Most people have a rough sense of what they spend at the supermarket. Almost nobody has ever added up the full number, groceries plus takeaways plus eating out plus the coffees and lunches bought out during the week, and seen it in a single figure, per person, per week.
That number is usually larger than expected. The UK average household spends around £60 to £80 per week just on groceries, but total food spend: once eating out, takeaways, and bought-out coffees and lunches are included, usually runs much higher. For many households it is one of the biggest controllable costs in the budget, and it is almost never looked at in full.
This tracker adds it all up, shows the per-person per-week figure, compares it to a realistic benchmark for a household like yours, and breaks down exactly where the money is going.
Who Is This Tracker For?
It is for anyone who wants to see what their household actually spends on food: in total, per person, and split across categories, rather than just knowing roughly what the weekly shop costs. Most useful if you are:
- Someone who has never added up the full food bill: groceries, takeaways, eating out, and other food spend all in one place, shown per person per week and as an annual total
- Anyone trying to reduce their food spend without eating worse, the category breakdown shows exactly where the money is going, which is always more useful than a general instruction to spend less
- A household with a mixed routine: some home cooking, some takeaways, occasional eating out, who wants to see what that pattern actually costs per year rather than per occasion
- Anyone who wants a benchmark, the tracker compares your spend against rough UK ranges for a household of your size and location, without telling you what you should spend
- Someone who buys coffee, lunch, or snacks out regularly and wants to see how that daily spend adds up over the year
- Anyone who suspects takeaways and eating out are a bigger proportion of their food spend than they realise, which is true for most households, and wants to see the percentage clearly to make the decision to reduce them more concrete.
Who Is This Tracker Not Suitable For?
- Anyone looking for a precise accounting of their food spend. The tracker works on your inputs and approximates totals using 4.3 weeks per month. For exact figures, your bank statement or a budgeting app that reads transaction data directly is more accurate. This tool is designed to show the pattern and the benchmark comparison, not to replicate a bank statement.
- Anyone looking for a strict budget target. The tracker shows ranges, not rules. There is no correct number for what a household should spend on food: it depends on income, preferences, dietary needs, location, and a dozen other factors. The benchmark ranges are indicators, not prescriptions.
How to Use the Grocery Budget Tracker
Start with the household section. Set the number of adults and children, children are counted as 0.6 of an adult portion for the benchmark calculation, which reflects the real difference in food consumption between children and adults. Select your location type, which adjusts the benchmark range to reflect the genuine cost differences between London, other cities, towns, and rural areas. If you want to see your food spend as a percentage of your take-home pay, enter your monthly income in the optional field.
Choose whether to enter amounts weekly or monthly using the toggle at the top. All inputs convert automatically, if you know your grocery spend as a monthly figure rather than a weekly one, switch to monthly entry and the calculator does the conversion.
The groceries section asks for your weekly shop total and the number of home-cooked meals you make from it each week. The second figure produces the cost-per-home-cooked-meal output in the hero panel, a useful number for putting the cost of ordering in or eating out into context.
The takeaways section uses number of takeaways per week and average cost per order. The what-if trim slider underneath lets you adjust how much you might cut from takeaway spend and immediately see the annual saving.
Fill in eating out, work lunches, bought-out coffees and snacks, then select your benchmark preference: tight but realistic, middle of the road, or just show me the ranges, and the comparison panel updates to match.
Food is one of the biggest weekly costs for most households, but most people have never added up what they actually spend across groceries, takeaways, and eating out. This tracker shows your total food spend per person per week, how that compares to a rough benchmark for a household like yours, and where the money is really going.
🏠 Your Household
Where do you live? (adjusts benchmark range)
🛒 Groceries
Supermarkets, online food shops, local shops for food and household basics.
🍕 Takeaways
Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats, direct orders, chippy runs — any food ordered for delivery or collection.
🍽️ Eating Out
Restaurants, cafés, pubs, brunch: sit-down meals away from home.
