We’ve always seen our parents and elders at home follow the general grocery practice of buying food items in bulk. Though we didn’t necessarily understand the reason behind it back then, guess it all now makes sense when we’re in their shoes. Buying your food products in bulk can actually yield you a huge gain. We have listed out the top 10 reasons for why you would want to stock up on food items the next time you do your groceries.
10 Reasons Why You Should Bulk-Buy Food Items
1. It’s cheaper per unit
This has to be the top reason when it comes to purchasing anything. When you buy anything in bulk, you actually end up saving money (even if it’s just a few pennies) upon each use.
Now consider an item such as food products which you’d be using most frequently in your household and therefore you need to buy them perhaps every week. If you buy food products in bulk, you can actually end up saving all those few pennies amounting to a considerable figure.
2. You’d rarely run out of the item
This would come in most handy when you use a specific product every day and possibly just can’t do without it. For instance, if cereal is what you take for breakfast every day, you wouldn’t want to get up one morning and find that you are running out of it. And maybe out of force of habit, nothing else would seem that appealing either. So why take chances? Stock up and enjoy!
3. It’s environment-friendly too
Bulk purchases usually require much lesser packaging than small purchases do. You must have seen a 2 kg pack of onions all tightly packed in a single paper grocery bag, whereas making smaller packs of 1 kg each would require more packing material. This all has an impact on the environment in terms of the quantity of paper and plastic used.
4. You’re always prepared for emergency situations
What’s the most likely emergency to happen when it comes to food? Perhaps when you have guests over. That too unexpected at times. You wouldn’t want to be embarrassed if you fall short of basic essentials like rice, flour, sugar, and the like. Stocking up on them well in advance always keeps you ready for anything unplanned.
5. You don’t need to pay frequent visits to the store too
This would be particularly helpful if your house is a few kilometers away from the nearest grocery store. It wouldn’t always be convenient to keep hopping to and from the store every now and then. Fewer trips also mean lesser spend on buying along with lesser expenditure on fuel. All in all, a win-win situation!
6. It also helps while preparing meals in bulk
If you’re working late nights or planning a weeklong trip to the countryside and need to cook and store meals in the fridge for your family, bulk buying can be a great cost-effective idea. You can prepare huge amounts of different types of meals by buying some of the basic ingredients in bulk. It’d be easier of course and more cost-saving too.
7. Lesser need to buy ready mixes
Pre-packaged ready-to-eat mixes and meals are tastier, definitely, but not a very healthy option, particularly for the long-term. If you buy food supplies in bulk, you can actually use a lot of ingredients to make your very own recipes or try out different concoctions to introduce a hint of variety and creativity in your meals. This would keep your family happy and healthy. Not only it will make your food tasty but it is also a cost-efficient means.
8. Less of tiresome repetitive effort
Buying the same essential supplies over and over again every week or fortnight can actually become a bit monotonous and cumbersome too. If you know that a specific item is used frequently in your household, it’d make more sense to buy large quantities of it in one go than indulge in unnecessary tiring and repetitive effort to make frequent purchases which are costlier too.
9. You can avail numerous discount offers
You may come across large discounts and bargain offers on certain items at the grocery store if you choose to buy them in bulk. For example, buy 10 kg of rice and get 2 kg of sugar either for free or a reduced cost. This can help you save more while getting all your essential supplies at great prices too.
10. Helps in times of inflation
The cost of food items can never be set as standard nor can it be predicted. You may find a pack of tomatoes at throwaway prices on one day and extremely unaffordable the other. The cost of food items keeps fluctuating because of a lot of reasons – weather changes, disturbances in the demand-supply chain, etc. Buying in bulk in advance can keep you safe and unaffected from such contingencies.
Top 3 Foods to Buy and Store in Bulk
Here’s what would be best for you to buy in bulk and save up too:
Beans – They generally last longer than any other food item – whether bought dried or canned.
Pasta – The best part about buying it in bulk is that you can buy endless varieties of it – dried or whole wheat, for example, and even save higher against the supermarket price. Most stores almost always offer huge discounts on pasta items.
Spices – They don’t go bad anytime sooner, they’re always in demand at home, and you’d find huge bargains on them too. One spice that you must buy in bulk is peppercorns.
Summary
Bulk buying can be great; you should just know what to buy and how much as per your requirement. Don’t buy items that you don’t consume much just because they’re available with bulk offers at the store. That would be simply wasting money. Also, make sure you have enough storage space at home before getting all those supplies home.