Colorado Springs-area grocery stores start their new sales on Wednesday, and most of them offer a chance to view the ad a day ahead to plan your sale+coupon matchups and menus! Here are links to each store’s ad preview:
Grocery Deals and Coupon Matchups for Colorado Springs
The grocery store sales in Colorado Springs run Wednesday-Tuesday. (At Sprouts, ad cycles run Wednesday-Wednesday with ads overlapping on Wednesday.) We generally publish the weekly grocery deals and coupon matchups for Albertsons, Sprouts, and King Soopers on Tuesday mornings. Safeway's weekly deals and coupon matchups are published on Wednesday morning.
King Soopers to Stop Doubling Coupons as of August 23
I just received word from King Soopers that they are going to stop doubling coupons as of August 23rd:
Denver, CO. (August 10, 2016) –King Soopers announced today that the practice of doubling the value of coupons will end on August 23, 2016.
“In an effort to modernize the company’s coupon policies, King Soopers has been investing additional resources into its digital coupons and promotions. This change will please the rapidly growing segment of our customers who prefer to shop and save without the hassle of clipping paper coupons,” says Kelli McGannon, Director of Public Affairs for King Soopers.
King Soopers customers have access to hundreds of digital coupons everyday which can be downloaded instantly, even as they shop. King Soopers digital coupons are downloadable at kingsoopers.com and through the grocer’s mobile app available on iPhone and Android devices.
Only a small percentage of King Soopers shoppers use double coupons and customers are responding favorably to the recent increase in the quantity and value of the digital coupons available.
King Soopers customers in the last year have loaded to their SooperCard more than $50 million in digital offers.
Along with the growing digital offers, King Soopers will gladly accept paper coupons at face value and will continue to offer great savings to our customers with everyday low prices, weekly specials, and fuel discounts.
“King Soopers will continue to invest in lower prices,” said McGannon. “Double coupons only apply to a small percentage of the items in our stores. Lower prices throughout the entire store are a better benefit to the vast majority of our customers.”
I know that this is going to be really disappointing to many people! It does seem like it’s been headed this way for awhile, though.
Looking Up Other Store’s Prices (Decoding Your Grocery Ad)
Over the past couple of years, it’s gotten so much easier to do grocery price sleuthing from home! When doing the weekly grocery ads, I regularly looked up prices online to see how good of a deal something was compared to other stores.
- Walmart’s newer Walmart Grocery service, which allows you to order online and pick up at the store, also enables you to look up their prices.
- King Soopers’ HomeShop service, which you can use to have groceries delivered (and hopefully someday very soon will allow you to order and pick up in the store!), can also be used to see what their current price on an item is.
- Sam’s Club’s website also has almost all of their in-store products on their website for the same price as in the store, so you can compare their prices as well.
While you might not want to look up prices at all three sites every week, it’s a great way to confirm whether or not a price is stock-up-for-six-months-worthy, or just a slight sale over what you’d pay off the shelf at Walmart.
Where to Look for Deals in the Albertsons Ad
Here’s how I look at the Albertsons ad to find the best deals (particularly as I did the weekly grocery deals and coupon matchups over the past seven years):
Albertsons front page is where their best deals are to be found. If there’s anything that’s close to a “great price” at Albertsons, it will almost always be found on the front page (or pages – keep reading).
Albertsons tends to run some of the best sales on meat, and they are always prominently featured here.
[Read more…] about Where to Look for Deals in the Albertsons Ad
Which Newspaper (Post or Gazette) to Buy for Coupons? Your Input Requested!
A question from Brenna:
I’ve been getting the Denver Post for years because of the larger subscription base [which means its coupon inserts have more coupons]. A friend and I are considering use the Gazette because we can get it a lot cheaper. What are your experiences with each paper and what paper do you use when quoting your deal match ups?
I wanted to pose this question to you all, because my priorities and grocery shopping habits have changed over the past couple of years, and I don’t subscribe to the paper or use coupons extensively myself right now.
The Denver Post typically has larger coupon inserts than the Gazette, because as Brenna mentioned, it has a larger subscriber base and gets on the “A” list for coupon inserts. The Gazette definitely has coupons, but the Post’s inserts usually have quite a few that the smaller newspapers’ inserts don’t.
I assume that this is the same as it has been in the past, but for those of you who regularly clip coupons, have you noticed that this is still the case? Do you think it’s worth paying a bit more for the Denver Post to get the additional coupons?
