Checking The Packaging On Food Could Save You Money On Your Weekly Shop

At the minute, we all need a bit of help pinching pennies here and there.

With fuel prices through the roof, food prices at their highest in ages, and very little help or respite expected, we’ve got to take matters into our own hands.

To be fair, as you'll tell from the video she shared this tip around Christmas, but it still holds true today.

The basic idea is to check the supplier codes on the packaging of food items when you buy them to see if they’re exactly the same – or very similar – to another item that you might be able to get at a cheaper price.

You see, many items have the same supplier or batch code, meaning that they’re supplied to the supermarket by the same company.

Of course, we could have a debate about whether it’s ethical in these straightened times to sell the same thing for two different prices because they come in a different box, but let’s park that for another day.

She explained how the idea popped into her head after seeing a similar ploy with medication marketing.

So, she set out to check whether the same is true of food, and it was.

She compared a 500g pack of pasta from Tesco that cost 53p to another 29p packet from Hearty Food Co – also owned by Tesco – and discovered that they have the exact same supplier code.

That means they’ve come from the same place but are being sold at two different prices.

She said: "I work in the food industry so know that whatever product we make will have a supplier code on it for traceability,

"I went into a supermarket and looked at staple foods like beans, pasta and bread and looked at the codes. It didn’t surprise me but essentially it’s all about how these brands market it to the consumer.

"The only thing I can do is make people more aware that buying branded is not always the best option and we need to be more conscious about the tricks supermarkets use."

This is far from her only trick, but you’ll have to follow her online to find out about those.

In the meantime, Tesco themselves have shared information about where you can discover the supplier codes.

The supermarket tweeted: "The supplier code (SC) should be found at the back of the packaging, at the end of our address."

The batch code – they added – is ‘the little code below the food standards stamp’.