What is your food budget?

You have read Michael Pollan’s books!
I like them a lot. There’s also a WONDERFUL documentary on netflix from him: “Cooked”

Lidl’s great. They even sell weed these days. Not quite the quality stuff from Amsterdam but better than nothing

Expensive. You can buy the stuff over the border for like 0.6-0.7 EUR/l

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The quality afghan stuff you can get from your local dealer on the black market. :joy:

Yeah, I know but the farmers’ milk is fatter and thus tastes better (and in my opinion is healthier).

I’m a single person and I spend probably chf70/week. I eat meat, and avocadoes. I shop almost exclusively at Coop.
What saves me is that at one of my schools there is no cafeteria, so if I want to eat, I have to bring it with me. The nice thing is that there is a full kitchen, so I can cook one day for that day and the next. I don’t mind eating leftovers or eating the same thing for three or four meals in a row.
I have a reasonably large freezer which is also super helpful for buying meat on sale.
I don’t eat out much. I have a hard time paying for food that I can make better at home, so I save eating out for occasions with friends or really special treats (because it’s always nice to have someone else cook and clean up!).
I don’t eat processed foods. I don’t really like to cook, so I use my crock pots to make large quantities that I can freeze in single portions.
Food is the one area of the budget that I can always justify spending, so I’m really proud that I’ve gotten it down to chf70/week (all in, including coffee/cocktails out). I used to spend over chf100/week just at Coop, but since about two years ago, I made an extra effort to get the spending down.

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That’s really impressive to me. 10 CHF per day, and that including meat. Sometimes when I buy one piece of tuna steak, it costs 10 CHF. Or half kilo of chicken or beef. That’s not gonna keep me full for the whole day, of course.

I can generally stretch the meat I buy to at least 2-3 meals. Meat is sooooo expensive here, but I eat it almost every day anyways. The freezer helps, the slow cooker helps, but meat is still by far the biggest part of my budget. Aside from avocados, I don’t really eat out of season vegetables and that helps, too. I don’t buy raspberries in February anymore, and sometimes I don’t even buy cherries in season because holy crap, have you seen how much they cost?!?! So there are ways of cutting costs even in the fruit and veggie department.
But we all are fortunate enough that we get to make choices for ourselves. I have a car because the difference in my quality of life even counting the gas, insurance, parking, traffic is so great that it is worth it. Not eating out very often and cooking mostly at home are some of my trade offs.

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I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone who have recommended Lidl. I finally went there and will now never buy at a Coop or Migros ever again! Easily saving +400 chf per month as of now for our family…

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well wait till you see the prices in lidl/aldi just north of the border then! jawdropping. don’t overshop though or i hope you have a big freezer

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Btw, in the topic of food. Have you heard of such companies as Blue Apron or Hello Fresh? The latter actually operates in Switzerland:

https://www.hellofresh.ch/

Basically, once a week they send you a box with ingredients and recipe for 3 meals for 2 people. It costs 90 CHF, or 15 CHF per meal, just the ingredients! The concept I like: I’d like to cook more, but I’m often without inspiration as to what I should cook. But the price is really high, even more so after having this discussion with you about your food costs.

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I’m skeptical about the quality of meat sent by post. would that even be legal? isn’t it supposed to be kept refrigerated?

I think Lidl do something similar…
genau.

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They send it with some cooling gel:

https://www.hellofresh.ch/green/

Yeah, ecological footprint is a serious problem for this kind of delivery. Every week a lot of trash generated.

Cool, didn’t know. So Lidl costs 12 CHF per meal, instead of 15. Otherwise the model is identical. What I don’t like is that they always put 2 meat meals and 1 vegi meal. I mean, I don’t have anything against a vegi meal, if there is some protein. But some noodles with sauce? Bleh…

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Happy to see it helps other members as well!

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Actually a good impact on my food budget was/is as followed:

  • Get a Cumulus credit card (and pay ANYthing with it)
  • Do your “big” groceries purchases in Migros as well and use Cumulus credit card and cumulus card
  • Do your “big” purchases always on multi-cumulus days
  • Get the comparis and other “Aktionen” apps to check when discounts are available

With this procedure, my girlfriend and I are getting monthly coupons (same as cash) between CHF 50-100.
We reduced our food budget dramatically and only buy CH BIO products with some exceptions (definitely only Bio for animal products) and still spend much less than other.

@Strutra2007 thanks for your info. What is your average monthly grocery cost for the two of you?

I have Cumulus, but I HATE it. I don’t like to be restricted where to buy stuff, so I go anyway mostly to Coop or Lidl, because they’re on the way. I don’t like getting the coupons, I just throw it away without reading. I keep my payback coupons in the mobile app. By paying in Migros you get 1% payback. And even if you do all these hoops you mentioned, I can’t imagine it’s more than 5%. And we all know that Lidl is like 30% cheaper than Coop or Migros.

I value convenience and focusing my mind on important things. I hate to be manipulated by supermarkets by their silly points and loyalty programs. Buy this on that day and you get 20x points, wow! It’s just like a game! Well, I’d rather just buy what I need when I need it and not make a big deal out of shopping.

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It’s between CHF 500-800 (food for cats and household products inclusive).

You’re right that Lidl probably is cheaper than Migros/Coop, to be honest I’ve never been there (it’s a personal thing :wink: ). On the other side I don’t feel forced to buy at Migros or to buy only if I have coupons for a product. I don’t pay attention to these other coupons either, but if we have to do our big purchases we lookout for these 5x/10x days to get the paycheck coupons. My breakfast I always buy at coop (because it’s on my way).

For those who don’t know, normally you get 1 cumulus point for each 1 CHF spent in Migros. for each 1000 points you get a voucher for 10 CHF to buy at Migros. So 1 point is worth 1 rappen.

So if you have these 10x days (didn’t know such thing existed, is it on ALL products?) then you rush to the shops to get a 10% discount. And in Lidl you have 30% discount at all times.

So how big can the grocery costs be? 1000 per month? So you save 100 CHF per month. It’s probably easier to stay 2 hours longer at work than keep track of all these Migros coupons :smiley: .

I despise of loyalty programs (Cumulus, Miles and More, whatever s%&* they got at gas stations), because it’s a psychological trick to get you hooked to one brand. Turning adults into kids. In Poland, the low budget supermarket brand made you collect stickers for each purchase. After 30 purchases you would get a mascot. Just think of all the hassle of always carrying this sticker board with you, just to get some shitty mascot. But it was a huge success…

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Would you like to share the personal thing or is it too personal?
If you don’t go to shop in Lidl (or Aldi), you miss a lot of swiss products (fruits/vegetables).

Also if you are environmentally friendly and you don’t trust chinese for food AND you like canned mushrooms (very good on pizza), you should not buy them at Coop or Migros. They both sells chinese mushrooms, while Lidl sells Polish ones. Just an example.

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