Find out how out of date food warehouses can save you money – and learn how you still have to keep your wits about you!

What is an Out of Date Food Warehouse?

In recent years, more food warehouses and out of date food warehouses have opened. Dotted here and there, maybe using different terminology across the country, if you look around you should be able to find a discount food retailer, or out of date food shop that suits your needs.

Some are “visit only”, while others offer goods online, which can be delivered at a surprisingly low cost.

These foods are entirely safe to eat, they’ve just gone past the date stamped on the packaging, so can no longer be sold in the supermarket. Mostly they’re long life goods, dried goods, tinned goods, drinks, crisps, cereals, sauces, rice, noodles and other products that actually have an almost unlimited lifespan. Nothing is fresh/chilled or frozen.

Last year, at the tail end of many lockdowns, there were a lot of catering sized goods for sale, for example, as the catering industry didn’t have such a great idea, so many items at the distributors were close to going out of date. 100 individual sachets of vinegar for £1? 100 individual sachets of tomato sauce for £1? Many chip shops charge 30p per sachet, so if you’re a regular buyer of these then it could save you money by the time you’ve ripped open the fourth!

Sometimes called a Best Before Food shop or warehouse, these are foods that are fine and safe to eat, but the shops can’t sell them any more as the Best Before date is printed on the packaging; suppliers’ warehouses then resell them, wholesale, at heavily discounted prices and they’re resold to the public.

Nothing is fresh, chilled or frozen – they’re all tinned, or longlife packaged foods – cereals, crisps, bottled drinks, pasta, pouch rices, sauce sachets and more.

These cheap food shops go by a variety of names and are local, not national, so you need to research your own local area to find out what’s round your way.

Many very high end seasonal products are sold “for pennies”; I’ve even seen Harrods’ Christmas Gift Set chocolates passing through at just £2/box, which’d been for sale the week before at £18/box if you were in Harrods! This is where you have to be careful not to overspend though – I passed on those as I didn’t need chocolates and I figured “I’d just eat them if I bought them” and that’d not been a good outcome! On the other hand, if you knew you specifically liked those luxury products, what a treat to find them at an affordable price!

What they stock is unpredictable as they buy what’s available, they buy what they know sells well in their location. When it’s gone it’s gone usually. Sometimes they just have one pallet and that’s it!

You Don’t Save Money by Buying What You Don’t Need and Didn’t Come In For!

Sometimes, people’s idea of a saving is a little mis-guided.

If you spot a Harrods cake that retails for £20 each, on sale at “3 for £3” – did you just save £57?

If you didn’t want to buy cake at all, then you haven’t saved £57 by buying them, you’ve spent £3!

Of course, looking at it from the other direction: This might be the only time in your life you get to spend £20 on a Harrods cake and you want to buy THREE of them. That’s fine…. I saw several recent “great offers” like this and resisted as I’d have been eating chocolates/cakes for weeks and spending money when I was there to spend less.

You save money if you are buying food you planned to buy, that you do eat, at a price cheaper than buying in a local shop or supermarket. You don’t save money by buying extra! It’s OK to treat yourself, but don’t get carried away.

Rogers Wholesale Warehouse

For the past two years I’ve been using Rogers Wholesale Foods, the UK’s biggest “gone past best before warehouse”. They have outlets in Poole, Southampton, Plymouth, Bilston and Manchester. These are a wholesale out of date food supplier, which means that you have to buy a whole case of goods! It’s for this reason that I’ve not visited as often as I’d like, because I see products for sale that are at a great price, but I can’t get through 10. For example, in the past they’ve sold mixed boxes of 10 cakes for just £3. These are the sort of cakes you might see sold in your local corner shop, so small loaf tin sized, or 8″ box sized. I bought them once…. but having to eat my way through 10 cakes meant I didn’t do that again!

So far I’ve tended to head for “actual food” – but, even then, it can be difficult to get through an entire case of something…..

But there are MANY bargains to be found too. In my last visit I picked up a case of Dolmio Plant Based Chilli Bolognese, typically sold at £1-1.50/150g pouch – the box of 10 pouches cost me just £1. So far I’ve only eaten one (which was very tasty), so haven’t been tempted back to “stock up” as I know I just can’t eat all the pouches in quick succession!

I used 1/6th of a 20p pack of spaghetti + a pouch of Dolmio plant based chilli bolognese to make a meal for under 14p! I microwaved both too, so this was a meal for under 14p that took under 10 minutes to cook!

