British shoppers are adopting a new strategy to try to stretch their weekly groceries: switching to long-lasting goods.
Tesco Plc’s customers are buying more frozen vegetables, fish and pizza lately. Some shoppers at the UK’s biggest grocer are also shifting from fresh pasta to dry, and from chilled soup to canned. Rivals from J Sainsbury Plc to Iceland Foods observed a similar trend.
Consumers facing mounting grocery and energy bills are forced to get creative, and the shift toward items that can be cheaper and less wasteful comes as they embrace discounters and supermarkets’ own-label goods rather than big brands.
“People are very mindful of value,” Richard Walker, managing director at Iceland, the budget supermarket, said in a telephone interview. “Frozen food is cheaper and there’s less waste — and budgets are very squeezed now.”
