I went to Food Warehouse in Nottingham with £10 and…

I went to Food Warehouse in Nottingham with £10 and picked up some bargains

Food Warehouse at Riverside has only been open a day but already there were customers waiting outside for it to open when I arrived. The bargain store is known for its wide selection of food, drinks, alcohol and household goods at incredibly low prices.

After deciding to see what bargains I could pick up for £10 - a well-timed challenge considering I had forgotten my lunch and was due in the office all day. As I was in the office, I was restricted from buying frozen items too as I wouldn't be able to keep them cold.

This doesn't sound like much but it does have an effect on how much you can buy at Food Warehouse because a lot of the low-cost items are frozen. So it's definitely one to come back to for the ice cream section alone which was both impressive and overwhelming in equal measures.

The first place I go is the coffee aisle because it was the first thing on a grey Wednesday morning and I hadn't had my usual five cups. I was pleased to see that I could pick up a tub of Costa instant coffee for £3 when it would have been £5.25 in Tesco. So that went in my basket immediately.

Since I already had coffee, I decided I better add some chocolate chip cookies into my bag while I was at it. This was for no reason other than my belief that chocolate chip cookies make excellent biscuits for dunking in tea or coffee. Luckily, I managed to nab a packet for 65p instead of the £1.35 at Tesco.

With my missing lunch on my mind, I headed into the frozen aisle to look for the Slimming World items. The Slimming World range is exclusive to Iceland so I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I managed to pick up a frozen Pea and Ham soup bowl for £2.75 which is great considering the massive size of the 500g pot.

So far, my meals are relatively sorted with a nice snack and a soup for lunch. It's here that things went a bit chaotic as I tried to think of other items I needed. I spent far too long wondering if I needed, or could justify, a litre of sweet chilli dipping sauce for £3 but changed my mind at the last minute.

One thing I did notice was that there are some items that aren't cheaper than Tesco or Sainsburys so it pays to have the phone out ready to do a quick search. I noticed that some of the brand-name cheeses were more expensive than Tesco but not by much. However, if you are tightly budgeting your food then every last bit can add up if it's more than you bargained for.

I settled on picking up the last few bits to make a nice dinner for myself when I get home tonight. Nothing says mid-week pick me up quite like a stodgy comforting pasta bake. So I grabbed a jar of creamy Tomato sauce from Dolmio for £1.99 but here is where I forgot to check my price comparison and ended up paying an extra 24p as a result.

I did grab some Ragu authentic Italian linguine to have for dinner but there wasn't a direct comparison that I could find to check for a price. I did think that £1.25 was a good price for the 750g that I got so it will last me quite some time.

Ultimately, Food Warehouse is cheaper but it does require keeping an eye open so you can take advantage of the best bargains on offer. It was nice to see so many major brands offering their products for less so I did feel that I saved money in comparison to going to Tesco or Sainsbury's without having to compromise on what I got.

However, I do think that buying frozen items is where there are real savings to be had. So that in mind, I'll be returning to Food Warehouse because there is a tub of ice cream or two with my name on it.

I went to Food Warehouse in Nottingham with £10 and picked up some bargains

READ NEXT: