If you’re anything like us, you’re feeling the stress at the grocery store more than ever before, so we’re giving you are best Money Saving Grocery Shopping Tips. With the Canada Food Price Report 2026 predicting that the average Canadian Family will spend nearly $1,000 more on food this year, saving money isn’t just a hobby; it has become a necessity.
With a large family, we have learned a few tips and tricks over the years to make sure there is nutritious, filling food on the table every night that our kids will eat. Over the years, we have developed a system that ensures our family eats nutritious meals that are filling but don’t drain our bank account. Whether you shop at Loblaws, Sobey’s, Metro, or Walmart, these are our real-life tips and tricks we use weekly to keep our costs down while keeping our cupboards full.
These are our money-saving tips and tricks we use every week to cut grocery costs. Although these tips are based on Canadian shopping, they can still be used in other countries to help you save money.
Saving Money Can Be Easier Than You Think
Yes, it really can be easy with a few tips. We have learned many tips over the years and have been sharing them with friends and family for years.
When you have as many kids as we do, grocery bills can take up the highest percentage of our budget, next to rent. Over the years, we have tried different ways to save money, and these are the tips and tricks we are sharing here.
Have a Plan
Our biggest tip for grocery shopping is to make a plan. We never go to the store without a list of the groceries we need.
When making our weekly grocery list, we start with the Flipp App on our phones. We look for the sales in meat and vegetables first and make a list of what’s on sale.
Once we know what’s on sale, we plan recipes and meals around those sales. This makes it easier for our family because we all know what meals will be made throughout the week.
Make A List
Yes, you can make your list in Flipp or other apps, but we find it easier to have a list written out on paper. We sort it by department in the store so we can easily find what we are looking for. This helps us stick to the list we made.
Price Match
Some stores will price-match other stores’ flyer sales. No Frills, Real Canadian Superstoreand Giant Tiger are the stores we use that price-match other stores.
This is where the Flipp app comes in handy because you can add all the sales to the app’s list. This makes it easy to show a cashier the sale for matching the prices. When you have everything in one place on the app, it’s easy to show the cashier.
Make Price Matching Easy At The Cash
We keep everything we will be price-matching together in one area of the cart and make sure they are the last items to go on the belt. This way, it is easy to tell the cashier that you have price-matching items, and they can easily be scanned, without holding up the line.
This may sound like a lot of work, but it becomes a routine when we shop and takes very little time to do after you do it a couple of times.
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to consumers.
Additional Money Saving Apps
We have a few other apps we use to help us save money at the store. These apps help us in different ways.
PC Optimum App
Not only do we price match at No Frills and Real Canadian Superstore, but we can collect PC points at the same time. We have collected over $5000 in free groceries over the past few years.
This app also offers special deals at times. On our app, we get offers of price matching at Loblaws on certain products. We also get member-only deals on some products.
And if you have a PC Money account, which we do, you can earn points on purchases from other stores.
Flash Food App
This is where we go to purchase many discounted items that are nearing their expiry date. Sometimes the items are not even close to expiry, the stores just have too many or the items are discontinued.
You can expect a discount of 50% or more off the original price. And it is simple to use. Just order and pay in the app, then head to the store and pick up your items at the customer service desk.
Grocery Apps
We use grocery apps like Food Basics and Walmart to check prices at stores close by. We also use these apps for times when we can’t make it to the store.
The Walmart Canada app allows you to download coupons that can be used for both online shopping and in-store purchases. We have saved on sale items using these coupons.
Moi Rewards
The Food Basics app has its Moi Rewards built in, so when you scan the app, you earn points towards free groceries. Metro is the parent company of Food Basics, so the points are also accumulated at Metro stores.
Moi Rewards are not only for points, but there are also coupons in the app to use at Metro or Food Basics.
Points are accumulated on certain products in the app and flyers. As per dollar value, 500 points will get you $4 off your groceries. This program is not as good as PC Optimum, but if you are shopping there, the points can add up.
Voila
The Voila app lets you order your groceries for pickup and delivery. Their app occasionally offers free products with every order. The downside to this app, though, is that they don’t honour the sales featured in the Sobey’s and Farm Boy flyers. They have their own sales inside the app.
Scene+
Many people believe Scene+ is only for movies, and it used to be. Now you can collect points toward free groceries at Sobey’s and Fresh Co. Points can also be collected and redeemed on the Voila app.
