Smarter Shopping

Understanding what your shopping habits are can help you to cut down the cost of the weekly shop. Here are some different shoppers, their habits and some secrets to saving. Do you recognise your shopping style?

The Improvisor

This is one laid-back human who has zero fear of starvation and a few personal responsibilities. They will drop into the local takeaway at a moment’s notice, grab a ready-made meal from the supermarket, or look up a last-minute recipe and buy only those ingredients. So decadent! They might also be an amateur chef who relishes the chance to dream up the next meal and buys the ingredients day-to-day. This person loves cooking and sees it as part of their leisure time. They feel no stress about living meal-to-meal because at the end of the day, a slab of cheese and a pack of crackers also make a great dinner and for the chef-type, their interest in cooking means none of this is work.

If you are an improviser you will shop more than once a week and often get home, start cooking a fabulous meal, then realize that a key ingredient is missing! That means going back to the shops buying whatever is needed, plus the other five things which catch your eye which can quickly become expensive.

The Smarter FridgeCam won’t tie you down – but will let you know what treats you already have in and some new and exciting recipes to use them.

Who knows you may also make a meal plan before you go to the shops and get what you really need for that gourmet meal rather than a random selection. Saving you time and money

The just-in-case shopper

Ever looked in your fridge and wondered why you have three boxes of eggs or identical slabs of cheese? Well, you might just be a just-in-case shopper. These shoppers are struck by the compulsion to buy the same type of grocery item every time they step foot in a supermarket. They might constantly be running low on milk but they have enough mayonnaise to dress the salads of a small nation. It’s like the just-in-case shopper has a small shred of the hoarder’s DNA alive within them, but only when it comes to very specific items.

They buy too much food and don’t match it to their budget or their social calendar; fully intending to use it but going out to eat on a couple of days.

Soon there will be anything between 10 to 50 pounds worth of not so fresh food in their fridge.

There’s no need and no excuse to overbuy when you use FridgeCam to show you exactly what you have already and bring up your automatically generated shopping list on your phone. So match your budget to your calendar. Before you make your food plan for the week, pull up your social calendar. If you’re having dinner with friends and a date night with your spouse, that’s two fewer meals you need to plan for this week. Put that grocery money toward your favourite pizza joint or pad Thai place instead.

The busy family

Food shopping is a chore and someone is going to whinge if you have not got the right protein shake, lunch box treat or beetroot for the power bursts, let alone the bacon, sausage milk and eggs for Sunday Brunch. There are only 30 minutes to do the whole thing before you have to pick up the kids from sports club and your usual supermarket has seen fit to shift round the fresh produce aisles so your usual orienteering approach to familiar products rather than having a shopping list is scuppered.

This is a no brainer for FridgeCam just pull up your smarter generated shopping list on your phone, ping it off to your supermarket and get it delivered whilst you have your feet up with a well earned Friday glass of fizz! Save time and stress.

So how does this work?

The Smarter FridgeCam with SmarterAssist can do some pretty cool stuff:

  • It takes a photo every time you open and close your fridge door and sends it to your smartphone, so you can always see what you need.
  • It has a best before tracker. Keep on top of your fridge items’ expiry dates, so you’re reminded to use them up in time.
  • With the recent advancement of SmarterAssist, you can now label a food item once and its tracked forever.
  • SmarterAssist also automatically updates your inventory and shopping list, which you can link to your Amazon fresh or Tesco account, then with one click of a button order your weekly shop, FridgeCam always helps you to stay one step ahead

People who always make a shopping list are three times less likely to overspend than those who don’t, spending almost £200 a year less on groceries. In the UK we throw away almost 20% of the food we buy. It’s believed that in the average household this adds up to £50 worth of food waste per month or £600 per year. Break these three costly grocery shopping habits and you’ll gain more time in your schedule and keep more money in your wallet. Not to mention, you’ll get rid of a cartload of stress!