Save a Bundle on Groceries

Sage Rich, a grocery shopping coach, cases the aisles of a Real Canadian Superstore in Nanaimo, B.C., with the zeal of a drug-sniffing police hound. Her mission is helping families buy nutritious food while saving themselves up to $400 a month on food bills. She zooms past a refrigerated section of cottage cheese. "Waste of time." She passes the sour cream and chip dip-"Doesn't matter."

At the sight of cold fresh juice, she makes a sweeping dismissive gesture. "Waste of money! Buy the Tetra Pak of juice instead. One litre." Rich collects flyers and coupons from all the big grocery stores. Experience tells her "Safeway sometimes has juice Tetra Paks four for five dollars. They're way, way less expensive. Fresh juice has a shelf life. Your kids don't drink it, it goes down the drain."

When Rich arrives in the frozen meat section, she's like one of the Arctic diamond miners she once cooked for. Here is the motherlode of savings. "In the Arctic, I didn't have fresh so I relied heavily on frozen meats and vegetables and that educated me on what were good products and what weren't. You don't lose any nutrient value in frozen meats. They're cheaper and, if anything, beef breaks down a bit more when it's frozen and it comes out a more tender product."

To prove her price point, she counts up the number of fresh skinless chicken breasts in a package. "Air-chilled la-la-la," she says, ridiculing the brand's fancy advertising slogan, as she runs a tabulating finger down the outside plastic wrap. "Count the chicken breasts. I think this is outrageous. There are seven breasts. Twenty dollars. That's almost three dollars a chicken breast. No."
In the frozen section, she hoists a large cardboard box of breasts like it's the Stanley Cup. "Here. Beautiful skinless boneless chicken breasts. $26.20. For sure there's 20 of them in here. Instead of three dollars each, they're a dollar each and they're huge!"

To those who wish to stick with fresh, free-range meat, Rich, who was raised on a farm in Prince George, B.C., suggests doing what her sister did. "Get together with your friends. Go for a drive in the country. Make a deal with a farmer, or put a notice at a feed store: 'Four people looking to buy 100 fryer chickens. Please phone.' "
"Then a farmer phones you and he goes and buys 100 chicks for three dollars each." The farmer raises and feeds your birds. "You communicate with the farmer a little bit" while the chicks mature, but not too much, she says. "You don't need to phone every month and ask, 'How are my birds doing?' " Rich's sister paid eight dollars a bird for her custom-ordered, "fully bagged" free-range fryer chickens. "For a fryer chick, you'll get a nice little plump five- or six-pound chicken and that bird is going to be absolutely delicious."

"I'm in the same boat as everyone else," she says, explaining why she believes her grocery coaching services are needed right now. "I don't want to be spending $100 every time I go shopping. I think a hundred a week for one person is high, I really do." Since last year's market crash, Rich has watched beef prices soar 30 per cent. Pork is the only decent deal on fresh meat, she says, "because of the swine scare. If you eat pork, go for it."

Even bread is expensive right now, she says. "You don't have to eat bread. Buy tortilla wraps: 12 to a pack for $2.59. Make wraps. That's 12 sandwiches. Or one night it's chicken quesadillas and in the morning it's scrambled egg burrito."
Marching through the produce section, Rich says, "I never buy real lemons for cooking. I buy bottled lemon juice. Strawberries are the big ticket item right now but they don't freeze well. You have to eat them in a certain time frame. They're not the greatest fruit for a family on a budget."

At the margarine section, she stops dead in her tracks. She's aware of the divisive butter-margarine argument, and takes a moment to deliver her opinion. "I don't think margarine is bad for you. I've never heard of anyone dying from it or getting any diseases. Some cooks go, 'Oh my God! You don't use butter?' Well, I think that's nuts. The price of butter? You think your family can tell when you make cookies without butter? Never! Why would you waste the money?"
Rich charges $60 for a three-hour consultation and coaching; $150 for coaching, shopping, cooking, and a two-week meal plan.

Do women really need this kind of consultation?? Years of experience of grocery shopping for a growing family must surely be the best teacher. But Ms Rich certainly is an enterprising woman. She has created a business out of a slumping economy and she charges a hefty fee. I think I'd shop around for a cheaper rate.