Stumbling on a sale
Grab a super deal when you can - and fight greedflation!
One way of Fighting Greedflation is to just save a heck of a lot off the list price.
Remember, if we save 10% on something, we’re beating inflation by 7.5%, approximately. But we can do better than 10%.
If you ever make a Dunkin run, how much are you spending for a donut and coffee?
Multiply that by the number of days you make that run. (Maximum: 7 days. Well, 7 days is beyond maximum, probably.)
How much are you spending in a week? Come on! Multiply it out.
But if you’re a sharp shopper, you’ll look to the sale table to see what the store is offering.
Bill Knapp’s is a well-known name in Michigan family restaurants, and I especially liked their donuts. Unfortunately, it seems the donuts (which they call dunkers) are the last that’s left of Knapp’s.
I see their dunkers at our local Meijer, a Michigan-based grocery chain. We had a houseguest who liked donut holes. It occurred to me that he might like dunkers even more.
So I swung by the bakery department to see if they had my favorite (cinnamon-sugar, though the peanut dunkers are darn good, too) and I saw the familiar box. The price just about floored me: $1.
I had to taste one to make sure it was OK before offering it to our guest. We all loved them, slightly stale as they were.
But at this price, we’re talking about 12 cent dunkers.
Coffee savings
I look for savings in coffee, too. I’d seen Death Wish Coffee mentioned, quoting their claim for being The World’s Strongest Coffee! Stronger than the stuff I roast on my Weber grill? I bet not.
Seeing Death Wish on sale for $4.99 for a 12 oz bag, I had to give it a try. Pumpkin spice chai coffee sounded fun. So I make a French press of that in the afternoon, add a bit of milk and stay awake until dinner time.
Death Wish Pumpkin Chai Coffee (right) with Starbucks Pumpkin Spice coffee (center) can be extended with French chicory, as they do in New Orleans.
I probably get around 10 cups out of that 12 oz bag, maybe more. So that’s around 50 cents a cup.
Add that 12 cent dunker, and my morning break is 62 cents. How does that compare with Dunkin?
What about Starbucks?
I’ll get Starbucks coffee on occasion, and this fall I got a bag of Pumpkin Spice coffee. A 17-oz bag (more than a pound) cost $6.99. For that you might get two cups at the shop. I’ll get at least 15 cups, costing 47 cents a cup. I doubt if Starbucks ever charged that little for a cup, even 50 years ago!
If you believe you have a problem with caffeine after lunch, you may take a tip from the French Market in New Orleans. Their chicory-coffee blend goes perfectly with the donuts they make down there, the beignet: a pile of rectangular fried pillows of dough covered with a thick layer of powdered sugar.
So now I purchase roasted French chicory and add it to my own coffee: about 1 spoonful to 3 spoonfuls of ground coffee. That way I’m cutting my caffeine intake by 25% without resorting to decaf of any kind.
I get 3-4 bags of French chicory at a time and that order might keep me slightly less caffeinated for about 4 months.
Now, if I could find French Market beignets for a dollar a box…