1. Pick your "everything else" shop carefully.

The single biggest lever is which chain you do your main weekly shop in. On a branded staples basket, Aldi and Lidl beat the big-three (Tesco, Dunnes, SuperValu) by 10–15% week in week out — and Tesco's Clubcard prices close most of that gap if you're a Clubcard household. Pick one of those as the default and you've done most of the work without thinking weekly.

The natural pushback is "but they don't have what I want." Often true. The fix is splitting the shop, not abandoning the cheap one entirely (see point 3).

2. Save the Dunnes vouchers.

Every Dunnes receipt over €50 prints a €10-off voucher for next time. Roughly speaking, that's a 20% discount on every other Dunnes shop — if you actually use the voucher, which most people don't because it ends up in a drawer and expires.

Either get disciplined about putting it in your wallet immediately, or save it in Zavvy — the app reads the voucher off the receipt and shows the barcode full-screen at the till. The discipline problem is now somebody else's problem.

3. Two-shop the high-leverage categories.

Some categories have huge per-item savings at the discounters; others are basically a wash. The discounters typically win big on:

Dairy (milk, butter, cheese)
Bread and baked goods
Frozen veg, frozen meals
Tinned goods and dry staples (pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes)
Snacks and crisps
Wine (Aldi/Lidl wine ranges are remarkably good for the price)

So: stock up on those at Aldi/Lidl every fortnight, and use Tesco or Dunnes for the rest of the shop. You don't need to change shop weekly — just spend 20 minutes once every couple of weeks at the discounter on the high-leverage stuff.

4. Use the Deposit Return Scheme tactically.

Since the Deposit Return Scheme rolled out in 2024, every plastic bottle and aluminium can carries a 15c or 25c deposit that you reclaim by returning the container to any participating shop. It's not a saving — it's your own money back — but if you've been throwing them in the regular bin, you're effectively burning 15–25c per container, every week.

The return machines are at most large supermarkets. Build it into the shop trip instead of a separate visit.

5. Check shelf labels, not the shelf.

Shelf-edge labels in Ireland legally show price per kilogram or per litre alongside the pack price — and it's how to tell that a "bigger pack = cheaper" assumption is sometimes wrong. The per-kg price is in small text but it's the one that matters. A 250g jar of jam at €2.50 (€10/kg) is cheaper than a 500g jar at €5.20 (€10.40/kg), even though the bigger one looks like the better deal.

6. Watch for end-of-day reductions.

Most Irish supermarkets reduce fresh meat, bread, and bakery items in the last hour or two of trading. Tesco and Dunnes are usually 50% off; SuperValu and M&S sometimes more. Worth timing one shop a week around closing if you can — fill the freezer.

7. Track what you actually spent.

You can't lower a number you don't look at. The hardest tactic psychologically is just noticing the trend — seeing that the weekly shop has crept from €120 to €145 over a year. That's what Zavvy's spend tracking is for: snap the receipt at the end of each shop, and the chart shows whether this month was up or down on last, by category. The behaviour change is just looking at the chart.

How to cut your weekly grocery bill — Irish edition.