Maeve Commins regularly shops around for fresh food at discounted prices and freezes it to save money every month. Photo: Lyse Comins
Middle-income consumers are surviving South Africa’s tough economic conditions by shopping around to find the best deal, including visiting supermarkets to scoop discounted goods just before they legally expire.
Glenwood resident Maeve Commins is a regular shopper at Pick n Pay and Shoprite Checkers where she is always on the lookout — and makes special trips — for items that have been placed, usually in the afternoons, on “reduced tables” at discounted prices.
Commins recently shopped at Pick n Pay Musgrave and happened to join a group of about 20 shoppers — all neatly dressed regular folk searching for a bargain — who patiently followed one of the supermarket employees around as he placed red discount stickers on fresh produce, meat and other groceries.
“Every day at 2.30pm Pick n Pay Musgrave marks down items on discount, and we literally followed the man with the reduced price stickers — like the Pied Piper — as he walked around the shop slapping them on items. There were people of all ages in the crowd and they were well dressed, they were not people off the street. It wasn’t their first rodeo,” Commins said.
“When the man finished putting all the discounts on he tore up the remaining stickers to let the people know that this was done.”
Commins said there were a few other staff members in other departments also placing stickers on goods so it would be worth shopping as a team to maximise the benefit of the reduced prices.
Among her stash of discounted items were 125g of pepper ham marked down from R45.99 to R10; 1.2kg of butternut soup reduced from R74.99 to R15 and 740g country classic boerewors reduced from R77.69 to R55.
Commins said she was grateful for the reduced prices.
“We are the missing middle-income group that usually do not get any assistance from the government, or anyone. Poor people get government grants and charity organisations get waste food for free from supermarkets, and the rich are fine, but there is nothing to help us middle-income people who are battling,” she said.
Pinetown resident Talita Zondo said “food prices are too much”. She keeps track of prices and is prepared to travel a little to find a good bargain.
“Five boxes of 1kg Kellogg’s All Bran Flakes are now R95 each, so that is almost R500 for five for the month, and then I have to buy long-life milk for about R1 000 and that is already R1 500,” Zondo said.
“Food is too expensive and I buy every day but I know the prices now and where to shop. I go to Oxford in Hillcrest and to Dawood [a national chicken distributor] in Maydon Wharf to buy chicken,” Zondo said.
Shoprite Checkers said it has noticed that consumers are stretching their budgets and have changed how they shop for food and other essentials.
“Trends include more customers seeking promotions; customers are buying more combo deals and often opting for collective buying, and more customers are changing brands and switching to private label, with 96% of all customers now buying at least one private label product,” the supermarket said.
A spokesperson for Pick n Pay said the supermarket chain had adopted a system of reducing prices to reduce food waste across its stores.
“Should a fresh product be nearing its sell-by date, it may be marked with a ‘reduced to clear’ sticker. This initiative helps us avoid unnecessary food waste, something Pick n Pay strongly promotes,” he said.
Julian May, the director of the NRF-DST Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape, said about a quarter of the population is battling to put nutritious food on the table as prices rise.
“We are also seeing a tragedy of citrus farmers dumping oranges because of the issues of importing into Europe, so it has been difficult to get the fruit into the EU and it is difficult to get their fruit out of SA.
“They are dumping, not because they are bad people, but it would cost them money to take it to places where people need the food, so in most productive parts of SA, oranges are being fed to cattle.”