101, I gave you Tips 1-4.
Today more tips.
Tip 5 Shop the Outside Aisles of the Store
The outside aisles are usually in the following order: Produce, Deli, Meat, Dairy, Frozen Foods and Bakery. Occasionally they will move around these items around but they are on the outside of the store. Lesson: Higher priced items are in the inside aisles. The convenience items like macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, bottled juice, chips are in these aisles. The ingredients are to make the convenience items from scratch are found in the outside aisles. By shopping the outside you will eat healthier and save money.
Tip 6 Do Not Buy Items at the Checkout.
General merchandise heaven. This is where you see the nail clippers, Carmex, candy bars and magazines. The impulse items that you look at while you are waiting to check out. Lesson: They are saying blow your budget. You want these things that we pay 20% of the price to get.
Tip 7 Coupons, coupons, coupons. Take them.
Many grocery stores do not have coupons in the store. Manufactures put them in the paper to entice you to buy their product. In the 1970s many stores had a coupon exchange area by the front door. You could take the coupons you wanted and left some you clipped for other shoppers. They got rid of them. The stores don’t like them. Why? The processing fee the manufacturers pay does not pay for the time it takes for the grocery store to mess with them. This is why the savings cards were pushed. They wanted to get away from coupons. Lesson: There are Millions of dollars of coupons that go unused. And the grocery stores are happy. Some stores will even double them but they are counting on you not using them.
Tip 8 Store Brands are Name Brand.
I was amazed as I worked on the dock. The truck from the name brand manufacturer delivering a truck of there products to the distribution center would unload pallets of there brand name items and then pallets of the store brand. Much like the car manufacturers that make the same car for Chevy, Pontiac, and if they have an overseas counter part like Hyundai. The car rolls of the assembly line identical with a different except the different label. Lesson: Buy the store brand. It is made by the name brand company. The grocery store makes more money off the store brand which makes up for me not buying the General Merchandise items there.
This concludes Grocery Shopping 201. For those of you interested, I am going to offer an elective course Grocery Shopping 202. It will discuss bulk buying.
Just my 2 cents. Jim @ ChangeJarSavings.com
© 2009 ChangeJarSavings.com | Grocery Shopping 201
Related posts:
