I am a famous chicken hunter. In the old days I would have crept through the forest in a loincloth carrying a spear, but today the skills you need are very different. I am called 'the chicken hunter' because there is a type of chicken meal with barbecue sauce they sell which is called 'hunter's chicken' and which is often reduced to clear. I hunt such chicken and other extreme reduced prices. One of the prime skills needed is timing. You need to know WHEN to be there to get the good stuff. First thing in the morning can be good - many supermarkets do their first round of reducing before they open, so you get a good selection of reductions, but maybe not reduced by that much. The best reductions are the double bubble, where they've reduced the stuff once and then reduced it again. Best time for that varies, but is usually an hour or two before they close. Bonanza time is when they're closing for a day or two like at Xmas and New Year - you can get the last of the scrapings off the shelves for a few pennies only. In reduced to clear, you're obviously looking for stuff that can be frozen or that will keep. Fresh stuff gets big, big tempting reductions and for sure you can get it if you can eat it straight away, but it's very risky. In any case, like most other bargain chicken hunters, I avoid 'on the date' coleslaw, prawns etc. As for etiquette, to my mind it is perfectly acceptable to take stuff off the little staff trolley immediately they have stuck the reduced sticker on, even though they haven't put it on the shelf yet. Once the sticker is on and they've taken their hand off it, it's fair game to my mind. I don't know why some supermarket staff get uptight about you grabbing it - it saves them having to put it on the shelf. Unacceptable practices amongst the hunter's brotherhood include using your trolley as a physical barrier to try to block off others from the 'reduced to clear' section and most especially the filthy and unfair practice of putting EVERYTHING from the reduced to clear in your trolley and then going round the corner to hide and furtively sift through it in peace to see what's wanted and what's not. Don't forget your fresh fish and fresh meat counters - can be excellent bargains on those reduced to clear, which other hunters seem to overlook. We had lovely breaded lemon sole each the other day - so big we couldn't eat it all. That was 3 fishes for about £1.87. Of course we had to eat them the same day though. Now after Xmas is another golden time for chicken hunters with some great reduced Xmas stuff. A lot of it sweets and chocolate of course, but you have to take what there is. Plenty of good reduced Xmas shower gel/deodorant packs too. Recent chickens hunted: Co-op irresistible West Country clotted cream fudge 150g box - was £3.50, reduced to 50p M&S golden blonde luxury taste the difference serves 8 people Xmas pudding dated until April - was £15, reduced to £1.20. Sainsburys taste the difference clementine flavour marzipan box - 8p. Yes 8 pence! Also got matching clementine flavour icing tub - 6p. Ciff's birthday is next week, so I'll make her a cake with that. I also wanted some wrapping paper so - M&S luxury Xmas wrapping kit with 3 rolls of paper (one christmassy, the other two plain and fine for any occasion, ribbon and tags) reduced from £6.00 to 20p. People complain about inflation and the cost of living, I think they're just poor hunters or are too fussy about what they have, because of course one down side is you can't really choose what you're going to have - it depends what is reduced.
Pre-pandemic my local Tesco "Extra" used to have it's second reduction at around 7pm every evening. The "chicken hunters" soon cottoned on to this and would gather around the stock room door at this time in anticipation. Your term "hunter" is very apt for what would follow. Staff pushing "green trays" on trolleys full of reduced goodies would burst through the doors and head for the wider aisles to deposit them. As soon as they appeared the hunters would pursue them like lions trying to bring down an antelope. More than once I found myself in one of these wider aisles at the wrong time with a staff member, their face a mixture of determination and fear, bearing down on me, fiercely pursued by a dozen hunters. It was entertaining but it was also getting dangerous. Covid forced things to change which was just as well as things got very heated and it was only a matter of time before someone got hurt. Now they still have the 7pm reduction but they put up barriers and funnel the hunters pass the green trays in an organised line. The top hunters start queuing at about 6ish! Fair play to them. I regularly see them with large full trollies of yellow stickered bargains. Definitely a great way for those on a budget to beat inflation and have a good standard of living at small cost.
Hunters chicken is a translation of Chicken Chasseur. You can probably cook it yourself for less than the discounted price, especially if you do it in quantity and freeze some for future. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/one-pot-chicken-chasseur
The Sainsburys where we do our big shop chuck out all of their veggie stuff for pennies at the end of each day. I can fill a trolley for a tenner. Veggie sausages, veggie mince, veggie meatballs for 10% of the original cost. Add to that hummus, cottage cheese and fresh salsa, all of which do at least an extra week in the fridge past the sell by. That’s a weeks worth of lunches for chuff all. Just not much of a bargain bin culture in Melton in seems. I used to live in Loughborough which has a much larger, more diverse population with a lot of students obviously and you’d literally see shoving matches and verbals when the yellow sticker trolley came out in Tesco.
The second reduction at Tesco is also a bit of a perk for Tesco staff. The reduction sticker has a little "CS" on it that stands for "Colleague Shop". All the second reduced items are free to staff after 9pm. I had a friend who worked at a local "express" store. The staff regularly hid some of the second reduction goods only to "find" them after 9pm!
I used to be responsible for reductions back when I worked at Tesco. I enjoyed playing games with the pushiest "chicken hunters", as Clive calls them. Was amazing the depths that some people would stoop to to get 20p off!
Of course not. Back when I was doing it my mum used to come in to shop about the time I put the reductions out. She did that for a reason...
Our Tesco, very occasionally, has bin ends on sale (two bottles of 'Cloudy Bay' for a fiver each - yes please) and whenever spirits change their labelling (for promotions) there are always a few bottles with the magic yellow stickers as are split packs of beer/cider.
The amount of food that gets chucked away is a bloody scandal. As a family we're as guilty of it - if not more so - than anyone I'm ashamed to say. The only way to stop the waste is for food prices to go up. Eat less but buy better quality. Supermarkets stop screwing farmers to entice shoppers with cheap meat and milk.
Meal planning a week or so ahead makes a huge difference, but there are only two of us and I appreciate it must be more difficult with a family.
Yes. I do all our on-line shop because i'm just fantastically organised. Mrs TuT misses wandering round a store (usually on an empty stomach) and "picking up what looks nice" but our bank account doesn't.
In our late 50s we are very fortunate that we can afford to use the butcher at Harcourt Road, the Greengrocer in High Road, the fishmonger at Battlers Farm. But we eat vegetarian, mostly a pulse based main meal most days in the week. A big bag of Chana Dal is cheap; packed full of protein and vitamins. You don’t need a feeezer to store it. Is easily made into tasty meals. Only downside is being organised to soak it in water for several hours before you use it. Must be the cheapest way to sustain you.
Think it just depends how much you want to focus on it. We do a form of meal planning for the week ahead for the 4 of us and then shop off a list to get the bits we need. It’s not a rigid thing, sometimes we deviate from it, but it means our monthly food shopping bill is about £450 tops. Can’t remember how but it came up in conversation with another family of 4 we socialise with and they said they spend over £1k a month! And really they were shopping in the same sorts of places we were, no M&S or Waitrose or whatever. I used to work with a woman who decided on her dinner on the way home and would then buy it, and who swore she never had anything of substance in the cupboards/fridge at home. Bonkers.