☕ Other Food Spend
Work lunches, school dinners, bought coffees and snacks: small daily spends that add up.
📊 Benchmark Preference
How do you want to see the comparison? These are broad ranges, not rules.
£0
Groceries, takeaways, eating out, and other food spend added together£0
Your total divided by the number of people in your household (children counted as 0.6)£0
Weekly total × 4.3: a realistic monthly approximation£0
The full-year cost, often larger than people expect when seen as a single number£0
per week across all food categories£0
Monthly estimate£0
Groceries, takeaways, eating out & other food spend£0.00
Grocery spend ÷ home-cooked meals per weekWhere the money is going — weekly
How your spend compares
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How Much Should You Spend on Food Per Person Per Week in the UK?
There is no single correct answer, but there are realistic ranges that reflect how UK households actually spend.
Research from the Office for National Statistics and various UK household budget studies finds that total food spend varies by household size, income, location, and lifestyle. The following rough bands give a useful starting framework.
A tight but realistic budget for most UK adults runs to around £20 to £30 per person per week on total food spend. This is achievable with meal planning, shopping at budget supermarkets for the majority of your shop, limiting takeaways to once or twice a month, and rarely eating out. It is not a poverty-level budget, it is a disciplined one, achievable with moderate effort and attention.
A middle‑of‑the‑road budget runs to around £30 to £50 per person per week. This reflects typical UK adult food spending when takeaways, the occasional restaurant meal, and bought‑out lunches or coffees are included at a realistic weekly or near‑weekly rate. Most working adults who cook regularly and eat out occasionally will land somewhere in this range.
A more generous budget of £50 to £75 per person per week reflects households that eat out or order in regularly, buy higher-quality groceries, or have dietary requirements that push up the cost of the shop.
London and other major cities add roughly 10 to 15 percent to these figures: the cost of eating out, ordering in, and even supermarket shopping is higher in central London than in the rest of the UK.
Groceries vs Takeaways vs Eating Out: Where the Money Actually Goes
For most UK households, the grocery shop is the largest single food category, but it is often not the category with the most room to reduce costs.
Groceries account for 50 to 70 percent of total household food spend. The scope for reduction is real but needs effort: switching supermarkets, meal planning, reducing food waste. UK households throw away approximately £730 of food per year on average, which is a more substantial waste stream than most people appreciate.
Takeaways are the fastest-growing food category in UK household budgets. Research from the Food Standards Agency and various food industry reports shows that UK adults now order takeaway food on average 1.5 to 2 times per week, with average order values of £20 to £35. For a household ordering twice a week at £25 per order, the annual takeaway bill is £2,600, a figure that surprises most people when they see it as an annual total rather than a per-order cost.
Eating out ranges a lot. A household that eats out once a week at a mid-range restaurant is spending £100 to £200 per month on meals out. A household that eats out occasionally is spending a fraction of that. The key insight from the breakdown panel is the percentage share, seeing that eating out represents 25 percent of total food spend puts the decision about whether to reduce it in a different frame than seeing the per-visit cost.
Other food spend: bought-out coffees, work lunches, canteen food, vending machines, is the category most underestimated. A daily bought coffee at £3.50 is £910 per year. A daily meal deal at £5 is £1,300 per year. Most people who buy lunch out every day have never calculated the annual total, and the tracker makes it visible.
The Cost Per Home-Cooked Meal Figure
This is one of the most useful outputs in the tracker, and it is rarely calculated.
If your weekly grocery shop is £80 and you cook ten meals at home from it each week, the cost per home-cooked meal is £8.00 for the household. For a couple, that is £4.00 per person per meal. For a family of four, it is £2.00 per person per meal.
Compared to the equivalent takeaway or restaurant meal, this gap is almost always larger than people expect. A takeaway pizza for two costs £20 to £30. A home-cooked pasta dish from a £2.50 pack of pasta and basic ingredients costs £3 to £5 for the household. The per-meal cost difference is not marginal, it is around three to eight times higher for eating out or ordering in than for equivalent home cooking.
