IF THERE’S one place where Filipinos need to keep their financial wits about them especially in these days of spiraling prices, it’s that enclave with eye candies in every corner, temptations in every package, and come-ons on every aisle: the grocery.

For most families, the grocery is a place that decimates savings plans and kills financial discipline. So much so that when the cash register announces the total bill, it often sends little shock waves into the pocket book.

With the frenzied lifestyle most Filipinos lead especially in Metro Manila, grocery shoppers tend to gravitate towards stores that are convenient, not cheap. But a July survey by the Hotel and Restaurant Cost Controllers Association of the Philippines (HRCCAP) revealed that on the average, some groceries can be as much as 5 percent cheaper than others.

“If your monthly grocery expense is more than P8,000 or P100,000 a year, you could save about P5,000 annually if you shift allegiance from high-end to low-end grocery stores. Will the 5 percent savings make up for the sacrifice in comfort and ambience? In these hard times, I guess people will prioritize any potential savings,” says Noel Mendegorin, chairman of the Research and Development committee that conducted the survey and the cost controller of Peninsula Manila.

The members of the committee are cost controllers of Makati Shangri-la, Hard Rock Café, Traders Hotel, Via Mare Restaurants and Bayview Park Hotel.

Based on the survey, the cheapest groceries excluding wholesale outfits are Cherry Foodarama and SM Supermarket. SM’s ranking is due largely to its “Yellow Tag” items, without which Cherry Foodarama wins hands down.

Rustans and South Supermarkets are at the upper range with the most expensive prices. The others, ranked from cheapest to most expensive, are Robinsons, Puregold, and Landmark.

The food items surveyed were vegetable oil, catsup, vinegar, mayonnaise, sugar, sardines, tuna in oil, and Coke in can. The non-food items surveyed were dishwashing liquid, toothpaste, bar soap for washing clothes and taking a bath.

The HRCCAP also discovered that loyalty cards have minimal or no effect on grocery stores’ pricing schemes and that grocery store chains are consistent with the pricing and availability of products. That means rushing to SM Fairview to find a few missing items in your grocery list will be a waste of time and gas.

Here’s a list of other things that you can do to squeeze more juice out of your grocery budget:

1. Attentive spending. Before you go through those big double doors, especially if grocery shopping is a family affair, remind yourself and your brood that this is not a place for mindless spending. Be conscious of what you put in your cart.

Stacking up the cart and choosing to delay the decision making until you reach the counter makes you vulnerable to whining from babies, grumbling from the teenagers and guilt trips from the spouse. Here’s an idea: make a game out of spotting big bargains. A lollipop prize at the end may be the lesser evil compared with an overblown grocery bill and it will teach your children personal finance principles they need to survive.

2. Prioritize the perimeter. In every grocery, necessities are situated in the perimeter of the store. Bread, meat, fish, vegetables, rice, toiletries, and milk are always situated near the walls of the grocery. If you go through the grocery in a zigzag manner as most people do, you tend to stack your cart first with expensive processed food and sweets, rather than what you needed to buy in the first place. Change your strategy by making sure the must-buy items are covered first.

3. Look up and down. Store insiders know that groceries charge merchandisers more for eye-level shelves and guess where these people recover the cost? You. When choosing items, compare with those that are placed above and below eye level and you’ll find sure bargains.

4. Get in and get out. Behavioral studies have shown that most shoppers buy expensive items on their third hour of shopping. If you want to minimize unnecessary expenses, make a list and stick to it. If you don’t like lists, simply walk away from items you don’t need. The more you interact, the more you smell, admire the colors, the packaging, the more likely you will convince yourself that you need them.

5. Use the right-sized basket or cart. In the grocery to buy bread and eggs? Don’t get the big cart. You’ll end up wanting to fill up that empty space and before you know it, you’ll be leaving with a trunk full of grocery items before the scheduled trip. Because of this, some people prefer going to the grocery once a month to minimize impulse shopping. If impulse buying is your weakness, consider buying bread and eggs from the sari-sari store, if these are all that you need. The items might cost a little bit more, but the “savings” from buying unnecessary items can be bigger.

6. Compare apples to apples. Ever notice the case of the shrinking bread? Manufacturers are keeping the price level of their products the same, but reducing the size of their items because they know that shoppers are in a belt-tightening mode. This is most obvious in cooking oil. The 1 liter containers are fast disappearing, and you will see some leading brands keeping their prices but selling less than 1-liter bottles. This means comparing products in the grocery will be a bit more challenging these days. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges by keeping a close tab on the unit volumes.

7. Don’t shop when hungry. Fill up your stomach before going to the grocery store because you tend to buy more when hungry.

Grocery shopping will be more expensive year after year -- that’s a given. It’s up to you to squeeze more pesos out of that regular activity.

(For more personal finance articles, visit the MoneySmarts blog at http://blogs.inquirer.net/moneysmarts).

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