With food prices at an all time high, we need to take a look at what we can do to cut our bills. The downshift challenge is one way to try
Have you heard of the downshift challenge? It’s the brain-child of Money Saving Expert and friend of Quids In! Martin Lewis, and it’s been going for years.
The basic idea is that we take all of our favourite brands, and try to save money by shifting down from our preferred brand to a cheaper version. We just try one at a time, and if we’re happy we stick with it, or try going down another level to see if we can save even more. If we don’t like the substitute, we go back up to the one we like. We have nothing to lose, and maybe lots to gain.
Let’s try instant instant coffee as an example. We looked at Sainsbury’s at the end of September 2025 for our prices.
Premium Brand
On the week we were looking, a premium brand instant coffee (Nescafe Azera) cost £8.25 for a 140g tin. That’s a whopping £5.89 for 100g of coffee. Assuming we drink 50g of coffee per week, that means we would spend £152.14 every year on coffee.
Standard Brand
On the next level down Nescafe Original cost £7.75 for 300g. That’s more than half the price at £2.58 per 100g of coffee. Our 50g of coffee oper week woul now cost us £67.08, saving ourselves a very impressive £86.06.
Own Brand
Sainsbury’s own brand Gold Roast coffee costs £6.75 for a massive 500g tin. That bit of bulk buying means that we get the coffee for just £1.35 per 100g. Drinking own brand coffee would take our savings over a hundred pounds to £118.04.
Budget Brand
Sainsbury’s budget brand is called Stamford Street, and a 200g jar costs us £2.30. That’s a miserly £1.15 for each 100g. If we could manage to get down to budget brand, our annual bill for coffee would fall to £29.90, saving a massive £123.24 per year.
The downshift challenge works well for all sorts of staple items, from digestive biscuits to bacon to washing powder. If we can save more than £100 per year on coffee, imagine if we could do that across lots of other goods too…
Hunting high and low
One last piece of savvy shopper advice. Supermarkets put items they want us to buy in our eyeline on the shelves. If we want to find the cheaper brands we sometimes have to look up or down, very often along the bottom shelf, for the best value.
Image: Bigstock/Prostock-studio