Check Out 51
This cash back app lets you grab coupons in advance. Then, when you buy the products, you just have to upload the receipt to get the money added to your account.
The downside of this app is that the points expire if you don’t upload a receipt after a certain period. And the product selection is limited, in our opinion.
Amazon
Amazon is great for a lot of non-perishables and is sometimes even cheaper than the grocery stores. We try to check our list against the prices at Amazon before we go shopping.
They also have a buy 5, get 5% off on certain mix-and-match items, which saves you more. Items like cereal, crackers, shampoo, and coffee can be found on Amazon’s buy 5 get 5%.
You can also save with Subscribe and Save. It is up to 15%. Simply add the items you use frequently and have them delivered regularly. You can skip it if you don’t need it. We do this for shampoo, deodorant, and soap.
Check out all the items you can subscribe to and save money on Amazon’s Subscribe and Save page.
Other Ways To Save
We have found other ways to save as well. When shopping, we look for in-store deals that may not be advertised. Many times, these are managers’ specials or clear-out deals that can save you up to 50%.
Many of the grocery stores near us have manager’s specials on meat, especially on the first day of a new sale. Last week’s meat sales may still be honoured because the store did not sell off all of the product. Also, we have found some of these meat deals at 50% off because they are nearing the sell-by date.
Reduced Racks/Bins
Almost every store has reduced racks, where items are marked from 25% to 50% off. We find everything from fruits and vegetables to meat, bread, and non-perishables in these areas of the stores. We allow for these expenses in our grocery budget because we don’t know until we get to the store what we will find.
For fruits and vegetables, we like to shop at Farm Boy. If you’re in Ontario and lucky enough to have one nearby, check out their deals for reduced produce. We can usually get apples there at a good price. Farm Boy will usually reduce the cost of any produce that has a blemish. Bruised apples make a great pie filling.
Reduced bread, bagels and English muffins can be frozen for a few weeks, and when they are already on sale, an additional 50% off makes it an even better deal.
We buy reduced meat and freeze it immediately upon returning home. It can last for a couple of months in the freezer. We thaw it in the fridge overnight and cook it the next day. This saves us a lot because meat is one of the most expensive items on our grocery list.
Subscribe and Save
More and more online shopping apps are offering a subscribe and save discount on frequently bought items. We use Amazon’s Subscribe and Save for shampoo, garbage bags and vitamins.
Walmart’s Subscribe and Save is where we get our dog food. And we noticed that PC Express is now offering this option as well.
Loblaws has now added Subscribe and Save to their PC Express app, and with some items, you get bonus Optimum points on your first order.
Costco Business Centre
We use the business centre to buy in bulk when we are sharing that product with family. One of the things we tend to find that is on the cheaper side is meat.
Large boxes of chicken wings, chicken thighs, and ground pork can be cheaper per pound, but it is only a good deal if you can use that amount of food. We split with our older kids, who are on their own. You do have to factor in the space it takes to store larger portions and the cost of the freezer bags to store them to see if it really is a good deal.
Flour, sugar and other baking items can also be cheaper, especially if these are items you use regularly, as we do. Or if you will split the cost with others.
Make It Yourself
Sometimes the best way to save money is by doing it yourself. There are so many items in the grocery store that save you time, like pre-cut vegetables and pre-made salads. But all these come at an additional cost. Even shredded cheese that is the same sticker price as a block of cheese actually costs more because you get less in a package.
We buy vegetables whole and cut them into pieces once we get them home. It is a little more work to peel and chop a 2-pound bag of carrots, but the cost is much lower per serving than a bag of baby carrots.
When it comes to cheese, we go through a ton of it. We purchase 400-gram bars of cheese when they’re on sale. Then we enlist the help of one of our kids to shred it when we need it.
And we are avid bakers, so we do make a lot of our own cookies, cakes, and muffins. Check out our recipes for baking and more at BBQ and Baking, our other website.
We also make our own BBQ sauces and condiments like our Pickled Jalapenos that uses all the peppers we grow in the backyard every summer.
This might sound like a lot of work, but it really isn’t, especially when you get used to doing this every week. It takes us about 15 minutes to plan the grocery list and the menu for a week, and it is well worth the time.
If you have any tips for shopping on a budget or for saving money, we would love to hear them. Leave a comment below letting us know. This also helps others who read this post.