A week's worth of groceries for under $100: I tried grocery shopping online on a budget for my family of 4

As the designated grocery shopper in my family, grocery shopping has always been the highlight of my week. Not only is it therapeutic, but it’s also a form of stress relief.

However, I’m someone who tends to overspend when I’m out grocery shopping and usually buy more food than what is actually needed. This often results in me spending unnecessarily as well.

In an attempt to start saving money, I figured that grocery shopping online might help make things easier on my wallet. From my past experiences shopping online for groceries, I know how the whole process can be convenient and fuss-free, as I can stick closely to my shopping list.

Last Sunday, I hopped onto foodpanda to order groceries for my family of four, for the week ahead. However, this came with a catch - I challenged myself to keep within a $100 budget.

After curating a list of groceries that my family had requested, it was time to shop. To my delight, I was able to find all the items that were needed as Giant, the grocery store that I usually do my weekly grocery shopping from, is a merchant on the app.

I was pretty impressed as not only were the pricing of the groceries the same as in-store, with no mark-ups, I could find everything that we needed. This included fresh produce and Meadows products that have become a staple in our household.

I’m someone who actively collects yuu Points at the physical Giant stores so as to redeem discounts on my purchase, so I was delighted that I was able to redeem points despite ordering through the foodpanda app too.

The whole process from selecting my items to receiving my bags of groceries took approximately an hour. With the week’s supply of groceries secured, these were some of the meals that were made throughout the week.

The most important meal of the day

Everyone in my household makes sure that we have a good breakfast every morning to start the day right.

Thanks to foodpanda, I was able to get fresh fruit and bread and was able to stock up on Nutella, all of which are often a part of our breakfast. Like typical working adults, starting off our day with energising drinks is a necessity. I stocked up on Milo cans and our favourite Nescafe Gold coffee, which served us well for the week.

Quick and easy lunches

Work-from-home days are days when I whip up simple lunches for myself. I gravitate towards putting together meals that are quick to put together and require minimal dishes for me to wash.

This will probably offend Italians but I use bottled pasta sauce when trying to make a quick bowl of pasta. I’ll throw in mushrooms and vegetables, in this case broccoli, and cook up a small but filling lunch in less than 20 minutes.  

Another simple and low-effort meal that I love cooking for myself when I’m working from home is a comforting bowl of instant noodles. Myojo is one of my favourite brands and I love throwing in eggs, mushrooms and spring onions for extra flavour.

Comforting meals to end the day

Due to the busy schedules during the week, my family tries to have dinner together at home whenever we can. We had 2 dinners together that week.

One of the meals that we had was ABC soup. My mum had planned to cook this simple but comforting meal for a while now, and all the ingredients were easily found on the foodpanda app.

The other dinner that we had together was udon. As we already had most of the ingredients on hand, all I had to do was order udon noodles.

The udon was from Giant’s house brand, Meadows, and it was our first time trying out the noodles. Not only was it relatively affordable compared to other brands, it had a smooth and bouncy texture. Taste wise, it was on par with most of the other brands of noodles in the market. It was a great discovery and we agreed that we would purchase it again in the future.

Was the challenge successful?

The damage on my wallet totalled $90.15, with free delivery. This was approximately $30 less than what I’d usually spend on groceries.

It was a satisfactory experience as the online shopping process was a seamless one. Not only that, I was able to select the delivery timing and track when it was being delivered.

But for the most part, I was proud of myself for being able to spend within the budget, with some money to spare. I’ll definitely be grocery shopping online more often from now on!

If you’re not spending as much as I am on groceries, you can also enjoy a $1.99 delivery fee (minimum spending applies) at Giant, Cold Storage or CS Fresh, exclusively available on foodpanda from now till Oct 31.

This article is brought to you in partnership with foodpanda.

samantha.lek@asiaone.com

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