When I first moved to the Chicago area, I visited Jewel once and pretty much decided to never go there again because I thought they were way too expensive. I still think their prices are higher on a lot of things, but I've also learned one big secret that can make shopping at Jewel very worthwhile, and this is their Catalina deals that are "buy $X worth of certain products and save $Y on your next shopping trip." A good example is this week's "Buy $25 worth of ConAgra/Kellogg's products and save $10 on your next shopping trip." When you buy enough qualifying merchandise, a coupon will print out of the Catalina machine next to the register that is good for money off your next order. What often makes these deals absolutely wonderful is that the $25 qualifying purchase is based on the price of the items before you scan your preferred card. This makes for some truly amazing deals!
To see how this works, check out these deals this week on Wesson oil and Kellogg's cereals:
Buy 6 Cocoa Krispies @ $4.35 (price before preferred card) = $26.10 (if you want another kind of cereal, I would check the price first; this was the only kind I price checked)
Preferred card price = $15 (6 @ $2.50 each)
Minus (3) $2 off 2 coupons from this week's paper = (-$6)
Pay $9, get back $10 coupon to use on your next order.
If you wanted, you could use that $10 to get more cereal (plus $1 of something else as a filler so you can use the full amount of your $10 coupons), which would give you another $10, and the cycle just goes on and on and on...
You could also take your $10 and do this...
Buy 5 Wesson oil @ $5.45 (price before preferred card) = $27.25
Preferred card price = $12.50 (5 @ $2.50 each)
Pay $12.50 (or $2.50 cash + $10 in coupons from a previous order) and get back $10 in coupons
Final cost = $.50 each
It's possible that there are some other great finds hiding in this deal somewhere. If you find any more, let me know...I love to hear about other people's great shopping trips :)
Similar deals also run at other stores owned by the SuperValu chain, including Albertson's, Acme, Save-a-Lot, Shop 'n Save, Bigg's, Cub, Lucky, and probably some others.
In addition to using coupons and taking advantage of "$$ off your next order" deals, another way to save at Jewel is with avenu electronic coupons. Avenu coupons are tied to your preferred card and instantly deducted at the register; they are considered store coupons, so you can combine a manufacturer combine with an avenu discount. Avenu offers are supposedly customized based on your shopping habits, but I'm not 100% convinced of this. Go here to check out your avenu offers.
And, just in case you still aren't sure that Jewel's catalina deals are worth it, I paid a little over $20 out of pocket over the course of a week or two during the last couple deals they had like this, and I came away with over 20 boxes of cereal, 20 cans of fruit, 7 large jars of applesauce, several loaves of bread, 7 frozen pizzas, a couple bags of cheese, numerous cans of vegetables, a couple bottles of syrup, 2 boxes of crackers, 4 bottles of mayo, a package of lunch meat, a head of lettuce, some bananas, several bottles of salad dressing, a couple bags of salad, several packages of hamburger, 4 boxes of mac & cheese, 3 Easy Mac, more yogurt than I could possibly count, 2 Macaroni Grill dinners, 4 packages of onion soup mix, frosting, cake mix, a few Knorr side dishes, 5 bottles of laundry detergent, several packages of Klondike bars, and cartons upon cartons of Breyer's ice cream (I took at least 15 to work and gave several more to friends, and we still have quite a few in the freezer). I will also get $45 back in rebates from Kraft and Tombstone for all this, so I actually made a pretty decent profit!
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