This does not mean eating out is wasteful or wrong. The convenience, social value, and enjoyment of a restaurant meal are real and worth spending on. But seeing the cost‑per‑meal figure from your own grocery shop makes the comparison concrete rather than vague, which is what changes decisions at the margin.
Takeaway Spending in the UK: The Annual Figure Nobody Calculates
The individual takeaway order feels like a small expense. The annual total almost never does.
At one takeaway per week at £25 per order, the annual spend is £1,300. At two per week, which is close to the UK average, it is £2,600. For households with three or more people ordering individually, or for households that order more expensive platform deliveries, the figure runs higher still.
The what-if trim slider in the tracker shows what cutting £10, £20, or £30 per week from takeaway or eating out spend saves annually. Cutting £20 per week saves £1,040 per year. Cutting £30 per week saves £1,560. These are not trivial numbers, at £1,000 to £1,500 per year, the saving is in the range of a holiday, several months of a savings goal, or a significant debt repayment contribution.
The point is not to stop ordering takeaways. The point is to make the annual cost visible so the decision to order or not is a deliberate one rather than a default.
Food as a Percentage of Income
The optional income field in the tracker produces one of the more revealing outputs, food spend as a percentage of monthly take-home pay.
Most financial planning frameworks suggest that food should account for around 10 to 15 percent of net household income, though this varies enormously with income level. For a household earning £2,500 per month after tax, 10 to 15 percent is £250 to £375 per month on food. For a household earning £5,000 per month, it is £500 to £750. The proportion rises sharply at lower income levels; food is a relatively fixed cost that does not fall in line when incomes drop.
For households where food is above 20 to 25 percent of take-home pay, the tracker’s category breakdown is the most useful starting point for identifying where reduction is most feasible. In most cases, the largest share of spend above the benchmark comes from eating out and takeaways rather than the grocery shop.
How to Trim Your Food Budget Without Going Extreme
- Switch one weekly shop to a budget supermarket. Aldi and Lidl often rank as 15 to 25 percent cheaper per basket than mid-range UK supermarkets for equivalent staple products. Switching the majority of your weekly shop, or even half of it, to a budget supermarket while continuing to buy specific items elsewhere is one of the highest-return changes available. Our grocery discount codes also cover a range of UK supermarkets and online food retailers.
- Plan meals before shopping, not after. The single most effective way to reduce food waste and grocery spend is to decide what you are cooking before you shop, then buy only what you need for those meals. UK households waste around £730 of food per year on average, mostly fresh produce and bread that was not eaten before it spoiled. A simple weekly meal plan eliminates most of this waste.
- Replace one takeaway per week with home cooking. At £25 per order, cutting one takeaway per week saves £1,300 per year. The tracker’s what-if slider makes this figure visible at your exact per-order cost. Our cooking and baking deals cover the kitchen equipment that makes home cooking faster and easier to sustain as a habit.
- Bring lunch from home at least three days a week. At £5 per meal deal, buying lunch out five days a week costs £1,300 per year per person. Bringing lunch three days a week and buying out two reduces this to £520 per person per year, a saving of £780 without eliminating the habit entirely.
- Check Savzz before any food-related spend. Our grocery deals, food and drink deals, kitchen and dining deals, and hot drinks discount codes cover a wide range of UK food and drink retailers. Saving 10 to 20 percent on the food spending you are going to do anyway reduces the annual total without changing anything about what you eat.
What the Annual Food Spend Figure Reveals
The most common response when people see their annual food spend for the first time is surprise. The weekly grocery figure feels manageable. The annual total: once takeaways, eating out, bought coffees, and work lunches are added, regularly comes in at £5,000 to £10,000 for a two-adult household, and higher for families.
