Items You’re Wasting Money On At The Grocery Store

When it comes to grocery shopping, there are many items you might be purchasing that are costing you more than twice the price of what they are worth.

We are breaking it all down with these items that are popular buys, but can be costly.

Below are the products that cost a lot and can be easily replaced, and will save you money every week. The savings from these simple swaps can lead to quite a bit of savings in a month.

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Pre-cut Fruits and Vegetables

The first department in most stores is the produce section. And this is where a lot of money can be wasted on pre-cut produce.

It is a significant convenience to have your fruits and vegetables already peeled and cut, and stores recognize this. They fill the produce sections with celery sticks, broccoli florets, and apple slices. But these come at an extra cost. You are paying for the labour and extra packaging to get that convenience.

Saving On Vegetables

As an example, celery can be washed and cut into sticks in about 5 minutes, and save you $2-$3 by doing it yourself. If you buy celery every week, you could save over a $100 a year by spending 5 minutes or less cutting it yourself weekly.

This can be done with carrots as well. We stopped buying baby carrots and cut carrots into sticks for snacking. A bag of baby carrots can cost up to $7 for 2 pounds, and a 3-pound bag of regular carrots costs $3.50. It is a little work, but the savings add up.

Shredded vegetables are easy to do yourself as well. Saving you money on bags of coleslaw and stir fry mixes.

Fruit Savings

Just as with vegetables, precut fruit is costly. This goes for fruit platters as well. We invested in a quality knife that cuts fruits and vegetables just as good as the ones you find in those platters.

And most of the time, those platters come with some kind of fruit that no one eats. For us, it is usually the melons. Unless it is watermelon, it is the last thing to go, and sometimes it ends up in the garbage.

Make your own fruit platters, using in-season fruits and berries. Cutting fruit takes little time and can also be used for lunches and snacks.

Premade Salads

Sticking to the produce aisles, premade salads are another expense that can be swapped out to save you money.

Most stores not only sell salads made in-store, but also bags of premixed salads that usually come with salad dressing and toppings.

How To Save On Salad

Premade salads can cost $6 or more for 300-400 grams of salad. By making your own salads, you can add the vegetables you want and the amount you want and make larger batches that save you money.

And you get more value for your money when you make your own. Those premade and bagged salads add in a dressing, and that dressing comes at a cost that raises the price of the salad. But your own dressing in a bottle or jar and portion it out.

Pre-Packaged Deli

If you purchase deli meat, skip those prepackaged slices that are in the deli and meat departments. It is cheaper to buy from the deli counter and having it sliced the way you want it. A 175-gram package of deli meat is priced at $6 or more. One package we looked at was $9.79 for 175 grams of turkey breast, working out to $5.59 for 100 grams. The deli counter turkey made by the same company cost $4.49 per 100 grams, or approximately $7.86 for 175 grams. 

Save On Deli Meat

Save on deli meat by comparing the prices in the deli case with the prepackaged. It may add a few minutes to your grocery shopping, but the savings add up.

Another way to save on deli meat is to buy the whole piece at places like Costco Business Centre or Wholesale Club. We invested in a meat slicer about 10 years ago, and it is still saving us money. It actually paid for itself within a few months.

The slicer we own and use is a Cuisinart, a newer model is available on Amazon. It can also be used to slice fresh bread and blocks of cheese.

Shredded Cheese

Shredded cheese is convenient, but it does come at a cost. The cheapest shredded cheese we found while writing this was selling at $2.03 per 100 grams. A block of the same cheese was selling at $1.62 per 100 grams. Both packages were the same sticker price, but the shredded one has only 320 grams, while the block has 400 grams.

Shredded cheese also has a powder added to the package to prevent mould and clumping.

Save With DIY Shreds

By shredding cheese yourself, you not only save money but also get more, and there is no powder added to the cheese.

Cheese can be shredded and stored in the freezer for later. Shred a whole block and store in a freezer bag in the freezer for up to two months. Use it to top pasta dishes, pizza and casseroles straight from the freezer.

