I can pretty much guarantee that I would have gone through my entire life never realizing that March is National Frozen Food month had I not decided to begin Penny Experiment. But since I did begin this, I do now know this fact and as a result, there are great deals on frozen food in March when using coupons.
Safeway is offering a $10 catalina (a discount for you next purchase on anything you want to buy that comes out of the register with your receipt) for every $25 worth of participating frozen food that you purchase during March. Since I was planning to make a trip to the food bank today and lack freezer space, I decided to give the discount a try. It worked out well:
To make the catalina work, I needed to make 3 separate trips through the grocery line and then another two to redeem rain checks I had gotten for Corn Flakes when they were on sale for $0.99 a box. Those 5 trips through the grocery line netted $175.22 worth of food for $10.26 — an 94% savings. This is how I was able to do it:
Now, I was able to do this at such a great discount because I had a few coupons for free Bertolli meals (a $6.99 value) that not the average person can get. That being said, anyone can still get all these for 80% + off by purchasing foods that are participating which have online coupons available. Basically I mixed and matched these 3 items:
Pillsbury Strudel ($1 off online coupon)
Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest ($1 off online coupon)
Smuckers Uncrustables ($1 off online coupon)
The first trip through I purchased five Pillsbury Strudel @2.50 each, two Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest @3.00 each and 1 Bertolli frozen meal @$6.99. This total came to $25.49 putting me over the $25 minimum to get the $10 catalina back. I then used five $1 off coupons for the Pillsbury Strudel, two $1 off coupons for the Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest and the free coupon for the bertolli frozen meal. These manufacturer coupons brought the price down to $11.50. I then used a $10.00 catalina I already had to bring the price paid out of pocket to $1.50 (most people would have to pay $11.50 out of pocket for this first transaction). With my receipt, I also received another coupon for $10.00 off my next purchase. I put these in the car and then went back to the frozen food section:
On the second trip I purchased five Smuckers Uncrustables @2.50 each, two Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest @3.00 each and 1 Bertolli frozen meal @$6.99. This total again came to $25.49 putting me over the $25 minimum to get the $10 catalina back. I then used five $1 off coupons for the Smuckers Uncrustables, two $1 off coupons for the Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest and the free coupon for the bertolli frozen meal. These manufacturer coupons brought the price down to $11.50. I then used a $10.00 catalina I had just received minutes before to bring the price paid out of pocket to $1.50. With my receipt, I again received another coupon for $10.00 off my next purchase. I made another trip to the car and headed back to the frozen food section a third time:
On the third trip I was running low on all my coupons so I had to mix and match. I purchased three Pillsbury Strudel @2.50 each, two Smuckers Uncrustables @2.50 each, two Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest @3.00 each and 1 Bertolli frozen meal @$6.99. This total again came to $25.49 putting me over the $25 minimum to get the $10 catalina back. I then used three $1 off coupons for the Pillsbury Strudel, two $1 off coupons for the Smuckers Uncrustables, two $1 off coupons for the Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest and the free coupon for the Bertolli frozen meal. These manufacturer coupons brought the price down to $11.50. I then used the second $10.00 catalina I had just received minutes before to bring the price paid out of pocket to $1.50. With my receipt, I again received another coupon for $10.00 off my next purchase.
I could have continued doing this forever if I had more coupons, but unfortunately, that was all that I had which forced me to stop. I do still have a $10 off my next purchase in my pocket, so I’m hoping to get more coupons from all of you (if you don’t do the deal yourself) since this deal goes on the entire month of March
In addition to these, I scored big time with 2 rain checks I got when Corn Flakes were available for $0.99 at Safeway a few months back. I matched them with “$1.50 off of 2 boxes” coupons I had been collecting making the price for each box only $0.24 – I purchased 24 boxes (I could have gotten more, but just didn’t know at the time. I will certainly get the max available for any future rain checks I get) which was an $83.76 retail value for only $5.76.
Then it was off the the food bank to deliver all the food. The food (along with a bunch I had from previous shopping trips) was taken to Open Heart Kitchen:
It was definitely a good start to the month and I hope that I can continue to find deals like I did. All this food will be added to the Penny Experiment food purchased master list. Penny Experiment couponers (if you are a couponer, we’d love to have you join the effort) have now purchased $2102.19 worth of food for $238.43. Penny Experiment continues to take small steps toward the goal of buying $1 million worth of food for food banks, and we now have only $997,897.81 worth of food to go…
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