Popping down to the dairy for milk, eggs, bread or other ‘ingredients’ usually purchased at the supermarket used to feel to me like a lazy option. Now i’m thinking it’s not so lazy.
I ‘popped down’ to the dairy quite abit last weekend due to time pressures and it got me thinking. Am I being lazy or economical?
Obviously bulk shopping at a supermarket is still a good economic idea. But let’s look at the quick trip for one or two things a little tiny bit closer. If i’d driven to the supermarket, the $1-2 margin added by the dairy would probably have been lost in driving costs. Actually, let’s do the sums (on fingers and thumbs):
2 Litre Milk
Supermarket $3.80
Dairy $4.50
Saving $0.70
So, estimating that a trip to the supermarket would be a drive of between 1-2 kms for most folk, at the estimated rate of $0.50 per km overall to run a vehicle, that is a saving of $-0.30. This doesn’t count the return trip in the car and it doesn’t include any real factual basis. Rather, broad guesstimates. But hold on, supermarket petrol vouchers to the rescue! There’s how you get some of your $0.30 back. Maybe the petrol voucher could even be ‘counted’ as another item on your shopping list to justify the trip all the way there. I’ve never used one of the ‘petrol voucher/3 cents off per litre’ thingees, and don’t intend on doing so anytime soon. But some folk must use them. All that receipt paper used to print them must be evidence of demand.
Anyway, back to planet earth. If you have one or two things missing from your cupboard and need them asap, I would venture to say that the economic benefit of driving the further distance (for most people) would be minimal, if not extinct.
It’s kinda like the time I was on a surf trip in Fiji on a student budget in the late 90’s. I’d bought a coke from the store shack some 300m from the resort in 30 degree+ heat (cost approx NZ$1.00). Upon return to the poolside I asked a mate “…you bought a coke from the bar, that’s like $2.00 more expensive.” To which he replied from the comfort of his deck chair: “Yeah, but it’s a $1.00 walk!”
