The rising cost of energy bills, food and fuel has had a huge impact on millions of people across the country. In order to make ends meet households are ditching leading supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury's in favour of budget groceries.
A writer from Hull Live decided to do her weekly shop in Heron Foods to see if she would be able to buy enough supplies for one week's worth of meals. The budget store is lesser known compared to its competitors Lidl and Aldi but it has stores in most regions.
Here's Aditi Rane 's account of how she got at Heron Foods.
With the cost of living going up this week, I wanted to save as much as I could before emptying my pockets on electricity and bills, so I left the comfort of Tesco and committed to only shopping at Heron for a week.
With a Heron store close to me, I have popped in to buy the odd item every now and then, however, I didn't think their limited options would suffice for a week's worth of groceries. I went to the Whitefriargate store on a Saturday afternoon, when I imagined a lot of people would be around but was surprised to find it relatively empty. After a couple of laps around the store, I struggled to find out why.
They had a massive selection of pantry essentials and frozen food, with prices that almost seemed too good to be true, 39p for pasta? A steal. Considering how I was planning to only shop at Heron for the week, I tried to think of things I could put together as meals and found it surprisingly easy.
Right off the bat, I thought of putting together an egg fried rice, stir fry, pasta, and tomato soup with bread, and within minutes, I had an armful of ingredients, ready to be checked out. I also picked up some turkey nuggets and mac and cheese bites for mid-afternoon snacks and they hardly hurt my pockets costing £3 in total, bear in mind, frozen snacks at Tesco usually cost £3 each.
I was also impressed with their selection of World foods, while it wasn't the best tasting, it gave me a good enough base to work with. The frozen fried rice was a bit lacklustre to begin with, but with a little bit of sauce-dumping, it turned out great. A couple of things I would add, however, is that if you shop for name brands, that would need to go out of the window entirely. Heron doesn't cater to that, what you see is what you get.
Right off the bat, I thought of putting together an egg fried rice, stir fry, pasta, and tomato soup with bread, and within minutes, I had an armful of ingredients, ready to be checked out. I also picked up some turkey nuggets and mac and cheese bites for mid-afternoon snacks and they hardly hurt my pockets costing £3 in total, bear in mind, frozen snacks at Tesco usually cost £3 each.
I was also impressed with their selection of World foods, while it wasn't the best tasting, it gave me a good enough base to work with. The frozen fried rice was a bit lacklustre to begin with, but with a little bit of sauce-dumping, it turned out great. A couple of things I would add, however, is that if you shop for name brands, that would need to go out of the window entirely. Heron doesn't cater to that, what you see is what you get.
As more people make the dreaded switch to budget shopping, it seems almost ridiculous that basic fresh vegetables now seem to be reserved for the wealthy. Nonetheless, while that bank overdraft subsists, I will continue to shop at Heron for my basic essentials, while only returning to Tesco for fresh produce.
Here's everything I bagged for £13.48:
Frozen broccoli and cauliflower (£1), six bananas (£0.89), 10 pieces of garlic bread (£0.89), turkey dinosaurs (£1.89), mac and cheese bites (£0.89), six eggs (£0.75), long grain rice 1kg (£1.29), penne pasta 500g (£0.39), garlic puree (£0.59), butter (£1.15), cheese sauce packet (£0.59), two cans of corn (£1.09), dark soy sauce (£0.69), tomato and basil soup (£0.49), egg fried rice (£0.89).
