If you’re offering a sandwich, chips and drinks along the way, this used to be a bargain lunch spot.
But the prices of most of these popular lunch options have gone up.
The average cost of a meal at five of the largest retailers has increased by more than a fifth, or 21%, since the pandemic.
Three years ago you could get a £3 meal deal in many shops but the cheapest deal generally available is now £3.50 at Sainsbury’s.
Poundland has launched a meal deal that undercuts its larger rivals by £2.50 but with a much more limited range.
- Tesco raises price of meal deals as food costs rise
Several retailers have added premium offerings that offer fancier items like hummus, sushi, and smoothies, so there’s more choice – but at a higher price point. Boots has upped its London deal to £4.99.
And while Boots, Tesco and Morrisons all have slightly cheaper offers for members of their loyalty programs, these too have risen along with grocery prices in general.
You can get a three-piece lunch below the meal deal price by buying the cheapest items individually, going to a cheaper supermarket like Aldi or Lidl, or taking advantage of Asda’s three-for-two deal.
There are no available figures on the number of food deals sold, but many people still crowd around the refrigerated counters in the stores. Online, fans post videos of their lunch specials, and long chat threads are devoted to rating and berating other people’s choices.
“Eating out is getting cheaper because everything else is getting more expensive,” says Vix Leyton, host of the False Economy podcast and a fan of the three-for-one flat-fee offerings.
“Many money-saving experts will say there’s cheaper ways to make sandwiches at home, but life can be pretty dreary at times, and when you want to treat yourself in the middle of the day, it’s not bad.”
Typically, a meal deal will save you a pound or two. For example, a ham and mustard sandwich, a bottle of sparkling water and a pack of plain crisps would cost £4.50 if bought separately, but you can get it for £3.50 at Sainsbury’s Meal Deal.
But Ms Leyton says she enjoyed selecting the most expensive items available to get the maximum value for her meal deal fee.
“You’ll see on the receipt ‘You saved £4 today,'” she says. It felt like she was “getting over Tesco”.
That’s why there’s a “small resentment” against getting water at a meal service, even if you’re really thirsty, she says.
Realizing she ended up with lots of cans of Red Bull she didn’t really want, she tried to control her bargain-hunting instincts.
But the principle remains that a food offer is likely to tempt you to take things you didn’t plan to, points out Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University.
“That’s what 2-for-1 or meal deals are all about — getting people to buy more than they otherwise would,” she says.
Then there are the big yellow or red signs advertising the good deal.
“You see these automatically before you look at the products on display. Once we focus our attention, it’s difficult to direct it,” she says.
“When we think we’re getting a good deal, we get a very small adrenaline rush — a little bit of excitement,” she says.
Plus pre-lunch shopping gets you going when you’re at your weakest.
“When you’re hungry, you want sugar. You make the worst food choices.
Because of this, some would like to see restrictions on food offerings. The Welsh Government, for example, is considering whether foods high in sugar, salt and fat that are otherwise restricted should be excluded from meal offerings.
An additional tax on foods high in sugar and salt is intended to encourage shoppers to make healthier choices. But the meal deal removes that price lever, says Carol Williams of the University of Brighton.
Students she surveyed in 2018 said they picked the most expensive drink to “get a bargain.” So there’s actually a perverse incentive to choose the less healthy, more expensive option.
These days, Vix Leyton says she takes a “mature” approach and picks a sandwich she really wants, even if it’s on the lower end of the range.
Then she either grabs the “protein pop” — two boiled eggs — or she grabs a pot of olives to put in her bag for later. You can make healthy choices about a food offering she insists on if you choose to.
But she doesn’t get Tesco either way. Retailers don’t care what you buy, says Ms Jansson-Boyd. For them, the point of a food offer is to convey the message that they are a budget travel destination.
“You’re building a relationship with the consumer,” she says.
As long as customers think, “Tesco was good for the food business, I’ll go back there,” the retailer will be happy, she says.
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