At £7,000 per year, food is one of the biggest household expenditures after housing. It is also one of the most controllable, unlike rent or mortgage payments, the food spend can be adjusted without any fixed-cost commitments. A household that reduces total food spend by 15 percent saves £1,050 per year. At 20 percent, it saves £1,400.
The tracker does not suggest that reducing food spend is the right priority for everyone. Eating well, eating out socially, and enjoying good food are valuable uses of money. The point is to make the full picture visible, so whatever share of the food budget goes to each category becomes a deliberate choice rather than an unconsidered default.
Our grocery discount codes, cooking and baking deals, kitchen and dining discount codes, and food and drink deals mean that whatever you spend on food, you can spend less of it than full price.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the average UK person spend on food per week?
ONS household spending data puts the average UK adult grocery spend at around £30 to £40 per week, but this covers supermarket shopping only. When takeaways, eating out, work lunches, and bought-out coffees and snacks are added, total food spend for a UK adult is typically £50 to £80 per week depending on lifestyle, location, and income. The tracker gives you the figure for your specific household.
What is a realistic weekly food budget for a family of four in the UK?
For a family of four on a middle-of-the-road budget in the UK, a realistic total food spend is around £150 to £220 per week, covering groceries, a weekly takeaway or two, and the occasional meal out. In London the figure is typically 10 to 15 percent higher. A tight but realistic budget for the same household is around £100 to £130 per week with regular meal planning and limited eating out. The tracker adjusts for your family size and location.
How much should you spend on groceries per person per week in the UK?
On groceries alone, a reasonable range for a UK adult is £25 to £40 per week. Budget shoppers using Aldi or Lidl with a meal plan can spend £20 to £25 per person per week. Higher-quality shops, organic or specialist dietary products, or shopping at premium supermarkets push the figure to £40 to £60 per person per week. The tracker focuses on total food spend including all categories, which is the more useful figure for understanding the full household food cost.
How much do UK households spend on takeaways per year?
Research from the Food Standards Agency and food delivery industry reports suggests UK adults order takeaway food 1.5 to 2 times per week on average. At an average order value of £20 to £35 per household order, a household ordering twice a week is spending £2,000 to £3,600 per year on takeaways. The tracker calculates your household’s specific takeaway spend and shows the annual total.
Is it worth switching to Aldi or Lidl to reduce grocery spend?
For most households, yes. Aldi and Lidl price their core staples 15 to 25 percent below the equivalent items at mid-range UK supermarkets. For a household spending £80 per week on groceries, switching could save £12 to £20 per week, £624 to £1,040 per year. The main adjustment is the absence of some branded products and a smaller range, which matters more or less depending on the household. Most households that switch find the savings real and the quality difference minimal for everyday items.
How much does buying coffee out every day cost per year?
A daily coffee at £3.50 costs £1,277.50 per year. At £4.00 per day it is £1,460. At £4.50 per day, a large coffee from a central London chain, it is £1,642.50. The tracker’s other food spend section includes coffees and snacks in the total. Entering the weekly cost makes the annual figure visible, which tends to be more motivating than the per-cup cost.
What percentage of income should go on food?
Most financial planning frameworks suggest 10 to 15 percent of net monthly income for food. In practice, this proportion is higher at lower income levels (food is a relatively fixed cost that does not reduce with income) and lower at higher income levels. The optional income field in the tracker calculates this percentage for your household so you can see where your food spend sits as a proportion of take-home pay.
Who built this calculator?
The Savzz Grocery Budget Tracker was built by the team at Savzz.co.uk, a UK discount code and money-saving site. We built it because most food budget tools focus on the grocery shop alone and ignore the full picture: takeaways, eating out, bought coffees and lunches are all genuine food costs that most households have never seen added together in a single weekly and annual figure. This tracker covers all of it, shows it per person per week, compares it against realistic UK benchmarks, and shows what small changes save annually. It is completely free to use.
