The summer season is open: 5 tips on how to profitably stock up on food for a weekend in nature
Miscellaneous / / May 20, 2022
1. Follow the trend towards rational consumption
More than 60% of Russians spendThe Russians told how much they spend on food / TASS about half of your budget for food - you should not replenish this statistics due to rash purchases on a grandiose scale. There is nothing wrong with taking a package of buckwheat or vegetable oil at a discount in reserve: products with a long shelf life will surely wait in the wings. But you don’t need to order “just in case” three loaves of bread and an extra piece of cheese. The chance may never come, and the food will go bad.
Such surpluses inflict17% of food is wasted at the consumer level / UN tangible damage to the environment: the amount of greenhouse gases that are released during transportation and decay of food waste, comparableHow food waste is a huge contributor to climate change / The Guardian with the carbon footprint of the US and China. To protect the planet and your wallet, don't shop on an empty stomach. It's so easy to overfill, and rashly bought foods will lie idle until they expire.
To satisfy hunger, too, should be approached consciously. For the feeling of emptiness in the stomach mayWhy Am I Always Hungry? /WebMD hiding thirst or stress. To get rid of such "hunger", sometimes it is enough to drink. Difficulty recognizing thirst and increased risk of dehydration ariseThe truth about hydration: should you drink eight glasses of water a day? / The Guardian in children and the elderly, but fruits and vegetables will help replenish the necessary fluid balance. Instead of juice and cookies or a candy bar, buy your child an apple or strawberry for a snack. And if you prefer bananas, take a couple of pieces, and not a whole bunch out of habit. This will be cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Lonely and ripe yellow fruits often do not reachBeauty (and taste!) are on the inside / FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) shopping bags and, along with other victims of marketing selection, are sent to landfills.
2. Leave room for a "Plan B"
Shopping lists can really save you from impulse spending. But in the case of the cottage, everything is not so clear. For example, it happens that the weather interferes with plans carefully calculated in terms of calories, ingredients and servings. You don’t want to fry the planned kebabs under a downpour, and the meat cooked at home will not fit the general vibes of the weekend. You will either have to compromise or go to the store and buy new ingredients for the adjusted menu.
Predicting your own and other people's emotions, like the weather, is difficult. Even if you have decided on the list of dishes for a snack in nature in advance, you will probably have to buy something before the trip. To avoid wasting money and not throwing away products that never went into business, limit advance shopping with breakfast preparations and universal centenarians like onions, potatoes and garlic. They will wait in the wings, even if you do not want to use them this weekend. And meat, vegetables for salad and components for snacks can be purchased on the eve of the weekend, when it will already be approximately clear what is happening with the weather.
In order not to waste precious vacation time on additional grocery trips, take a look at "SberMarket». If your picnic or country weekend is not far from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar or Rostov-on-Don, you can simply order groceries for the day. For example, the delivery area of SberMarket near Moscow includes the environs of Naro-Fominsk, Dmitrov, Sergiev Posad, Istra and other large cities. And the summer residents of St. Petersburg will bring food to the Priozersky, Vsevolozhsky, Vyborgsky and Kolpinsky districts. Enter your address and see which stores can deliver your purchases.
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By the way, on online showcases you will find not only your favorite goodies and ingredients for holiday feasts. In addition to groceries, here you can order useful little things like insect sprays and pots for seedlings. And while shopping in a smartphone, it will be possible to quickly update garden tools. AT stores SberMarket has everything you need, from secateurs and rippers to knee pads and fruit pickers.
Open shopping season
3. Change from prey to hunter
Compare prices in different stores and track down the most attractive offers. Offline, such a hunt for savings would take a lot of time, but with delivery apps you will become a top profit stalker without getting up from the couch. Online services often work with dozens of retailers at the same time - in the mobile program it is easy to compare prices for the same product in your favorite stores. At the same time, discounts on popular summer cottage categories are collected in special sections - so you don’t have to look for a long time where it’s better to stock up on everything you need for Sunday barbecues. Filters and automatic sorting of goods from cheap to expensive will be a powerful weapon in the hands of profit hunters. And you don’t need to drag the “loot” yourself, because the packages will be brought by a courier.
In addition, it will not be possible to enter a promotional code at the offline checkout and significantly reduce the final amount, and in applications such “magic words” regularly help to save. There is another life hack that works in some online stores: the “forgotten” basket. The system sees that you have added items to the cart, but have not paid for the order, which means that you need to be motivated by an additional discount. For a day, without doing anything on purpose, you can gain a couple of hundred more rubles.
4. Leave children, friends and spouses at home
It is easier to win the battle to save the budget alone: the fewer people are involved in shopping, the less unnecessary purchases will go into the basket. Children will demand sweets and snacks, someone will want to add juices and unplanned sandwich toppings to the menu.
Boredom is often the cause of collective extravagance. While you are picking up the goods on the list, the rest of the participants in the grocery campaign are forced to wander between the shelves and look at the bright packages, dreaming of getting to the dacha as soon as possible. Annoyance from such wanderings can cause a desire to compensate for stress with sweet, salty, fatty, but so delicious fast food.
In the case of solo shopping according to a clear list, the risk of gaining too much is minimized, but carrying heavy packages from the store home is entertainment for everyone. To avoid these burdens, just order groceries for delivery. At the same time, it is not necessary to purchase for the whole weekend at a time: you can gradually, during the week, collect everything you need, adjusting to daily promotions and special offers of services. If you do not succumb to the temptations of red price tags, you will save money, time, and nerves, because you will not have to refuse unnecessary expenses to children and other companions.
5. Don't leave shopping until the last minute
On a trip through traffic jams, you already run the risk of catching country stars right on the road. With an additional visit to a store along the route, travel timing is likely to increase significantly. At the same time, the temptation to buy not too healthy goodies on the road will grow. The fact is that wandering through the labyrinths of hypermarkets can be a powerful trigger for unnecessary spending. Tired of collecting bags and countless planning, summer residents will want to start their vacation already in the car - from here, chips, sweet soda, candy bars and other travel pleasures will appear in the check.
In addition, in a crowded evening store there will be no time to study the composition of products and check price tags. The result is a longer check, a larger amount of payment and heavier packages. Road trips to the store have another unobvious minus: you will have to pack your purchases in a hurry. There is a risk that eggs in a clogged trunk will reach the dacha with losses, and one of the packages will “please” on the spot with a surprise in the form of leaked milk.
It is better to take care of most of the food in advance - for this you do not even have to go to the store. Order groceries the day before you leave, pack them compactly into your cooler bag, and load food into your car ahead of time. So it will turn out to reduce the travel time, not to buy too much and just bring everything in one piece.
If you did not have time to order products in advance, it is possible to avoid a kilometer-long queue at the checkout. To save time and budget, place an order for pickup at "SberMarket» while sitting in the car, and then just pick up your purchases from any convenient store along the way. 134 retail chains cooperate with the service, so, most likely, it will not be difficult to find a suitable point on the country route.
And to save even more time next time, mark favorite foods hearts. After a couple of orders, a separate list of favorite items will be ready for each store and you can quickly add everything you need to the basket. Also check out the "Special Offers" section: here thousands of goods at special prices with discounts up to 60%. Products are categorized so it's easy to find everything you need to buy before your trip.
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