Why shopping at different supermarkets can help you reduce grocery spending

Shopping at several supermarkets for different food items can be a cost-effective approach to cutting grocery costs.

I was able to directly experience this using my own financial tracker. With this, it was easy to create the following visualisation of my grocery spending:

Tracking spending habits

Visualising my grocery spending in this format makes it clear how my shopping habits have changed over the twelve months. It is evident that by shopping more at Waitrose (green bar) instead of buying groceries from both Morrisons (blue bar) and Sarin (purple bar) that my overall spending is gradually increasing to over £140.

From this graph, it is obvious how I should alter my grocery habits to bring down my supermarket expenses. By switching shopping at Waitrose with Morrisons instead this should help lower my overall grocery costs to that seen previously, where it was consistently around the £100 mark.

The reason I switched to shopping at Waitrose in mid-2020 was most likely due to convenience and a shorter walk getting there. While switching back to Morrison might mean travelling a bit more, this will help reduce my grocery spending considerably – worth the slightly longer walking distance!

The risk of impulse purchases

Another approach to reduce grocery spending further is to visit supermarkets less frequently. This is because once at the grocery store, it is very easy to impulse-buy items that you likely were not intending to purchase but was persuaded to buy due to enticing offers.

For example, walking in with intention of buy some milk but walking out of the supermarket not only with a gallon of milk but also a tub of discounted ice cream and some 2-for-1 cereal bars. These additional costs for impulse purchases can add up to a significant amount over time.