Savvy city shopper has ploy that may help you save at supermarket
BRANDING AND BATCH CODES FIND A HIT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
The only thing I can do is make people more aware that buying branded is not always the best option Maneet Kaur
A SHOPPER from Leicester has shared an ingenious ploy that could save people half of the price they would normally pay for products in supermarkets.
Do you ever choose the more expensive item, even though it looks pretty much the same as others on the shelf? Well, you might be wasting your money.
Maneet Kaur has revealed how you can use batch codes to find out if a food sold for difference prices – pasta shapes, for instance – is actually all from the same supplier.
The 28-year-old watched a video on how medication is marketed and decided to look into the food industry.
In a clip shared to TikTok, the process technologist compares a 500g packet of penne pasta from Tesco, which costs 53p, with a packet by Hearty Food Co, also owned by Tesco, and shows how these appear to have identical batch codes.
She suggests this means the products are from the same place and that shoppers are spending 24p more – nearly double – for the branding alone.
“I work in the food industry so know that whatever product we make will have a supplier code on it for traceability,” Maneet, who has 10,000 followers on TikTok, under the name @minsmeals, told Jam Press.
“I went into a supermarket and looked at staple foods like beans, pasta and bread and looked at the codes.”
She said what she found “didn’t surprise” her, and added: “Essentially, it’s all about how these brands market it to the consumer.”
Maneet said she believed that shoppers needed to be aware of some of the methods that are used to separate consumers from their hardearned cash.
“We need to be more conscious about the tricks supermarkets use,” she said. “The only thing I can do is make people more aware that buying branded is not always the best option.”
She also has another top tip for shoppers.
“Branded food will most likely be at eye level, while unbranded, cheaper items will be either on the top or bottom shelf,” she said.
“I’m sure if people had the time and were interested, the same could be applied to many other items.”
Maneet said she loved sharing useful shopping tips and hunting down new snacks for her followers to try, such as fun finds like popcorn-flavoured KitKat bars and punchflavoured cans of Fanta.
She went viral last year after discovering a cheeky hack for opening a tub of Heroes without breaking the seal – meaning chocolate lovers could dive into their family’s tubs before they were opened. Tesco has previously shared a tweet explaining where to find batch codes and supplier codes on products.
It said: “The supplier code (SC) should be found at the back of the packaging, at the end of our address.”
It added that the batch code was “the little code below the food standards stamp”.