Feeding a family of five: a worked grocery budget

A five-person household is a small food business. It has suppliers, stock, wastage, peak periods and a budget that has to survive all of them.

There is no universal number for what that budget should be — it depends on ages, appetites, school lunches, and how often relatives visit. But a worked example is useful, because most grocery budgets fail on structure, not on discipline.

Below is an illustrative monthly basket for a household of five, priced at P1,500 (numbers are illustrative, not current shelf prices). Adjust the quantities to your family; keep the structure.

What the money has to cover

A grocery trip is rarely just food. The same receipt often carries cleaning supplies, airtime and school items. Split them mentally, or your food budget will look worse than it is.

For this example, assume the basket covers:

• Starch: maize meal, rice, bread, potatoes
• Protein: chicken, eggs, tinned fish, beans
• Vegetables and fruit: seasonal, bought weekly
• Dairy and breakfast: milk, tea, sugar
• Fats and condiments: cooking oil, salt, stock, sauce
• Household: soap, washing powder (the quiet budget eaters)

A worked monthly basket

Two things stand out. First, starch and protein are almost half the budget — small percentage changes there matter more than anything else. Second, vegetables are the category with the most price movement, which makes them the best place to be flexible week to week.

Where budgets leak

In our experience reading slips, the leaks are rarely dramatic. They are small and repeatable:

1. Promo creep. A "special" on something you did not plan to buy. It feels like saving; it is spending.
2. Pack-size drift. The 1 kg pack becomes 900 g at the same price. Unit price catches it; the shelf price does not.
3. Small-format shopping. Buying 500 g of maize meal at a premium because the big bag ran out mid-week. The top-up shop is where unit prices are worst.
4. Brand drift. Switching to a premium brand for one item and never switching back.
5. Waste. The most expensive food is the food you throw away. Cooked rice, bread, vegetables — all common casualties.

Five swaps that usually free up money

• Buy the big bag if you can store it. Maize meal and rice are cheaper per kilo in larger packs — check the unit price, then check for pests and damp.
• Buy chicken portions, not whole birds, if that is what you cook. Fewer leftovers, less waste.
• Follow the vegetable season. When supply is heavy, prices fall — and the quality is better.
• Use store brands for basics. Flour, sugar, rice, soap: the premium is often packaging.
• Cook once, eat twice. Batch cooking is a unit-price strategy disguised as a time-saver.

The weekly rhythm

A structure that works for many families:

• One main shop (weekly or fortnightly) with a list built from meals, not items: seven dinners, five lunches, breakfasts.
• One top-up mid-week for fresh produce and milk — with a cash limit.
• One review at the end of the week: what did we throw away, and what did we buy that was not on the list?

Measure, don't guess

A budget you cannot see is a budget you cannot fix. Keep the slips. Once a month, look at your top five spending lines and their unit prices — not the totals. That is where the next improvement is.

Breadwinner reads your slips and shows unit costs per line, with 7 days of history free and 90 days on Premium. If you want the national context for what prices have been doing, we wrote about the September inflation release here.

Scan your first slip — free, 10 slips a month, no card: app.breadwinner.deals

Sources

• Statistics Botswana, Consumer Price Index — September 2026 (published 15 October 2026): food & non-alcoholic beverages +4.5% year on year; vegetables −3.0% for the month. PDF

The basket above is an illustrative example, not a quote or a promise. Prices and household needs vary.