Saving Money on Bread

One of the most frequent items on our grocery list is bread. With 4 kids, we go through bread pretty quickly- we go through almost a whole loaf of sandwich bread in one meal! When I decided recently that it was time to cut back our grocery bill, I knew something would have to change in regards to buying bread.

Last month we decided to do something different. We visited local bread outlets and found the same bread we buy at the grocer's for less! We also found packages of breakfast bread, mini-bagels, and English muffins for significantly less than they're priced at Wal-mart and other stores!

The bread items at the bread outlets come from local grocers. How do they end up at the outlet? The grocers have a certain amount of time to sell the bread. If it hasn't sold by that time, the bread then goes to bread outlets. There were some loaves that were a little smashed, (make sure you check carefully as you're going through the bread) but most were just fine and very soft! Not even expired yet!

7 Great Things About Bread Outlets:

*Name brand bread loaves are significantly less than at the grocers or even Costco/Sams Club. For example, Sara Lee 45 Calories loaves were only $1.29 a piece (vs. the $1.89 at Sam's). Texas Toast was only $1.38/loaf (vs. $2.47 at the local grocer).

*The bread is as nice as what you'd find at a grocery store

*You'll find other great bread items- bagels, hamburger buns, breakfast breads and more!

*Specials of the day- shop in the morning and find special items of the day marked even lower. I.e., the day we shopped, Iron Kids Bread was $1/loaf, and bagels were packages of 12 mini-bagels for $1/package (marked down because they had a surplus of them)

*Free items or other incentives based on how much you spend. At one of the outlets we shopped, we were able to pick out 1 free item per $5 we had spent. The items we could choose from were ones that were either expired or close to their expiration date.

*You can freeze extra bread (therefore needing to shop less)

*Bread Outlets are located just about everywhere in the U.S! Use Google or a Bread Outlet Directory to find out which outlets are near you.

What NOT to do When Shopping Bread Outlets:

Don't buy so much bread that that you are left with little room in your freezer or have more than you can use before it gets freezer burn! We bought too much. I'm waiting to see how the bread holds up in the freezer before deciding how much to stock up on next time. It's been almost 1 month since we bought the bread and it's still fantastic, but 2, 3, 4 months from now? I'm not sure yet.

***If you've shopped at a bread outlet, what was your experience like? Any advice on freezing bread for more than 2 months at a time?