When I do the grocery sale and coupon matchups, I pull from a national database of coupon inserts, so there are occasions where neither the Post nor the Gazette received a coupon that’s in the database, because different regions do get different coupons.
Coupons that were region-specific are usually marked with an “R” next to the insert information. (I did used to have an assistant that tracked which coupons came in our local papers and I only used those coupons in the matchups, but that was one of the things that I had to cut back a couple of years ago.)
So, readers: have you compared the coupon inserts in the Gazette and the Post lately? Does the Post still get more coupons than the Gazette? And do you think the difference is great enough to pay more for the Post?
Please comment on this post with your thoughts.
Hot Deal on Sam’s Club Membership through Groupon
If you have been thinking about getting a Sam’s Club membership, you can get a fantastic deal through Groupon right now! This Groupon deal is for a one-year membership plus a $20 Sam’s gift card and $26 worth of free food vouchers for $45! The food vouchers are for free roast turkey, ciabatta rolls, black bean dip, and apple pie. (There is also supposed to be $80 worth of additional discounts but I can’t decide if these are exclusive to this offer or if it’s their regular monthly deals.)
Go here to read more on this Sam’s Club Groupon deal. Thanks, Money Saving Mom! Note: Liz commented that she did a similar deal for a Sam’s Club membership through Groupon and it auto-renewed, so just keep that in mind.
I am still loving having a Sam’s membership, especially the Click n’ Pull service! I am a little bummed that they have recently stopped carrying C&H sugar and replaced it with beet sugar (there’s been a couple of other product changes like that lately), but I still find that for my family, it’s been a good place to shop since I don’t have time to clip many coupons or shop a bunch of different stores like I used to.
Are You Still Subscribing to the Newspaper for the Coupons?
Jamie emailed with a great discussion topic:
I stopped getting the paper a while ago. Do you find that it is still worth it to get it for the coupons? I had been collecting the free mail outs but it doesn’t seem like the same coupons are in there and lately I haven’t even seen them like I used to. What have you found? Also, do you tend to get multiple copies of the same paper?
I’ve written before about how my grocery shopping habits have changed so that I’m not using as many coupons as I used to, but I think I may have only mentioned in passing that since we moved last year and have been busy renovating, I haven’t even started up a subscription to the newspaper at our new house! :/ I’m finding myself using ecoupons and shopping at Sam’s Club more and right now my biggest strategy for saving is cooking from scratch. I totally know I could save more if I used newspaper coupons, but I can’t do everything and that’s one of the things I stopped because I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I used to. There are other things that I can do to make the most of my grocery money that I actually enjoy.
I definitely think newspaper coupons are still a huge source of savings, and so I will continue doing coupon matchups with them, but I have the feeling that I’m not the only one whose coupon habits have changed, whether due to decreasing coupon availability or decreasing time to clip them or whatever!
What about the rest of you? How has your coupon use changed (to use fewer or more coupons!), and what has been the driving factor? Click here to comment.
Get Cash Back on Groceries through These Apps
Several readers have commented or emailed lately about a couple of apps that you can use to save additional money on groceries! It looks like, at least right now, these can be combined with other at-the-checkout coupon offers, much like a rebate. Here’s some info from Linh:
I just recently started couponing and found out about these great apps to earn back extra money in the form of rebates: Checkout 51 and Ibotta. They have select items for rebates and once you hit a certain dollar amount they can either cut you a check (Checkout 51) or give it back through Paypal (Ibotta). Deals last for a week at a time and quantities are limited they say on the app.
And Kristina gave some great information on using these apps on this week’s King Soopers deals:
Don’t forget Ibotta and Checkout51 rebates: Look for Special K bars that have $1 off two peelie (any bars), and there are about 9 (nine) Ibotta rebates for $0.75 each on Special K products (5 different protein bars and 4 cereals). I think several of the Protein bars are included in the sale…makes them $1.50 after peelie, $0.75 each after ibotta rebate. Ibotta still has $0.50 rebate on white milk (KS has one of the best prices per gallon this week).
Also, Checkout 51 has a $1.00 rebate for two special K cereal, and $1.00 for 1 box Triscuit, making them FREE. I just discovered Checkout 51, and better than Ibotta since no store restrictions on it. This week, Checkout51 has rebates on any fresh tomatoes and fresh bananas, too.
You CAN submit same receipt to both apps! I did this for $1.00 rebate on milk last week!
I just signed up for Checkout51 and it had an offer for a $2.00 rebate just for scanning a recent receipt! You can sign up for Ibotta here and for Checkout51 here.