Friday night is food shopping night and this week Zack and I went to Whole Foods. We are both Prime Members and with Amazon’s new acquisition of Whole Foods came a lot of perks. I’m sharing what those are in this post. Read on!

Tip # 1 Become An Amazon Prime Member

Ever since the announcement that Amazon bought Whole Foods, Whole Foods has been integrating the savings you get from Amazon into the brick and mortar stores. This definitely helps the consumer with out of pocket costs up front.

Immediately I noticed the tags to promote the Amazon Prime member sales perks. Prime members gets an extra 10% off of the sale items, that definitely plays a role into grocery shopping if more of your staple items become more affordable.

Tip # 2 Download The Whole Foods App

The Whole Foods app is free and when you download it you can sign up with your Amazon Prime account. This I how you get the sales prices honored. At check out you open up the app, hit the little Promo Code icon on the bottom left and get that scanned at check out.

The app also has a Savings List. When you select that you can view what special deals that prime member’s get. This helped me plan what I was going to buy.

Tip # 3 Shop The Sales

Okay, so this can be applied to every store obviously. However, with becoming a prime member you get an extra 10% off so when shopping not just for the regular sales that happen in store but buying from the special Prime Member discounts you get to save even more.

Additionally, when you shop sales you may even improve your nutrition! How? Because you’re getting more variety. Most people fall into the same food shopping habits. Getting the same items over and over and while I support having your staples I also know the importance fo getting variety in your diet.

So heres an example! If you always buy kiwis for morning fruit, swap it out for another fruit that’s on sale. You’ll still be getting fruit but a different nutritional profile. I try to vary up as much as I can without it varying up my budget too much.

Eating healthy can be costly because fo the freshness of the food but it can also be affordable. Convenience foods are costly too! It’s all about budgeting which is why I am mentioning a bonus tip: use your calculator!

Bonus Tip Use Your Phone’s Calculator

When you shop, have your phone’s calculator app in hand and enter the price of each item you grab. Personally, I do this just for my groceries while Zack ventures and selects his items. This has helped me so much in the past few weeks stick to my weekly grocery budget.

I start by picking a budget. Knowing Whole Foods would be a bit pricer I budgeted $60 for my bill. Starting in the produce section, I selected items that were on sale like cherries and heirloom tomatoes. This helps me save money and get more variety in my diet as I explained above.

One thing to note, when items are priced per pound, it may be harder to stick to that budget or know exactly how much an item will cost. So here are my two tips for that:

1. Favor the items that are pre-packaged versus by the pound. For example, a bag of sweet potatoes priced at 2.39 is easier to price than sweet potatoes that are 0.89/lb.

2. Choose smaller items. For example, the grapefruits were 1.29 a pound and while all of them were roughly the same size, I assumed that they would be near 1 pound each and tried to choose a smaller one. It still ended up being over 1 pound but at least I chose a smaller one. With something like a grapefruit, I know I’m eating half so choosing a smaller one helps me portion control too.

So those are my 3 money saving tips for Whole Foods! Below is my grocery list and the prices. Just note that these prices are vary to change by date, location, season etc.

My Whole Foods Cherry Creek Grocery Haul!

  • Chicken Breast 1.82 lbs. @ 4.99/lb. ($9.08)
  • Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, 1/2 gallon ($2.99)
  • Liquid Egg Whites, 1 pt. ($3.99)
  • Mediterranean Veggie Blend, 2 bags ($2.69 e.)
  • Frozen Strawberries, 1 bag ($1.99)
  • Baby Carrots, 1 bag ($2.99)
  • Red Bell Pepper, 1 each (2 for $4)
  • Sockeye Salmon, 0.51 lbs. @19.99/ lb but -$3.16 for Prime Members!
  • Love the Wild Salmon Curry Kit, 1 Kit ($9.99)
  • Red Grapefruit 1.11lbs. @ $1.69 lb ($1.88)
  • Cucumber , 1 ea. ($0.89)
  • Heirloom Tomato, 0.88 lb @ $3.99 / lb ($3.51)
  • Lemon, 1 ea. ($0.79)
  • Mediterranean Organic Capers, 1 bottle ($3.99)
  • Sweet Potato , 3 lb. bag ($2.39)
  • Diced tomatoes, 1 big can ($1.49)
  • Jumbo Black Olives, 1 can ($1.99)