The Coupon King's September supermarket savings
In the UK, we throw away 9.5 million tonnes of food a year - but there are ways to stop this AND save money at the same time. From yellow stickers, to anti-food wasting mobile apps, and the key times to visit supermarkets The Coupon King is here to slash the cost of your next supermarket shop.
1) Supermarket Yellow Stickers: Where To Find Them
Yellow stickers are discounts that supermarkets add to products that are soon to expire. This way, someone can buy it for a discount and it saves it from going to waste.
They can be found in most supermarkets, in a few different areas such as the chilled aisle, bakery, sandwiches/meal deals, and non perishables.
2) Supermarket Yellow Stickers - Best Times To Get Them
Typically, supermarkets such as Tesco, Aldi, Lidl & Morrisons put out their first yellow sticker discounts at the start of the day (usually either finding items expiring the night before, or in the morning).
Discounts on early morning yellow stickers won’t be huge, likely around 10-20% off.
Things start to ramp up as we get to the end of the day however - it seems the sweet spot is around 2 hours before the shops shut.
Supermarkets may start to reduce items earlier in the day, but the biggest discounts come the later you leave it. They could be double or triple discounted, up to 90% off their original price late in the day.
3) £1.50 “Too Good To Waste” Fruit & Veg Boxes
If you’re a Lidl shopper, you can pick up massive boxes of fruit & veg for £1.50. These are filled with “Wonky” fruit or veg, which may be damaged, discoloured or abnormally shaped - but still fine to eat.
They’re subject to availability and can sell out very quickly, so you may need to go early in the day.
You may also find ‘Wonky Veg’ packs at Morrisons too, for much cheaper than regular veg.
4) Too Good To Go
Cafes and restaurants have food left over at the end of the day, so instead of throwing it away, it's listed on an app called Too Good To Go. Usually these are in what’s called ‘Magic Bags’, where you don’t know exactly what you’ll get. You’ll receive a selection of items that weren’t sold that day.
You could get a Costa bundle with paninis and cakes for £3.50, a whole roast dinner from Toby Carvery for £3.49, or a main course from Pizza Express for £4.95.
Many supermarkets also offer grocery bags, such as Morrisons, Asda and M&S. There are also local restaurants including curry houses and fish & chip shops dotted around the country. + Magic Bags are collected at the end of the day, but you’ll need to reserve one beforehand to get one. You’ll pay no more than £4-5, with the value inside being much more.
5) Olio
If you have food at the back of your cupboard that will never get eaten, or you’ve made too much food that would otherwise go to waste, there’s an app called Olio you can list it on.
You can list items of food that people local to you may want, and they come to collect it for free.
There could be home cooked brownies that someone’s made too much of, a massive pack of pasta that someone won’t use - or even some cereal that their kids don’t like.
Not only does it stop food waste, it also has a sense of community…plus you could save money too!
6) Supercook
This is a great tool if you have random ingredients in your kitchen that you want to use up - the website Supercook gives you multiple recipes, based on the food you have in your cupboard.
If you want some inspiration for a new recipe, or have food you need to use up, you can type in each item and choose from a number of options what to make.
7) Understand The Coded Best Before Dates
Supermarkets have stopped putting ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ dates on things like fruit and veg, to stop food waste and encourage people to judge for themselves.
However, if you want to know the best before date, there’s a way to crack some code found on the packaging to give you a date.
If you see codes likeI20, J15 or K3 - this will tell you. The letter at the start relates to the month (A = January up to L = December), and the numbers are the day.
So if a product is labelled I20, it expires on the 20th September. J15 would be the 15th October, and K3 on the 3rd November.