How I Actually Save Money At Iavarone Bros Every Week
I used to just walk into Iavarone Bros on Route 46 in Little Ferry and grab whatever looked decent. Then my wife pointed out that I was spending roughly double what she thought we should on groceries because I never checked the circular. That was three years ago. Now I spend about eight minutes every Wednesday evening going through the weekly ad, and it cuts our grocery bill by about thirty percent consistently. Here is how I actually do it without losing my mind. The weekly circular drops every Wednesday on their website and in print at the store. It is not some elaborate loyalty program with tiers or points. It is a simple flyer with sale prices, and the trick most people miss is that the real savings are not on the big headline items everyone screenshots and posts about. The actual margins you can exploit are in the produce section and the deli counter, where weekly specials rotate on items that are already close to peak ripeness and need moving. When I first started doing this, I made the rookie mistake of planning my entire week around the front-page specials. One Wednesday, the cover featured a steep discount on ribeye steaks. I skipped everything else, bought the steaks, and realized too late that the chicken breasts I normally buy were only ten cents cheaper than usual that week. The steak deal saved me maybe six dollars. The chicken would have saved me another four if I had just glanced two pages over. Never let the cover image dictate your whole shop list.
Here is the method I use now, and it takes me maybe ten minutes on a phone while I am watching TV at night. First, I open the circular and scan just the three columns on the left side. Those are usually produce, dairy, and meat. I note any items I already buy regularly that happen to be on sale. Not everything I want has to be on sale. If I am out of milk and the price is the same as the competitor across the street, I just buy it. I do not waste time chasing a twenty-cent saving on an item that costs three dollars. Then I move to the middle pages where the branded goods live. Cereal, pasta sauce, canned vegetables, those things. I look for BOGO deals or percentage-off bundles. If I see pasta sauce at buy-one-get-one and I normally go through two jars every two weeks, I take the deal even if I do not need it today. But if I only use it once a month, I ignore it. Buying something you will not use because it is cheap is not saving money. It is spending money at a discount rate. The right side of the circular is deli and specialty. This is where I ran into a problem that took me six months to figure out. The circular shows prices for pre-packaged deli items, but the actual deli counter often has unlisted markdowns on items that are nearing their date label. I asked the counter person once, and she basically told me to come in after 6 PM on Thursdays and ask about anything that needed to go. She was not wrong. I have saved between eight and fifteen dollars per visit this way over the past year. This is not advertised anywhere in the circular, and it does not work every week. Some weeks the deli just does not have much to discount. But when it does, it is worth asking.
I also keep a running note in my phone about what prices normally look like at Iavarone Bros versus the other places I could shop. When the circular shows ground beef at $4.99 a pound and my mental baseline from ShopRite is $5.49, I know it is a real deal. When it shows something at what looks like a discount but is actually the same as what I would pay elsewhere, I skip it. The circular uses anchor pricing on some items, showing a crossed-out price that was never really their selling price that week. It is a standard retail tactic and it works on people who do not shop there regularly. If you shop there every week, you stop falling for it pretty fast. One more thing that took me a while to pick up. The circular does not always match what the shelves actually show at the register. I have had three or four instances where the circular listed a price and the POS charged full price. It happens more often on the weekends when the new circular has not fully propagated to the terminal system. My workaround is simple. I photograph the relevant page of the circular with my phone before I start shopping. If something does not ring up at the advertised price, I show the clerk the photo and they adjust it on the spot. I have never had a problem with this. They do it every time. Doing it at the end of the month when you notice a bunch of overcharges is way more frustrating and sometimes they push back. If you want the circular itself, you can find it at iavaronebros.com under the weekly ad section. They also email it out if you sign up, though the email version is sometimes missing the bottom page with pharmacy and fuel discount info. The PDF version on the website is the complete one. I always use that one.
Get the Full Details
Some people will tell you that you need a loyalty card to get these prices. You do not. The circular prices apply to everyone at the register. There is no membership gate on it. The only thing that requires a separate setup is their online ordering system if you want to place orders ahead of time. For just reading the circular and shopping, there is nothing to sign up for except the patience to look at a five-page PDF once a week. The biggest limitation with this whole approach is that it only works if you are actually willing to adjust your meal plan around what is on sale rather than forcing yourself to buy things you do not want because the circular says they are cheap. I have seen people buy six cans of artichoke hearts because they were two-for-one and then throw half of them away because nobody in their house eats artichokes. That is not smart shopping. That is hoarding. The savings only count if you consume what you buy. Another practical limit is geography. Iavarone Bros is primarily in Bergen County. If you are in Newark or farther south, you are not going to make the trip for a weekly circular deal on olive oil. Know your distance-to-savings ratio. If you are driving twenty minutes each way to save twelve dollars on groceries, you have not actually saved anything once you factor in gas and time. This works best if you are already in the area or making a trip there for some other reason.
I have been doing this for three years now. Our average weekly grocery spend at Iavarone Bros has gone from about $185 down to roughly $130, and we are not eating worse. We are eating the same food, sometimes better, because checking the circular forces me to look at what is actually in season rather than grabbing the same five items on autopilot every week. That part alone was worth the effort.
