“I tried the new online discount store delivering 99p Heinz ketchup and other big brands straight to your door.”
Food prices may not be rising as quickly as they were, but they’re still shockingly high. Whether it’s switching supermarkets, buying budget ranges, or cutting back altogether, shoppers are doing what they can to keep costs down. But there are other ways that households are cutting their bills and one of them is by ordering from various companies which are helping to reduce food waste and people’s bills. One of them is Discount Dragon, which was created after its owner, the Huddled Group, bought out Motatos UK.
They both effectively did the same thing – stopped thousands of tonnes of food going to waste each year due to mis-packaging, over supply, or items coming close to their best before dates. Discount Dragon buys the products at big discounts and then passes the savings on to consumers, who can often get goods for a fraction of the price they’d pay in the main supermarkets.
I decided to order a shop from Discount Dragon to see exactly what bargains it has on offer. Some of the products online were a few weeks or months past their best before date, but perfectly safe to eat. It’s rather handy that when you’re ordering, the website actually tells you the minimum best before date that you could receive, so you can decide if you’re happy with that. I chose items that were either still in date, or in date until 2024. It was only the packets of Weetabix that were past their bb date and only by a few weeks.
And we’re talking big brands too – like Kellogg’s, Heinz, Coca Cola and Tetley. A pack of 10 Cokes was just £2.49 and dated until the end of November. They’ll be gone long before then. Heinz ketchup was just £1.39 for a 250g bottle. The same size costs around £2.30 in Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. And they had the hot ketchup too, which you don’t generally find in UK stores, for just 99p for a 570g bottle. While not as much of a bargain, the Heinz beans were 99p a tin, so still cheaper than your typical £1.40 shelf price. A whopping 480 Tetley tea bags came to £5.99, much cheaper than the £4.49 Aldi or Tesco price tag on a box of 240. And I managed to get six 58-wash bottles of ultra concentrated Comfort fabric softener for £11.99, when these are £5 each in Tesco – a saving of £18 alone. Those Weetabix I mentioned cost £1.29 for a 24-pack, less than half the price at Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s, where they range from £3 to £3.50. And a massive 660g box of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies was just 99p, a quarter of the price found elsewhere.
Some of the items stipulated that you had to buy a minimum number of each one – such as two bottles of ketchup and three packs of 99p Kellogg’s Nutri-Grains – but at those prices you’ll probably find yourself wanting to stock up anyway. And the best bit is, if you’re not in a mad rush, it’s free delivery within five to seven working days. If you want it quicker you can pay £5.99 to get it within two to three days.
