(WZZM) - It's not uncommon to try and make meals with items solely on sale and/or with coupons, but sometimes finding a recipe for those items can be tough. Meijer Mealbox, a fairly new website is making it easier to do that. The website is free and requires no membership.
April Brennan of Grand Rapids, a stay-at-home mother of one, has been using the site for more than six months. "Part of my job to stay home is finding ways to save money. We right now average about 60% savings on our groceries. It has made it a lot more convenient and easy for me to save money."
It's sort of like one-stop shopping for Super Savers. You can start in the recipes area. This area offers dozens of recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts and snacks. Every recipe listed has at least some of its ingredients on sale and/or available with a coupon.
The items in red are the ones to look for. They either have a "c" for coupon or "s" for on sale. "And if it's a sale, you can click on the sale and it takes you to the ad page. Now I can see how much I'm saving and how much it's going to cost," says Brennan.
"The nice part about Meijer Mealbox is you can use them (coupons) along side of a manufacturer's coupon so you can double up your coupons and you can get more for your money." On the day we met her, April's combination of coupons landed her free Lysol Disinfectant Wipes. "I can take it a step further, I click on the coupon and now it just brought me to the mealbox coupon so I can print it right off here."
Once you decide on your recipes and your overall shopping list, Meijer Mealbox automatically puts your items in a categorized shopping list.
We followed April and her daughter on their shopping trip to the Meijer store on Alpine Avenue. After about twenty minutes of shopping, April headed to the checkout aisle. "It was a really good deal of savings today." Her final bill was $33.23, and she saved $36.12. Better than 50% savings.
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