What is a discount grocery store? A discount grocery store sells food and other products for significantly less than a regular grocery store. The savings can be phenomenal. Let me tell you about my trip to our discount grocery store last week.
Here are just a few of the items we bought for our family:
Starbucks French Roast K-cups for $2.99
Family Sized bags of Moms Cereal for $1.49 a bag
Snyder’s pretzels and Food Should Taste Good Chips for $.99 a bag
Organic Muir Glen Chipotle Salsa for $.99
Welch’s Unfiltered Concord Grape Juice for $1.49
And we bought so much more! We make a trip to the discount grocery store at least once a month. It is about half an hour away from where we live, but well worth the drive. Here are 3 tips for saving money at a discount grocery store.
1. Find a discount grocery store from this directory. You can google “discount grocery stores” and come up with additional directories. Any discount grocery store within an hour’s drive is probably worth at least a once-a-month trip.
2. Know what to expect at a discount grocery store. Remember, discount grocery stores are low-budget operations. Cashiers still hand-type the prices into the cash register at our local discount grocery store. These stores are able to sell the products at such low prices for several reasons: the products’ packaging is changing so the companies are liquidating the products in the old packaging, the products are dented or the boxes slightly smashed, the products were seasonal and the season is past, or the products are near or past their sell by date.
3. Don’t be afraid of expired packaging on food at the discount grocery store. Read this article on food safety and sell-by dates. Basically, most non-perishable food products are good past their sell-by dates. We personally stay away from meat and most dairy that is past the sell-by date. However, for non-perishable food items we have not noticed a difference in eating food past the sell-by date.
Do you regularly shop at a discount grocery store? What is your experience like? Feel free to share in the comments.