When your fridge and pantry start to look a little bare, you probably picture yourself heading to your regular grocery store. While this is natural, you may be missing out on some amazing deals just down the street in places you might not think of for food.
1. Drug Stores – Yes! We have always been able to find clearance items at Walgreens at a significantly reduced rate. Although I am sure this would be the case at CVS or other drug type stores. As an example, we once found boxes of generic mac & cheese for $0.07 per box!
2. Hardware Stores – Mr. SF has done his share of food shopping at Menards, especially when they have their bag sale and everything you can fit into their paper bag is an extra 15% off. He has found the prices on canned and frozen goods to run a bit cheaper then a normal grocery store chain, and with the extra discount it is a huge money saver.
3. Discount Stores – We have a location of regional discount chain Ollie’s in our hometown where we have saved hundreds of dollars purchasing food, especially when we use the 15 percent coupons they mail out every few months. We always love going in because you never know what you might find there.
4. Salvage Grocery Stores – We have unfortunately lost both of our salvage grocers, but when they were both still open, we saved hundreds of dollars per year buy shopping there first and then going to other places to fill in the gaps. Because we had to travel over 40 minutes to get to them, we would only go about once a month and stock up.
5. Thrift Stores – We have a local thrift store that also sells food, and sometimes gives away extra food to their customers. It is run by a local Christian organization and we were shocked the first time we visited; we left with over $15.00 worth of free produce!
We realize not everyone will have all of these options available, but once you start searching for places to find cheaper groceries, you’ll probably be surprised at what you can find. We hope these ideas will get your creative juices flowing and you will be able to search our new place to score big savings.