Bakery Items

Walking through the in-store bakery, you may think you’re getting a deal on items like muffins and quick breads. Compared to the price of the local coffee shop, these are cheaper.

In-store bakery muffins sell for $7 for 6 muffins in our local grocery store. That works out to $1.16 per muffin, so it is cheaper than Tim Hortons where the muffins sell for $3 or $22 a dozen.

Bake Your Own and Freeze

Baking your own muffins and quick breads can save you a ton of money. We did the math, and our muffins cost about $2-$3 a dozen to make.

Batch bake 2-3 dozen muffins and a couple of quick breads once a month, and freeze them to grab and go or to add to school lunches.

Quick breads are easy to bake and can be sliced, wrapped and frozen for up to three months. They thaw quickly as well, so you can add them to a lunch and they are usually thawed by snack time.

Get the recipe for our Blueberry Muffins in the photo above.

Eggs- Pre-cooked/Boiled

Pre-boiled and cooked eggs have become a trend lately, especially with many people trying to boost their protein intake. The convenience of these items comes at a higher cost than if you make them yourself.

A package of boiled eggs costs almost $6 for 6 eggs. And egg bites cost over $8 for 10 pieces.

Make Eggs At Home

Boiled eggs are one of the easiest things to make, and when you buy a dozen eggs, they cost about 32 cents per egg.

The time involved in boiling eggs may seem like a lot, but it really isn’t. Here is how we do it:

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add eggs. Set a timer for 12 minutes. When the eggs are almost done, around 11 minutes, fill a bowl with cold water and some ice. Transfer the eggs to the ice water and let sit 3-5 minutes. Peel the eggs, rinse them off and store in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to three days.

Egg Bites are also easy to make in a muffin tin. Add any vegetables, cheese and meat to them, and bake in the oven or air fryer. They can be made up to three days in advance and kept in the fridge, or freeze them for up to one month.

Frozen Breakfast Sandwiches

These sandwiches can cost $8-10 for a package of two.

Make your own sandwich at home in less than 10 minutes, and they cost less than $2 per sandwich for an English muffin, egg, cheese and meat.

Pre-cooked Bacon/Bacon Bits

This convenience can cost up to twice as much as making it yourself. A package of precooked bacon is 65 grams and costs the same amount as 375 grams of uncooked bacon.

Raw bacon will shrink once cooked, but you will get about 125 to 150 grams of cooked bacon from a 375-gram package. Some packages weighed in at 175 grams of cooked bacon for us.

Our favourite way to cook bacon? In the air fryer. We have a larger air fryer, and it is so worth the price to cook more than just a single serving of anything.

Spice Mixes/Rubs

Specialty BBQ rubs and spice blends are great if you are looking for a quick way to season a dish. But what if you end up not liking that seasoning? At up to $15 for a small jar of seasoning, you could be wasting your money.

Many of those seasonings and rubs can be made at home for a fraction of the cost, especially if you can buy the ingredients in the sizes you need by shopping at a store like Bulk Barn, where you can buy only the amount you need for a certain recipe.

And the great thing about making your own seasonings? There are no added anti-caking ingredients, and you can control the amount of salt you add. We have found that some seasonings have a ton of sodium, to the point that they ruin the dish. These are usually the cheaper brands.

Snack-Sized Anything

Although snack-sized is great for portion control, you are sometimes paying twice the price than if you bought the same product and portioned it yourself.

It may be a little work, but the savings add up.

More Ways To Save

Some things we did not discuss in this post because everyone talks about them. Things like making your own coffee at home, and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water.

The items we mentioned in this article are just some of the ways to help save money. Most of them require a little work, but once you start doing it yourself, you may notice it is easier than it seems to save a little money.

We will be discussing these tips and more in an upcoming podcast. Make sure you are following us on Instagram to find out more.

If you have tips we missed, leave a comment below to help others save money.

And for more ways to cut your grocery bill, check out our Money Saving Tips For the Grocery Store.