My favorite new way to save big on my pantry and grocery buys is Amazon's Prime Pantry program! I've been shopping it regularly since January 2015, and I frequently find basics for up to 75% off what I would pay in my local grocery stores!
If you're not familiar with Amazon Prime Pantry, it's a grocery purchase program exclusively for Amazon Prime members.
If you don't have a subscription, you can go here to sign up for a free 30-day trial.
Just be aware that a full year of Prime is $99, so either make a point of canceling your subscription at the end of your trial, or be ready for that charge on your credit card! (I use my Prime membership at least weekly, so for me that price evens out across the cost of the year.)
Here are some of my top tips on saving money on my Amazon Prime Pantry purchases:
- Each Amazon Prime Pantry box holds up to 45 pounds of groceries -- although you don't have to load it totally full to place an order, I definitely recommend doing so! Each item you buy will tell you the percentage it will fill up in your box. For example, a 12-pack of soda takes up 23.5% of a single box, but a bag of pita chips only takes up 3.2%. So you can play with it to get the most items possible in a single box -- think of it like Tetris for couponers!
- Your box costs you a flat $5.99 shipping fee, no matter how little or how much you squeeze in. Frequently Amazon will offer free shipping when you purchase select items, though -- so you always want to check out the main Prime Pantry page for any special offers before you start shopping.
- Whenever possible, I recommend shopping Prime Pantry on a desktop or laptop instead of the mobile site. The full desktop site shows you similar deals that other folks shopping Prime Pantry have purchased. So when I am hunting super-cheap prices, the Amazon algorithm automatically shows me other super-cheap prices that fellow shoppers snagged too!
- Consider buying in bulk within the Prime Pantry site. For example, I recently found big 43 oz bags of MOM Brands Malt-O-Meal Frosted Mini-Spooners Biscuits priced at $1.05 each on Prime Pantry. My local HEB sells a smaller 36 oz bag of this cereal for $4.68 each. So if I buy 10 bags of cereal through Prime Pantry (that's how many would fit in a single box), my final price would be $16.49 after shipping. It would cost me a whopping $46.80 to buy 10 smaller bags at HEB -- and I'd have to go through all the trouble of going to the grocery store, standing in line, and unpacking my bags when I got home! With Prime Pantry, it just gets delivered to my doorstep. :D
- Be sure to review the current collection of Amazon coupons as you're putting together your Prime Pantry box. They typically are only good on a single item, so you can't buy 10 items and use the coupon 10 times. And the coupon discount will NOT show up in your cart until you go to checkout, so keep that in mind as you're building your Prime Pantry box! For example, I recently found 5-count boxes of Special K Protein Almond Honey Oat Bars priced for $2.78 each, with a clippable 25% off coupon available. So that's just $2.09 per box -- compared to $5.98 at HEB!
- You can sort categories lowest to highest in price to find even more deals! Again, I think you have to be on the desktop site for this function -- I don't think it's available on mobile.
- Finally, I check the Top 100 Amazon Best Sellers list for Prime Pantry products before I check out -- just to make sure I'm not missing any hot deals that cropped up. This list is updated hourly!
I hope these tips help you start saving money AND time on your groceries!
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