I tend to buy groceries at least twice a month, sometimes it is more than that because of impulse. Otherwise, I operate on a 35 ~ 65 budget.

I consider my monster javas, rice, pasta, coffee/creamer, oatmeal, almond milk, water, bagels/waffles with cream cheese and things to mix the pasta and rice with as essentials. They’re always staples in all shopping trips.

My shopping lasts no more than 10 ~ 15 minutes, maybe less, because I always know what I’m after. I hate having to hop around stores to find things one other store doesn’t have because while I could find cheaper alternatives, I am sometimes met with more pricier options which may force me to go without one of my essentials for a while.

My goal with grocery shopping is to extend rations as much as possible while moderating how much I eat. I do shop for processed foods like frozen and canned stuff, but I find that it actually helps my rations. I don’t particularly pick up things like loaves of bread or produce because from my experience in the past, I always feel like I have to eat them sooner or they’ll spoil and I don’t really like having to feel like I got to wolf down something as soon as I buy it.

Longevity is key to me.

I tend to spend a weekend cooking and freezing loads, then not really cooking for weeks.

So it’s a massive targeted shop every few weeks to do that, then mostly small trips (often on foot/bike) to the local shops to get milk and any odd things I run out of, or if I feel like mixing dinner up with something else.

We do groceries roughly every 1.5 weeks, or around 3 times a month. It consists of going to a big grocery chain for the essentials and two asian supermarkets for specific stuff that can only be found there. We try to hit them all in one trip but sometimes split them over 2 days because raw, frozen stuff sitting in the car while we go on two other stops is a bit risky.

Crate of 24 beers, five pizzas, two large steaks and a packs of French fries.

My wife comes up with a menu for the week and buys everything needed to make it.

Once a month, we go to Sam’s club and buy bulk meat which gets portioned and frozen, and other bulk non perishables like coffee, rice, pasta etc.

The weekly trips are about $200-$300 and the monthly trip is about the same.

We have five kids between us.

The butcher delivers meat once a week on a schedule

About every other week go to the local wet market for variety

Anything else is ordered about once week from the local western style market (free delivery)

These days, we tend to sit down on Sunday evening and plan out our meals for the week, then go shopping on Monday. We go to the farmer’s market Saturday and plan our meals around what vegetables we could buy locally.

I don’t consider very many things essential. Maybe dry beans, rice (sub millet, quinoa, or other cookable grain as needed), lentils, flour, and salt? Without those I’d have troubles surviving, with an adequate supply of those I could live for months, it’d take a while to even get sick of all the things you can make with it. I’m willing to cut pretty much anything I need to out of my diet if it’s not available and honestly I think the obsession with having all foods available at all seasons is weird.

I’ll usually have 2 or 3 meals in mind that’ll carry me for the week. I’ll make something that will have leftovers (stews, stir fries, etc), and other things that can be easily repeated (fried eggs, bagels, sandwiches, produce for salads, etc).

Once I get to the store things can change a bit according to what’s available or what looks good.

I go almost every day. It’s a good reason to get out and go for a walk.

What I buy mostly depends on prices/discounts. And only what I can carry in my backpack. Potatoes when affordable, otherwise rice; frozen veggies, ham/cheese, bubbly water, beer.

Two trips each week. One to the local farmers shop, for whatever is available there (mostly vegetables, eggs and bread, but sometimes fish, meat, ice cream, etc), and another to a supermarket for the common things (pasta for my gf and couscous for me, rice, flour, some dairy (fresh cream or cheese), sandwich bread and chocolate spread, sometimes stuff that needs to be refilled like oil, soap, toilet paper, etc and usually an extra meal : either rice and fish for sushi-like thingy, chickpea for nugetts-ich fried stuff, or a can of smthg like chili con carne).

We try to do lists for the supermarket, otherwise we always forget something. For the local shop, what’s available varies greatly so there’s no sense making a list.

I pretty much eat depression meals, with occasional cooking. Trying to be better, but I still eat a lot of food that isn’t the greatest for you, like frozen meals, that kind of thing. I really should be better, and I don’t know if I should be sad or motivated seeing everyone else’s food in this thread.

When I notice my fridge fails to either 1) hold enough prepped stuff to microwave an entree, or 2) provide snacks or something-pie – it’s grocery shopping time. I mostly keep to the membership stores, so just one/two visits a month, maybe. I only buy as much as I can carry in one trip from car to fridge.

Until yogurt drinks are in season again. Then it’s worth getting delivered by the pallet.

A mix of pre-planned list if we ran out of something or we want to cook something specific and in-shop decisions seeing what’s on promotion that week or what’s close to the expiration date and discounted a bit more.

We try to have like 3 servings of meat per week, and a constant stock of tomatoes, onions, garlic and lettuce and two other veggies (depending on what’s cheap that week: pepper, broccoli, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes).

For dinner we usually try to stock: Bread, 3 types of sliced cheese (a cheap “mix”, a cheddar and something fancy like a Camembert or Gorgonzola), and 3 types of cold cuts (prosciutto, krustenbraten, salami, chorizo, Mett, etc).

We keep a big stock of UHT Milk, pasta and rice, and restock when there’s a promo or we run below 2 weeks of supply. Some lazy food like frozen Pizzas or ramen always needs to be available.

We buy eggs every two weeks from a local farmer.

Usually one big trip a week with short visits on a need-to basis if run out of something mid week.

Usually a head of lettuce, a couple bell peppers, an onion, a lb of ground beef, any other meat that is on sale, a gallon of milk, bread, maybe some frozen or canned items, a bag of chips or some other snack, any staple items I might be out of, and a fifth of WT 101 if it’s on sale.

We manage our “food inventory” with Grocy which calls itself “the ERP beyond your fridge”. It basically tracks every single purchase and consumption of food and also each items best before date. It needs a bit initial setup and you need to remind yourself to checkout stuff you consume but then it’s just great. Not a single item spoiled because it got pushed too far back on the shelf. And since Grocy knows how much of what item we want in stock, it automatically writes our shopping lists with stuff which is about to run out.

So the shopping is basically day to day as we return from work and pass the store just ticking things off the list. And we made a rule for ourselves to only buy the stuff on the list, nothing extra to avoid impulse purchases.