How often should you go grocery shopping?

Grocery shopping is a must needed chore and some have perfected going once a month, while others go every week. This makes me wonder, how often should you go grocery shopping?

The real answer to how often you should grocery shop is going to be based on your specific conditions and also your goals for food shopping. Let’s deep dive further into the conditions and goals to see how many shopping trips are needed per week and month.

How often should you go food shopping?

Food shopping is very dependent on certain factors or conditions like transportation, available storage, and grocery budget.

If you don’t have regular access to transportation to a grocery store, then you will probably need to make bigger trips. On the other hand, if you are walking or riding a bike to the store, then you will probably shop every few days instead of weeks at time.

For more information about walking and biking to the grocery store, check out “Grocery Shopping without a Car.” We go over tips, tricks and suggestions to make shopping easier!

If you have multiple refrigerators and deep freezers to store food in, you may be able to go shopping less often than someone who is only working with a small or college sized dorm fridge.

Lastly if you have a very small grocery budget or are trying to greatly reduce your food budget, then going to the supermarket less often may work better for sticking to your budget. It is very hard to overspend, if you don’t go to the store very often.

How often is normal to go to the grocery store?

According to Statistica, in 2019 the average US household went grocery shopping 1.6 times a week. I would say this is a good average, because some households go once a week and others go multiple times a week.

My parents tend to go to 3 different food stores about 3-4 days apart. For instance, they will go to Aldis for produce on a Monday, then go to a discount bread outlet store on Thursday and finish out any additional shopping at Walmart on Saturdays.

My parents are retired so they have more active time to go to different stores every week. When both my husband and I were working 40+ hours a week, I typically only went to one grocery store on Sundays.

I would get enough food for the next week and call it done. Nowadays that we have more free time, we do one big trip a week and just browse stores for deals 1-2 times a week.

I live in a very small town and notice that lots of people actually go grocery shopping as a way to socialize with others. They may go multiple times a week and just grab a few items for the chance to run into someone they know.

If your goal is to save time on grocery shopping, you may notice that doing curbside pickup once a week is the most convenient and quickest way for you to shop. Curbside pickup can also help save money by forcing you to stick to your grocery list.

Should I grocery shop every week?

If you are trying to stick to a budget by meal planning, you can easily just go shopping once a week. Some find that going multiple times to shop for food makes them more likely to make impulse purchases.

If you are trying to avoid impulse buys, then make a grocery list based off a meal plan and stick to just your list.

If you typically buy a lot of fresh produce, you will probably need to shop weekly. If you buy mostly frozen fruits & vegetable or canned varieties, then you may be able to stretch to bi-weekly or monthly grocery trips.

Keep in mind that shopping once a month for food can save you a lot of money, but other’s said they ended up with a lot more food waste by shopping only once a month.

You won’t really know if shopping monthly is a good option, unless you try it for your family. I suggest making sure you have a solid meal plan to work off of in order to maximize that one trip to the grocery store.

How do people spend under 100 on groceries?

My family rarely spends $100 a week on groceries. This is mainly due to having a well-stocked pantry, a deep freezer full of meat, and having two fridges for cold storage.

On average, we spend about $75 a week on food purchases and mainly are just looking for deals and special pricing.

Our average grocery trips each week is for basics like sandwich bread, milk, and fresh fruits & veggies. We make a meal plan for each week, and only buy items that we don’t currently have at home.

For the most part, I create our meal plans first based on the oldest meat in our freezer. This week the oldest item is a Boston Butt, so we will make at least 2 meals utilizing this meat.

Next, I will check our fridge for any foods that need to be used up right away or our oldest vegetables stashed in our freezer. We recently picked about 6 cucumbers from our garden, so I will be using them for different dishes and snacks for the next week.

Once I make the meal plan using 80% of what we already have on hand, then we only need to buy 20% at the grocery store.

I also try to split my grocery budget into 2 sections for food: stocking up and weekly must haves. That means every week, I try to keep the items to fill out our meal plan to $50 or less.

This leaves $50 a week to stock up on good deals on meat and pantry items like flour, sugar, and yeast. We don’t include household goods like cleaners, shampoo, and paper towels into our grocery budget.

We rarely if ever buy these items at the grocery store, so they are listed in our household items budget. I mostly shop for these items at Dollar General or Walmart and spend about $25 every two weeks.

To find out more information, check out “How to Save Money on Household Items” and see why you shouldn’t buy household items at grocery stores!

To see a good example of a meal plan for 4 people that cost less than $100 for one week of food, check out “Ingles vs Walmart: Who is cheaper for Groceries?“

How often should you go to the grocery store a week?

I have found that most people go shopping based on how their schedule works or how their parents did it when they were young.

A friend recently told me she always goes to the grocery store after church on Sundays because that is what her mom and grandmother have always done. So, this is just a routine that she is familiar with and continues the tradition.

I used to be a devout weekly grocery shopper due to schedule constraints, but now that I work from home, I find going to the grocery store a much-needed break some days. It’s a place that is easy to stop by when I am out with the kids, and the air conditioning during the summer is nice too!

If you are trying to reduce your grocery budget, you may want to start stretching the time between grocery shopping trips and focus on meal planning and scouting sales flyers. Always use what you have at home first, before buying new items at the store.

If your pantry and cold storage is quite small, or if you don’t own a car then going shopping every few days will work best for you.

The best way to determine the right number of trips to take to the supermarket every week, is truly based on what works for your family! There is no “normal” or “right” number of times to go food shopping as long as everyone in your household get fed.

For more tips to lower your grocery bill, check out “Is it cheaper to make your own frozen vegetables?” and “25 Cheap food that fills you up when you are broke!“