We all know these days it really does pay to shop around!
When it comes to food shopping, you can find the same item in all the different supermarkets at vastly varying prices but we don’t always have time to visit 2 or 3 supermarkets, local speciality shops or markets to find the best prices…our time has some value too after all!
But, did you realise that even within the same supermarket, you can often find the same products at a much cheaper price…just by looking in a different aisle?
This was something I have found out almost completely by accident this week while visiting our local Asda.
I do feel that I am quite astute at hunting down a bargain or two but there is one aisle that has never enticed me to browse it’s shelves to see what was on offer…the World Food aisle!
But this week, as I had just worked out that the small 500g bag of basmati rice was almost the same as buying a larger 1kg bag (you would think that larger = cheaper but that is certainly not the case anymore…!) I happened to glance behind me to the World Food aisle and saw an enormous 5kg bag of the ‘Finest long grain basmati rice’ for just £3.80 – not a special offer just the normal price, which works out to 76p/kg.
This, as it turns out is a HUGE saving, almost half price – cheaper even than just ordinary plain long grain white rice.!
Asda’s own brand basmati rice is at best £1.42/kg if you buy the 4kg bag (£1.64/kg for the 500g bag or if you look at the premium brand Tilda, it’s £4/kg!!)
This got me looking much closer at what was available in this overlooked and neglected aisle and what I found was staggering!
Staples like sunflower oil, tins of tomatoes, chick peas…all cheaper and available in larger quantities too – great for bulk buying.
Probably the biggest eye opener though had to be the packets of spices. As a keen baker I do get through spices quite quickly and the small jars you can buy, even though they seem quite reasonable at only 80p or so, are soon used up as they only contain 28 grams (about 1oz).
In the world Food aisle I picked up an 85g pack of ground ginger for just 50p!!! To be fair, it was on a rollback but even then the price before was only 60p.
This works out to be about 1/4 of the price of the supermarket own brand…and the savings are much bigger if you normally buy the branded expensive ones (but you’re smarter than that, I know!)
So, next time you are shopping in the big supermarkets, do yourself a favour and stop and look in the World Food aisle…there are huge savings to be had!