The Real Shopping Cart

a feature on affordable groceries

Image description: grocery cart with a giant tomato. Image by Freepik.

My husband Charles and I live in an apartment on the fringes of Chinatown in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. We don’t drive. We do not have children or pets. Since Charles was laid off last November, we have worked to reduce our spending.  We have found the most significant cost reduction comes from paying attention to our grocery bill.

This involves a lot of time and dedication. Fortunately for me, Charles is into it. Every week on Thursdays, he goes thorough the flyers and websites of Ottawa grocery stores. The goal is to find the best prices for the items in our shopping list. Each week the shopping list varies depending on our needs.

From that list, Charles creates a chart listing which store has the best price for each item. The stores chosen are those which offer either free or affordable delivery or are within walking and transit distance.

Stores being considered this week are Metro, Walmart, Voila and Adonis for delivery, Massine’s, Isabella Loblaws, Kowloon and Farm Boy , which are within walking distance, and Real Canadian Superstore and Food Basics, which are accessible to us by public transit.

If we could get the cheapest price at all the stores, the total amount would be $151.12, but this isn’t practical. Online shopping requires minimal orders and the cost of bus fare for multiple trips would add too high an expense to save money.   

Charles optimizes the shopping list, figuring out how to satisfy minimal order requirements for delivery, keep our transit use down to one fare each and picks stores within walking distance for the rest.

By combining delivery from Walmart, a transit trip to the Real Canadian Superstore and a few strolls to local stores, he has obtained a price of  $165.54 for this week’s shopping list. While this cost is ten percent greater than the cheapest total price, it is realistic and still saves us a lot of money.

Before Charles’ lay-off, like many people, we typically shopped at only one store for all our groceries, using a delivery service. It used to be that the difference between stores was negligible, a few dollars here and there, but as the table below shows, the difference can be substantial.

As you can see in the table below, by shopping at only one of these stores, you can pay from nineteen percent more to a whopping eighty-two percent higher, or in our case, with the groceries that we need, an additional $123.23.

Image description: a table with three columns and three rows: Real Canadian Superstore:179.68/19%; Food Basics: 201.34/33%; Walmart.ca: 207.00/37%; Your Independent Grocer: 219.77/45%; Loblaws: 224.27/48%; Metro.ca/239.23/58%; Voila.ca: 274.36/82%.

Each week the stores which offer the greatest amount of savings for our grocery cart vary slightly but since summer began, Metro.ca’s price for our order is usually the highest while Real Canadian Superstore, Food Basics and Walmart offer the lowest total price for our groceries.

Our advice to those who wish to save money on groceries is to shop around as much as possible, while taking into account other factors, such as cost of travel and time. The days of relying on one store for all your groceries are over.

In Ottawa, Donovan Burey does a weekly round up of grocery flyers on Reddit.

What other ways do you find to save on your groceries? I’d love to know.

This may become a regular feature on my Substack. I’d also like to get into discussing food more. We are figuring out how to save money, eat delicious meals that are compatible with our dietary needs (diabetes and gut issues for me; lactose intolerance for Charles). I hope you find this helpful and inspiring!

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