I also picked up a case of OB Amie dried noodles, 40 packs for £4 (10p each) – these might typically retail at 20p/pack…. I figure I’ll still be eating them in a year’s time because, although I do eat a lot of noodles at times, it’s 1-2 years’ worth!

Out of date food warehouses also have foods I’ll never buy there. e.g. there are stacks and stacks of top branded boxes of cereal, 450g priced at 2 boxes for £2. If you’re a mad fan of a particular brand, then that would be a saving over their usual RRP of £1.80 per box; if you’re an Aldi shopper though, you’ll already be buying 500g boxes of cornflakes for 55p. One person’s bargain and saving isn’t everybody’s!

I’ve also seen lots of the Nandos Peri Peri kits, RRP £3.30 from most supermarkets – Rogers’ price was two boxes for £3. Again, a significant saving if you already buy these, but if you’re keeping an eye on the food budget it’s “just flavoured chicken” and you can look around at other ways to achieve it!

There are a few products that you can find, locally, at the same price (perhaps the supermarket has a particular deal on this week), or, one recent example was where I could buy five boxes of chocolate covered biscuits for £3, making them 60p/box, but I then spotted the same products, sold individually, at the same price in Home Bargains. It’s unusual, almost rare, to find a product for sale, locally, at the same price, but sometimes it happens.

We all buy different products and eat different food and meals, there’s certainly something for everybody at Rogers, I’m just not their target market.

Keep Your Wits About You!

When is a bargain not a bargain? It’s easy to get carried away with all the cheap prices, but you have to ask yourself if you’d have normally bought those items at all. Here’s a quick list of things to be careful of when loading up your trolley at an out of date food warehouse:

1. Is this a good price? Do I buy this brand, or is my usual supermarket brand actually cheaper? Do I need this one as it’ll cost me more for the same volume.
2. Do I need this at all? Would this item be on my shopping list, or did I just allow myself to be lured into buying it because “it’s cheap” and I’m actually spending MORE when I was here to spend LESS?
3. Do I need this many? While you might like baked beans, with four supermarket own brand tins costing approximately £1, do you need to buy a 2.5Kg catering tin of baked beans just because they’re £1? Yes, you can freeze them once it’s opened, but will you? And what about 12 packs of cake mix? Did you really buy/use anywhere near 12 boxes in the last 1-2 years? If not, why are you wanting to buy that quantity now?
4. Know the price you’re already paying for items – a bargain’s not a bargain if you can get it at the supermarket for the same price!

If you can find an outlet near you, it’s worthwhile popping in and looking around – or checking out their Facebook pages to see what’s on offer!

Other Ways to Save on your Food Bill

There are online out of date food retailers – the best known one of these is Approved Foods – with a minimum order of £25 you can buy individual items. Delivery is based on weight, which is advised in the checkout area, with a 25Kg box costing £3 in delivery, this is quite a cheap way to save money. Here’s a list of some websites to look at, I’ve not bought from any of them myself, so this isn’t a recommendation, just ‘helpful’

• approvedfood.co.uk – online ordering
• cheapfood.co.uk – online ordering
• bestb4food.co.uk – a grocery store, Caerphilly, Wales
• motatos.co.uk – online discounted food shop.

Cheap and Free Food Apps

An increasing number of apps have been launched, matching shops’, restaurants’, bakeries’ end of day food with people who want to buy them at a reduced rate. However, you do need a smartphone to be able to install and use the apps (my phone isn’t smart enough!). The apps are free and work on android and iPhones.

None of the websites give you a clue what is in your local area at all – so you do have to give it a go to see. Many people post online what they bought, or received free – and it seems, often, that you can end up with an overload of 1-2 items that you’ve no room or use for…. for example, it might be free, but could you really use 8 loaves and 4 bags of spinach that is best before today?

These apps aren’t for everybody, but if you’re in a position to download the app and take a look you’ll never know. The biggest names are:

• Too Good To Go. You might not have a clue what you’ll be getting here! It’s mostly coffee shops’ end of day lines and Morrisons supermarket.
• Olio. Free food. It’s collected, sorted and listed and you just need to collect
• Karma. Not used by many, but you do get to pick and choose what you want.

Be mindful of the cost of rushing round to benefit from these if you’ve transport costs to add on. Also, as they’re “end of day remnants” the collection times aren’t always convenient for many + there are some instances where people have turned up to collect and a staff member says they know nothing about it. It’s all very hit and miss if you’re lucky or not.