Economy Drive

As part of my constant quest to keep our food supplies up and the cost of feeding our children down, I often trade down a brand or two in my shopping.

Having grown up with Heinz, Kelloggs and Ribena, you’d think this wouldn’t come naturally to me. However, I do remember as a child, in learning the value of money, I failed to understand why Mum (and everyone really) didn’t buy the cheapest possible of everything. To be fair, I don’t have the most discerning of palates. To me a custard cream tastes the same whether it is ‘basics’ or ‘finest. ’ Unfortunately Ben can tell his biscuit quality and rejects both the basics and the supermarket own brand in favour of McVities. I blame my mother, if she didn’t stock the more expensive variety in her house, there would be no comparison to make and he never would have developed superior taste buds.

I do agree some things are quite obviously not as good. For example, you can’t help feeling a little cheated if your weetabix are skinny and rectangular, and multi grain hooplas are not nearly as nice as Cheerios. Although it doesn’t stop me buying them if the kids aren’t complaining. Most food stuffs we buy are essentially just to fill a hole (or six of them) and we’re not overly fussy. Even Waitrose has an essential range, though it amuses me that they stock ‘essential hummus’ – only Waitrose customers would consider hummus ‘essential.’

I find myself driving to Lidl in Leatherhead to get the 4 pints of milk for £1 deal, I can’t taste any difference in the milk but I do worry about the cows. Unless you bulk buy milk like we do, it is almost not worth the petrol over there. As I told Mum, I will shop more morally when I can afford to, I like to think that even if the cows are badly paid they are not badly treated.

I love getting a bargain though and mysupermarket.com is great for this. Not only does the website make a satisfying ‘ch ching ch ching’ noise as you select the cheaper option, it simultaneously fills up your basket from each supermarket with the total price comparison and then sends your order to whichever shop you select. (Surprisingly Sainsbury’s has usually come out the cheapest.)

I once scoured the packaging of the supermarket own brand pitta bread and the everyday value version to find out what the actual difference was between them. I discovered that the extra 20p you paid in going for the brand up was for the extra virgin olive oil and sea salt as oppose to olive oil and salt. Who could tell? The value pittas were also slightly smaller but that was admitted on the packet. Considering I often buy seven packets of six at a time, my £1.40 saving from choosing the value range is not to be sniffed at.

I love the anti- marketing of the basics products. The strap line on the pitta bread is ‘a little bit smaller, still fills up a lunchbox. ’ The long’ grain rice is marked up with; ‘some broken, still fluffy when cooked.’ When the marketing team can’t think of anything nice to write about the food, for example on the soups, they just put ‘no fancy packaging’ or even ‘nothing fancy.’

Some other examples that made me laugh, some purely for their dreadful puns or lame rhymes;

Peeled plum tomatoes – ‘some peel, still appealing’

Prawns – ‘smaller, no need to shell out more’

Bread- ‘simple recipe, a little less dough’

Peas – ‘a little less sweet, still go down a treat’

Mushy processed peas (not that I’d ever buy them anyway) – ‘more mushy, still lovely’

Mixed vegetable savoury rice – ‘fewer vegetables, still satisfying’

Tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce – ‘same spaghetti, different sauce.’

It tends not to bode well if you describe food as ‘different’, it usually means you are trying to be kind about it.

The use of the word ‘still’ or ‘even’ to promote something is surely not a positive marketing strategy, but maybe that is the point.

Any basics cleaning product just says ‘cleans, no added promises.’

Who knows what else you get if you pay a bit more, a product that also mows your lawn?

They may as well write ‘It’ll Do,’ but considering that is exactly the attitude with which I shop, it suits me perfectly.

The other day I was so busy in the shop trying save a pound here and fifty pence there that I totally forgot to pay for the car park. Luckily I remembered mid shop, abandoned my full trolley and got to the car in time with a ticket before the traffic warden did. It really would have made a nonsense of my penny counting if I had got a £40 parking fine.

The most uneconomical way to shop is to take the children with you. Then I get “Please, please can we get the iced doughnuts with sprinkles,” from Ben and “Can we have this cereal? It is my favourite, please! ” from Patrick. Then it’s “Please can I get these chocolate mousses for my packed lunch?” from Emilia, and because she knows me so well she adds “They are ‘Basics’.”

Shopping with Rachel is also tricky, not because she fills up the trolley with stuff she wants, although there is some of that, but because she refuses to go in a lift. If it is just the two of us, I have to put the trolley in the lift, press the button, dash out before the door closes and race the lift up the stairs with Rachel to meet it at the top. This is works fine mostly but is not so easy in the multi storey car park I sometimes use, where the stairs and the lift come out on a different floor on different sides of the car park. I nearly managed to lose all the children this way as they escorted Rachel up the stairs and came out somewhere else. They actually found the car before I did. Fortunately, I have not yet lost my hundreds of pounds worth of shopping in this complicated lift system. Now that really would be uneconomical.